It’s only in heaven where beggars do not exist!

Jacob Icia Moscow Chronicles 

It is almost certain before you cross one street to another in Nairobi, at least beggar will have genuinely tested your compassion for the less endowed if not a con.

By all standards, comparing Nairobi and Moscow especially on economy scales, you would think there are no beggars here.

Quite interesting, they are and they appear to be learning how it is done in Nairobi. I’m walking along Karoviy Val and out of nowhere a boy taps my hand, signalling to me he to put money in a small container he is carrying.

The boy is smartly dressed, but wears a face of a hunger. I examine the container he has for what Nairobians call tax collection, and realize it’s a type of yoghurt brand I have been seeing in Moscow malls.

So it must have been used and kept for the purpose!

In trying to figure out what is happening, my colleague points to me a shabbily dressed woman seated about 10 metres away keenly following my interaction with the boy.

“Exactly what they do in Nairobi, using kids to draw your attention. Look at that mama…” she said.

As I get draw something for the boy from my pocket, another man comes fast and speaks to the boy in Russian. I could not understand exactly what he said but the gesture told it all, he was telling off the poor boy.
He then turns to the woman by the road side, throwing seemingly some caution against what was happening.

In the middle of the drama, Matthew 25:42 hits my mind: ” I was hungry, but you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink…”

I quickly dished out some few rubles (I can’t remember how much it was as I have not mastered the local currency) and gave to the boy.

Ministering to a soul away from home, ‘in the uttermost of the world’ is such fulfilling.