Mozambique's Really Not That Different - UPDATE

I'll give you an example. The other day I'm in the market getting some produce with Victor. Victors out doing his thing and I'm hanging back guarding the car. I'm guarding the car because 1) People will smash the windows, slash the tires, or steal the mirrors and 2) because if people see Victor with a white guy he gets a bad rate on groceries.

While I'm hanging around the car, I of course get mobbed by people (because I'm so good looking). After I beat them all away one kid sticks around. He's about 10 years old and wearing super tight sweat pants and a t-shirt with the neck so stretched out he looks like he could be a high school girl circa 1988. This is how then conversation went happened (in Portuguese). Mets is the unit of currency, not a defunct New York baseball team.

Kid: Sir, please. Do you have ten mets.
Me: No.
Kid: Please, sir. I'm only asking for ten mets. I need to buy a pen.
Me: Go away.
Kid: Sir, I need a pen for school. Only ten mets.
Me: Sorry, I can't help.
Kid: Please, when I don't have a pen for school my teacher beats me. Just 10 mets.
Me: No.
Kid: Just 10 mets so I can buy a pen. I don't want my teacher to beat me anymore.
Me: I'm sorry, I don't have any money.
Kid: (crying) You're lying. Don't lie to me. I know you have money. Just 10 mets, please.
Me: Okay, I don't have ten mets, but I do have a pen. Here. You can have it.
Kid:
Me:
Kid: (crying ceased, now angry) No, just 5 mets for a pen.
Me: No, get out of here. You don't want a pen, you want money.
Kid: (shouting a crude obscenity in English) $&#*!@%


UPDATE: After a slew of emails claiming I've turned into a bitter curmudgeon and a very well worded comment from my dad I've decided to provide some context so that you don't think I'm completely heartless. I'm not trying to defend what I did, but I just want to point out that while life over here is a completely different picture, people are very much the same. So just to give a few points of background to the story.

• Mozambique is poor. I know most of Africa is in the same state, but now think worse. Depending on which statistics you look at, it is anywhere in the bottom 10% to 40% of Africa and was the first country to qualify for national debt relief from the World Bank.
  
• The kid is the story does not attend school. If he did, he would have been in school when this took place. And its unlikely that he was just skipping this one day. A huge amount of people here don't attend school. My roommate Felipe did not start school til he was 14. The reason kids do not attend school is not because they don't have pencils, its because they just plain don't go.
• If the kid wanted money for something else, he should have asked for money for something else. If he wanted food, he should have asked for food. If he didn't want a pen, then don't ask for a pen.
• If you've talked to other folks that have been here, you will know that it is not impossible but very hard to help people on this kind of scale because...
• The first time I helped somebody out here I gave a kid an orange after a bought a dozen or so at the market. The kid ran away with the orange and I was attacked by an angry mob of no less than 20 people (ranging from ages 10 to 20) demanding oranges for everybody and I ran away as they tore my clothes to pieces and threw punches at me.
• The second (and last) time I helped a person I gave a kid 2 mets (about 8 cents in America). I then watched helpless as the older kids beat him up and took his money.

I'm not cruel or jaded. I've just witnessed a little more I bargained for. And I'm not indifferent when I see life here, I just find other ways to help people, such as teaching and tutoring the kids at the orphanage or working with the well to get them clean and consistent water.

For more info on how Mozambique stacks up, read about the Human Development Index. Mozambique is in the bottom tier just ahead of two war-torn Congos, Sierra Leone, and Somalia.