Joanna Goldberg sends biweekly communiqués from Kenya, where she’s living with her kid
When you live in Africa, it isn’t long before you settle on a strategy for handling the daily stream of requests for handouts. Mothers ask for bread and milk for their babies. Children follow you with sponsor sheets for their school uniforms. Men ask for money, even one shilling. It’s not that there aren’t homeless people back home, but it’s easier to overlook someone sitting on a curb with a plastic cup half full of change than it is to ignore a barefooted boy gripping my daughter Cameron’s shoes as I give her a piggyback, pleading quietly but firmly, “give me your shoes…give me your shoes” for the length of three blocks.
