Power Bar

The other day, about dusk, while walking home I encountered three boys, around seventeen, a few of the post-war disenfranchised. One of them shouted, “Mazunga, Give me one five hundred (a coin worth about 25c).” We are under direction not to give money. Our gift is the teaching experience, the care we give to the students. So, I said, “No.”
He shouted back, “But I am hungry.”
I said, “Then from now on I will carry food in by backpack; if you are hungry I will give some to you.”
He began to walk on, I continued home, thinking of Samuel, wondering abut the right and wrong of either option. But after about 10 steps I remembered a honey nut power bar in my knapsack. I turned and yelled, “Owobi! (“boy”- it does NOT have the same negative connotation here ).” He stopped and walked toward me, when he was about fifty feet away I flipped it to him.
“It is good. Sweet, “I yelled, and we parted.

Yesterday, while returning from the orphanage, I came upon a group of young men on a corner—about ten in all. I started to pass, one of them shouted, “Wait!” From the middle a young man emerged, he walked up to me, his hand extended, “Last night, that sweet was good. Thank you.”
I asked his name.
“Courageous Dennis,“ he said. He then told me a tale of abduction, escape, and how now life is not much better. He sleeps on the field at Pece Stadium with his friends for protection and scrambles for food every day.

I have heard too many such tales to be able to divine the truth of any of them, but as we stood shaking hands I told him he had a good name and hoped he could live up to it. I promised I would try to always have something in my bag. If he was hungry, if any of his friends were hungry, all they needed to do was ask.

Not sure how the program would react if they knew. I am sure I don’t care.