While there is a nice glow to be had from helping a child in Africa, there are lots of needy people on our doorstep, ORNA MULCAHY
WE’RE JUST over the MS Readathon, and now the annual Shoebox Appeal is upon us. The flowering of our youngest’s reading habit has generated almost €100 for multiple sclerosis and now she is applying the same pester factor to filling shoeboxes that, via the Christian aid agency Samaritan’s Purse, will be sent far away, to impoverished lands where children have very little. Abroad that is.
Operation Christmas Child, as it’s officially known, is a well-organised campaign with clear instructions in a brochure that came home in the school bag. Each shoebox should be decorated with gift wrap, but not sealed, so its contents can be inspected for unsuitable items such as knives, glass, anything suggesting war, and books, other than those with just pictures. Sweets and chocolate are not allowed unless the sell-by date is beyond next March, so it clearly takes a while for the boxes to get to Armenia or Swaziland, to Romania, Nepal, Mozambique, Ukraine or Zimbabwe. The brochure shows happy-looking children holding their boxes aloft under a beating sun or against a rubble-strewn background.
There are suggestions on what to give: something that a child could love, such as a teddy or a doll; something to wear; something to play with; something to clean with; something to learn with; and so on. The charity asks that you give only new things (no dreary hand-me-downs or McDonald’s toys) so all week I’ve been running around to Dunnes and Arnotts and Marks Spencer during lunch hour, only to be told each evening we can fit even more! Who knew there was so much space in a shoebox? You could nearly emigrate on what’s been crammed into the two we’re packing, one for a girl, one for a boy.
“Your simple act of kindness can bring love and hope into the bleakest of situations!” says the brochure, and, sure, there is a nice warm glow to be had from imagining a child in deepest Africa opening the box and digging down through the layers to discover the colouring pencils and quality sharpener (unless it’s to be confiscated because of the blade), the vests and knickers, the teddy and the jelly beans, the soap and face cloth. The children might be glad of such things, or at least they might be able to barter them for something they really want.
Is it curmudgeonly to suggest that the charity could drop some of the boxes off on Dublin’s O’Connell Street on their way to the docks? There are plenty of needy children and teenagers there, sitting on pavements and in doorways, swaddled in sleeping bags and sitting on the bridge holding empty paper cups out to passersby.
There are boys slumped on the steps beneath Daniel O’Connell’s statue, and hunkered down close to ATMs. Increasingly, there are middle-aged men in doorways, wearing good coats, keeping their heads down and begging all the same, outcast maybe from homes or jobs.
On Monday, on the short journey from Tara Street to Henry Street, I was touched three times, most memorably by a lady from Mullingar who explained that her teeth were killing her and she needed to go to the dentist.
On Tuesday, when the weather turned cold, I had a mean thought – maybe there will be fewer beggars today, and one could go shopping without feeling bad, but no, there were plenty sitting on the footpaths, now cold as well as miserable. On such a day you’d miss the old Bewley’s cafe on Westmoreland Street, a vast warm place with real fires burning and staff willing to heat a baby’s bottle, give an extra big helping of chips or nicely ignore the person sitting over a pot of tea for hours on end. It closed because the building became so valuable in the boom it didn’t make sense to just run it as a cafe.
There is nothing like it now.
Dublin traders have been moaning for months that business is down by as much as 30 per cent, and that it is the fault of the council for introducing its bus gate at College Green, stopping would-be shoppers from driving into the city. This week the council agreed to suspend the evening bus gate in the run up to Christmas. Hopefully the traders will get the boost they’re expecting, but they might find otherwise. Many recreational shoppers have moved to Dundrum, where all is clean and shiny and secure, and where they do not have to sidestep a homeless boy, or a mother and child wrapped in blankets, to get into a shop.
In Dundrum they can say: “Recession, what recession, I could hardly get a parking space.” In Dublin city centre, the recession is laid out at their feet.
This week the Society of St Vincent de Paul urged the Government not to cut social welfare, and in particular the Christmas bonus that makes such a difference to families. Its vice-president, John Monaghan, warned that the society was likely to raise less in its Christmas appeal this year, but that it is getting more and more calls for help, the majority of them from households with children. It’s time to think of these people first, before filling boxes for the poor in other lands.