On Saturday night I was in Kalamata for the kids’ sports games. We each ate a souvlaki and then slipped into a pastry shop. We each got a sweet and the kids immediately started devouring them. Finally, since I don’t eat sugar anyway, I changed my mind. Luckily, I had unknowingly taken precautions and had taken it in a packet rather than in hand.
On the way home, I saw a man in his 60s, in black clothes, rummaging through the garbage cans. He was pulling out trash and separating it into two (at least that’s what it looked like from a distance). I approached him and asked, “Would you like a sweet?” And as if I was taking a baseball bat to the head, I heard him reply, “I wouldn’t want to deprive you of it.” I was speechless. I can’t tell you how embarrassed I felt.
This man, who was obviously looking through the trash for either materials that could in any way be marketable (such as recyclables) or things and materials that could be useful to him, thought of me first instead of – as is only logical – thinking of himself first (as do the rest of us who have at least solved the issue of meeting our basic needs).
And before I can recover from the dizziness of the first answer, he continues with the next hit, “Whatever you give to us poor people is good for us.”
I hold out my hand and offer him the box of sweets along with the napkins. He thanked me and while I literally wanted the Earth to open up and swallow me because I remember all the clothes I don’t wear, the food I threw in the trash last week, my daughter’s bag of fruit from school that rotted, the expired yogurt, the bun we didn’t like enough to eat, and the takeaway coffee I bought and eventually threw in the sink, two words were stuck in my head: deprivation (mine) and the (self-proclaimed) poor.
I take out my wallet and give him 5 euros.
And then he asks me, “Where are you from?” I say, “From Galaxidi.” And he continues, “Are the people who live in Galaxidi good people?” I take a moment to answer him, mostly pondering whether or not I’m really a good person, and with hesitation I reply, “Uh, yeah.” And he says to me, “There are good people in Galaxidi!”
I don’t know if Galaxidi or any other town for that matter has good people (me first). What I do know is that this man should be delivering classes in schools.
Marina Selini Katsaiti is associate professor and chair of the Department of Economic and Regional Development at the Agricultural University of Athens in Amfissa.