During our “On the Road” experience in Turkey, we recently stopped in the town of Harran to see a few archaeological sites there.  As our bus rolled into town, children and adults alike would stare at the crew of obvious tourists, the children with looks of awe and excitement.  When we finally arrived at the Harran Fortress, and the bus doors opened, we were immediately swarmed by a group of young girls.  Initially I was excited to interact with the young, adorable townspeople.  My excitement rapidly turned to dismay, however, when we realized that these youngsters were trying desperately to hawk some handmade trinkets and jewelry for “One lira! One lira! One lira! Please miss, one lira!” (This they repeated over and over, and were not even deterred by the site guard who attempted to shoo them away.) 

Our tour guide, Husnu, told us quite seriously that we should not give the children anything: if they were successful at making money, their parents would continue to send them out to solicit tourists whenever they came to town.  “We are helping them by not giving them anything,” Husnu said: “If the children are unsuccessful in the streets, then maybe their parents will start sending them to school.” I looked at the children again, and felt a pang of dismay.  Yet having experienced a similarly desperate sales pitch from some of the people I encountered during a trip to Ghana last summer, at first I was just fine firmly saying “No,” shaking my head, or simply ignoring them.  At first, that is.

The children followed us throughout the fortress ruins, intercepting us every chance they got with pleas of “One lira! One lira!” One girl in particular – a cute freckled kid about ten years old with an endearingly gapped smile and intensely deep brown eyes – latched onto me, having noticed a spare hair clip I kept on my purse strap.  She didn’t need to speak English for me to realize that she wanted it – desperately.  My once solid “No”s started to waver, but I had been told: give them nothing.  Nonetheless, a little voice of sympathetic angst started speaking up in my head:

What’s one little hair clip to me? Nothing. And to her, it would be everything! She has so little – I mean, my goodness – look at her shoes! They’re completely falling apart…if I can’t give her money, at least I could give her a little something, right? It’s really not a big deal…maybe if Husnu and Dr Killebrew (my professor, who ardently supported Husnu’s kabash on giving anything to the children) didn’t see me give it to her….

I was so bothered by the obvious disparity between the children and myself that I stopped listening to whatever was going on with our tour: I had no idea when the fortress was built, and I really couldn’t care less which god it was supposed to praise.  My mind was spinning, and the adorable girl with the gap-toothed smile that would probably never be fixed with orthodontia was still pulling at my shirt, gesturing to the clip and then to herself, over and over.  Her “One lira!” schpeel had long since been forgotten, and she had separated from the rest of her crew to stick by me. I kept almost-reaching for the hair clip, but a short conversation with Dr. Killebrew again dissuaded me.  She tsked at the girl (the Turkish way of saying get lost, I suppose) since I had lost all hope of standing my ground and saying “No,” and discovered my desperation for this girl had lead me to the verge of tears.

When we made it back to where the bus was parked, there she was again.  I couldn’t take it. I miserably got onto the bus, and I broke down. I couldn’t handle hearing the other students complain about how annoying the children were, and I couldn’t handle the fact that there was nothing I could do to help them. This was the grittier part of Turkey that we hadn’t quite been exposed to before Harran, and I was thus experiencing harsh culture shock.  Here we are, cruising around Turkey on a pleasantly air-conditioned bus, snapping pictures of historical sites and of the people who currently inhabit the area.  We are so divided from their lives that we feel as though we have to capture them on film to remind ourselves of their existence after we depart. 

Just think: I packed a pair of sneakers, a pair of loafers, and two pairs of flip flops for this trip – and have enough shoes left at home to wear a different pair every day for a month.  The girl from Harran, and her fellow child-vendors, probably owned one or two pairs of shoes total.  If any of my shoes get a hole, I buy a new pair and don’t even think twice about it. A hair clip breaks, and I replace it with another one and don’t think twice about that either.  These kids’ toes were poking through their dusty footwear; every time I looked down to avoid meeting their pleading eyes, I saw their shoes and my heart sunk lower. 

But what can we do? Poverty exists in the world, and we cannot fly to other countries and wave a magic wand or give out a few liras to fix everything. It is so much more complicated than that; it takes time to make such drastic social changes, and as Husnu said; sometimes we can only sit back and hope these children somehow end up in school….

But I do wish I had given that girl my hair clip.

Location: Harran, Turkey