Piss poor

Maneken Pis is small. The blue plastic copy outside the waffle shop is ten times larger. If, like me, you prefer to discover a place by wandering, you would miss it except for the crowds of tourists taking selfies. But, at the end of my first week in Brussels, I have seen the small boy pissing naked on a weekday and dressed in the football gear of a Spanish club on Saturday. Currently, work is proceeding on the facade behind and the tiny Maneken is backed by hessian sacking drapes yet he continues to piss in public with great confidence.

On Saturday, our free city centre tour guide (departs three times a day every day from the Grand Place) asked why the boy pisses and then proceeded to offer three mythical explanations. Two stories are heroic battle tales of Maneken saving Brussels from her enemies by (1) pissing from a tree into the eyes of the opposing warriors and (2) peeing on the lighted fuse of the dynamite intended to blow up the city. The third explanation is more Shakespearean. Ammonia in piss was highly valued and poor people in the city would send their children to this spot to pee for money. Hence the expression "piss poor".

The tour guide, an actor trying to pay the rent, probably made more from tips than Maneken Pis would see in a lifetime, probably more than all the beggars in Brussels would make together in a week.

And there are plenty of beggars in Brussels. Old and young Caucasian men beg from their sleeping quarters in doorways and under construction scaffolding. Women with white hair neater than mine sit on the floor in the Metro, begging cups held out as though offering tea. Women, and a few men, cradle children with one arm and hold out their other hand. One man has a dog. The man outside the Bourse, where I visited The World of Steve McCurry exhibition, looks like Bob Marley grown old.

I have already spent most of my allowance for six weeks on the rent of my flat, so I try not to notice the beggars. Yet the thrust of so many begging cups threatens to burst my bubble as I float through my first week as a citizen journalist. I am already overwhelmed with the clash of appearance and reality, of rhetoric and a good enough truth.

This has also been Pride week in Brussels. On Wednesday, we three citizen journalists attended a debate, Colors of the Rainbow, at BOZAR, centre for Fine Arts. I learned that Malta has been placed at the top of the EU league in terms of LGBTQ rights. In the rainbow bag (in Australia it would be called a show bag) we found a blow up beach ball with the slogan be Equal, be.Brussels. At  the reception afterwards, wine and canapés were consumed in bulk. On Saturday, the city was a crush of humanity for the parade. My internal map of Brussels grew as I tried to dodge the gridlock around dancing queens and deafening music. On Sunday, the pavements were covered in shattered glass and
in corners off the main thoroughfares, a smell of piss lingered as though Meneken had lost his aim.

Along with the beggars, two thoughts have been worrying at the back of my mind. The first is that the LGBTQ community, like the social justice movements of 1970s and 80s, has become dominated by men. The concern is less about creating a world where all people are respected and heard, regardless
of sexual orientation as one aspect of our humanity that makes us diverse. The focus appears to be about strengthening the rights of a particular group of men in relation to another dominant group of men. The parade was mostly about individual men strutting their stuff, drinking lots of beer and pissing in public.

The other thought brings me back to the beggars. Pride week in Brussels has been a costly celebration  of our diversity. The expense of police presence in securing the parade route and of cleaning squads to sort out the mess afterwards perhaps could provide hot meals and a bed for all the beggars in the
city. I know that this is too simplistic but I continue to grapple with the contradictions of my first week as a citizen journalist. In Europe, the Union has brought peace and prosperity for a growing number of people but the gap between the very rich and those who are living in abject poverty has to be addressed.