It’s been a rainy week in our city. Some of the dirt alleyways have turned to treacherous mud, and the open sewage trench that runs in front of our door has overflowed its banks and drained down the slope to the poorest homes in our neighborhood, right next to the big sewage canal. A new family has moved into one of the other small rooms in our landlady’s house this month. Three small kids and another one on the way, they have little to furnish their room besides some blankets on the floor, and they cook over an open fire in the small courtyard where all thirteen of us (landlady’s family included) hang up our laundry to dry. This week there’s been very little laundry because of the rain, but as we realized a couple of days ago, there’s also been very little cooking for this new family either. One morning we realized on our way to the outhouse that they hadn’t made anything for breakfast and had them over for chai and bread in our room. But that was just one day—we eat breakfast every day, and they go without food so much of the time, rain or shine, because they often don’t have the money on hand to buy anything to cook.

This week I went to visit two young friends I had met at a women’s literacy class in our community. They’re sisters, aged fifteen and eleven, and their parents have both died over the last few years, so they live with two older brothers who work to support the family. When I arrived at their home, they offered me a piece of a samosa. In the course of the conversation afterwards, I learned that because of the rain their brothers hadn’t been able to work for the past couple of days, and so this one salty pastry split between the three of us was all they had for lunch! They were waiting for their brothers to come home that evening with enough money to buy something to cook for dinner. This was sobering enough, but then one of the girls took me over to her cousin’s house just a few alleys away and left before her relatives fed me more samosas, along with chai and sweets. It is frustrating that I was treated to this hospitality while just a few yards away the girls were going hungry. Upon reflection, the disturbing thought occurred to me that my friend may have intentionally taken me to her cousin’s house thinking that was the best way to treat her guest the hospitality she herself was unable to provide. It’s humbling (and yes, disturbing) to think that the poor are feeding me instead of feeding themselves.

A lot of people go hungry in our neighborhood on a regular basis. Especially with the rain interrupting so many people’s livelihoods recently, we’re coming into a deeper awareness of that. But the fact remains that in all kinds of weather, families are living on the edge and often skip meals. Stunted children and skinny babies are the most visible reminders of that. Living within a few meters of these families, we never go hungry and make our decisions about meals based on our tastes rather than on whether or not there is cash on hand to cook a meal.

Of course there are all the complexities of an unjust global system that has kept me and most other Americans well-fed for our entire lives at the cost of keeping others hungry—but my friend has done a compelling job of explaining all of that in his blog post (which I highly, highly recommend), so I won’t go into that here.

Right now, I’m living next door to hungry people, so there is this pressing question of how to genuinely love my neighbors when they are hungry and I am fed. What is in my power to do, and am I doing that? But actually, in this age of global food chains and international connectedness, I suppose that my question is no different from the question we should all be asking—because whether we live in Los Angeles, Houston, India, or anywhere else on earth, our neighbors are hungry while we are fed.