“What class do you belong to?” asked Andrea Morillo of Nourish International, referring to the random ticket that we received upon entering Ellis Ballroom for the OXFAM Hunger Banquet.
“Low-income class,” I answered humbly.
“Please take a seat on the floor,” she replied.
As I sat down on the hard, wooden floor, I talked with the growing population of lower-class citizens that started to surround me, and I looked around at the middle-class citizens, who were sitting comfortably in chairs, and at the upper-class citizens, who were starting to eat fresh salads with shiny cutlery.
I was jealous that they had forks… Never in my life did I ever think I would yearn so strongly for a fork. My food finally came. It was a tiny bowl of rice, yet I still wasn’t sure how I was going to eat it without a fork. My hands had been touching the floor, so I was concerned that I would catch some type of disease if I ate using my dirty fingers. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
It wasn’t until this event that I truly realized how much of the world lives in poverty. I’ve helped serve food in areas where poverty is prevalent, but I never knew what it would feel like being the one sitting on the floor waiting for my small bowl of rice.
When one of the middle-class citizens, Anh Ha, was asked how she felt about the upper-class citizens, she said, “Not one of them offered any food to the people sitting on the floor. They say that they feel guilty, but they don’t do anything about it.”
She makes a really good point. Most of us come from middle to upper-class backgrounds. Sure, we may go on community service trips where we serve the poor, but then we return to our homes and eat nutritious and oftentimes, overly-filling meals.
I’m not sure that I have a grand solution to these inequalities quite yet, but I do encourage you to be more aware of the economic situations of others. We can start with small steps, such as serving at local soup kitchens, donating to homeless shelters, offering food to people who can’t afford it, etc. It may not seem like much, but little by little, we can and WILL make a difference.