Last Wednesday afternoon, for one hour, I stopped being Paul and became Liang.
Taking on the role of Liang, who lives in northern Vietnam, where the average income is less than $200 per year, I have no land so I work as a day laborer, earning a small income. My family barely has enough to eat. I can provide a rudimentary education for my son, but I need my daughter at home to help me.
For that hour as Liang, I experienced life in poverty, sitting on the floor next to piles of trash and crates in the MSC Century Rooms, which had been turned into a makeshift poverty-stricken area for a hunger banquet sponsored by the Catholic Newman Center as part of social justice month.
As Liang, I was part of the low-income group, representing the majority of the world's population. My average income is less than $900 per year or about $2.50 per day. Every day is a struggle to meet my family's basic needs.
Finding food, water and shelter may consume my entire day, but my biggest concern is being hungry. I don't get the minimum requirements of calories I am supposed to get.
I am just one of the approximately 850 million people who suffer from chronic hunger everyday.
When it came time for our meal, I received a spoonful of rice on a piece of cardboard with a glass of dirty water. (I still don't know what made the water brown and taste funny. I hope it was food coloring). My group had no silverware. We ate with our hands.
The group of individuals I was with was not alone. Next to us on one side of the room was the middle-income class, who were eating rice and beans with a glass of lemonade. They also had plastic silverware and paper plates, and they sat at a plain table with chairs.
On the other side of the room, at the fancy table, the high-income group was served salad, chicken parmesan with green beans, twice-baked potatoes, breadsticks and dessert.
One individual from the middle-income group offered us her plate of beans and rice. The high-income table did not offer us any food until one brave person from the poverty-stricken group begged for food at the fancy table.
As I ate my rice and drank my brown water, all I could think of is how much food I, as in Paul, not Liang, waste. I cannot imagine what it would be like living on a meal of rice and water every day or even worse, not knowing when my next meal would come.
One lesson I, as in Paul, took with me from the hunger banquet after being in the shoes of Liang for an hour, is that hunger is not about food, it is about power. People who suffer from chronic hunger do not suffer because a shortage of food exists.
Chronic hunger exists because certain people do not have access to basic needs in life, shelter, a decent job, education, peace, political freedom and food.
Chronic hunger will not end by growing more food. It will end when we figure out how we can allow better access to food for those people who are starving and how we can better equally distribute food across the world.
So, the next time you are sitting at the fancy table eating chicken parmesan and you want to give your leftovers to the hungry, what will your answer be when somebody asks you, what's stopping you?
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