I literally jump back. “Good God,” I think, “those are BODIES!!” It’s 11pm and I’ve just arrived home from work. I sleepily stumble into my building complex, entering the parking garage on my way to the stairs. I see what I presume to be bags, maybe trash even – I’m honestly not paying much attention. Movement!! I realize two people are sleeping on the garage floor of my building, covered with sheets. Is this the guard I see every morning, smiling with his young son often nestled between his knees, who sheepishly waves hello and goodbye to me as I pass? The bodies are stirring, and I don’t want to wake them. So I rush up the stairs, tip-toeing all the way up.

I have a sick knot in my stomach; this is not right. People should not be sleeping on the garage floor. So what should be done? Some people would say that this man is making money; at least he has a job. And if you merely just found a place for him and his son to sleep, what is that really solving long-term? There are thousands of others like them. Working in luxury buildings. Sleeping on nearby floors.

And that’s when it hits me. Parallel worlds of rich and poor clearly exist in all cities. But they’re much more hidden and separate in Western ones. New York, obviously, has its share of homeless and low-income residents. But most people don’t literally step over them once they’re home – maybe they pass them on the nearby street corner or give quarters to them on the subway. But home is home. A solace and refuge. Not a place where you have to confront the hypocrisies of your own life on a daily basis. Somewhere out there, you know there are people starving and people sleeping on concrete floors. But they’re hidden from immediate view.

In my first couple of weeks in Hyderabad, the hard questions keep coming. How “nice” of a place should I be living in? Should I live near work or should I live someplace farther that’s quieter and more comfortable? I think about Jon’s blog and absolutely agree – there’s something perverse about living in such a way as to claim “I’ve lived with the poor” – as if we could ever really understand what their lives are like.

Then there are the beggars on my way to and from work, reaching their hands into my auto-rickshaw. What do I do? Like in NY, I give them my food if I have any. But I don’t give them money. Generally. Because that’s not sustainable and is just encouraging begging. But what if it’s a child? My heart says one thing, but my brain says another: giving money is just reinforcing the fact that they’re begging in the first place – and not in school. But he’s just a child! What if it’s a woman, and that woman is carrying a baby in her arms? Then what? I’m here to work at a maternity hospital, and my work with LifeSpring is incredibly meaningful. But what about outside of work? How much should I be giving? – of my money, of my time, of my energy? How much is enough?

And so I’m learning that the hard questions begin now. These are the same questions I thought I had already worked through in my head. But now I’m away from the ivory towers of academia and the nestled safe-haven that the Fellows created with Jacqueline, Deepti, and Jesse in the Berkshires.

This is India, where everything is in your face and nothing is hidden from sight.

When I first heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – in an outstanding lecture on civil wars by Monica Toft (http://ksgfaculty.harvard.edu/monica_toft) – I thought it was brilliant. Maslow, a psychologist, lays out a pyramid with five levels of human needs and argues that the highest need, of self-actualization, cannot happen until more basic needs are met.

I revisited Maslow’s hierarchy today. And while there is something to it, my current environment offers a different perspective. Take Kibera, where people are at the bottom-most layer of the hierarchy: at times even physiological needs of food and water are not met, and safety and security is certainly not a reality for most.

And yet the top of Maslow’s hierarchy – of morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem-solving – can be as powerful here as anywhere else in the world. In the perceived chaos of Kibera, entrepreneurs like Millicent persevere with her CFW clinic, powerful family and community structures exist, and people come up with creative solutions to the deepest of problems. Without more basic needs met, people in Kibera will never reach their fullest human potential, but it seems to me that they often succeed in flipping this hierarchy upside down.