Last November, I got off the train from Paris to step into a large station in Cologne, Germany. As I walked down from the platform, I was surrounded by meats and harsh syllables I didn’t understand. My boyfriend and I were there an hour before my German friend would meet us outside the Cathedral of Cologne. We hovered anxiously for a moment as we tried to decide which direction to go. Within a minute of standing in the station, a woman in a hijab came up to us. She was thin and a little bent over. She had no German and only a few words of English. She motioned to her mouth and asked, “Please sir, I have baby. Eat. Food for the baby, sir.”

Instinctive alarm bells went off in my head; the kind that go off when people on the street ask you for money in broken English. The common wisdom is that these people will use drugs, or are in some way dishonest, and there is somehow a better way to help them than to respond to them then and there. Often this alternative amounts to talking about the merits of homeless shelters and forgetting to donate to one later. But, following the rule of my old boss, a city councilor in Cambridge, MA, if someone asks me for food, not money, I oblige.

The situation quickly became more awkward once I said yes. The woman’s sister and daughter appeared by her side. Apparently I was buying them all food. Then another thing became apparent: I was doing their grocery shopping. Every instinct told me to pull back. My boyfriend was thoroughly uncomfortable, as was I — this was not the script I’m used to in these situations.

Then the 17-year-old daughter started talking to me. She was bright-eyed and articulate, and while she spoke little English, she spoke almost fluent French and we were able to communicate that way. She told me their story. Her father had been a doctor in Syria. He had gone ahead of them to Europe. Now they, the women of the family, were in Germany and could not find him.

She was not currently attending school and they lived in a gym with hundreds of other newly-arrived refugees. As we walked through the grocery store, her mother and sister started filling their cart. I was uncomfortable with how much they were taking. Once I pointed this out, the girl was very careful to check that I was okay with buying each item as they went and told me to tell her when they had taken too much. She wanted to show me they were honest.

I ended up buying them a cart full of baby food, meat, eggs, milk and bread. They kept bowing to me, thanking me, and telling me how grateful they were. As we left the store the mother kissed my hand. I walked away feeling a tension between my conviction in their honesty and this instinctive suspicion that I couldn’t make go away. Logically, however, I couldn’t even pinpoint what I was suspicious of. What scam did I suspect this family of pulling? Logically, how can buying people food even be a scam? The biggest lie they could possibly have told me was that they weren’t as hungry or as poor as they said they were — but at what point does it become the best use of your time to beg for food?

And even if someone is asking for money rather than food, it actually takes much more initiative to give someone food — you have to either have the food with you or go into the store to get them something. I imagine there's a much higher success rate asking for money when people can just reach into their pockets and hand someone spare change. It's the economically more efficient ask in that people have to do the least to oblige.

I wondered how, after interacting with this family, after their sincerest gratitude and after learning their story and interacting with them as human beings, how could I still be trying erase them or to blame them? People do not just go out and decide to beg as a scam nor is it okay to dismiss someone in need as somehow too dysfunctional to deserve help.

Then came the numbers game. I spent less money on this family’s groceries than I had on my train ticket to Cologne alone. I am fortunate enough to be studying in Europe where I have this incredible opportunity to see the world, to learn multiple languages and to see amazing cities and diverse cultures. But if I am willing to spend more on a gratuitous trip to Germany than I am on the people who ask me for food when I get there, then I am saying that my vacationing in Germany is more important than this family eating this week.

Charity is often thought of as good-hearted, as going above and beyond. But I think it’s important to be more intentional than that. Every time you choose to spend money one place and not another, you make a statement. You value one to be a better use of your money than the other. You speak just as loudly by your lack of action as by your actions. And while I can’t say that there’s an absolute morality that requires us to give charity, I do think that we make statements we don’t mean to make on a daily basis by how we choose to spend our money and that we need to be conscious of those statements.

Personally, I cannot be okay with the statement “It is more important for me to visit Germany for a weekend than for a refugee family to eat.” So I chose to buy this family food. I also refuse to pretend for my own comfort that people begging for food (or money) are somehow unscrupulous, trying to get something from me. Yes, of course, they are trying to get something from me: Food. And I will gladly give it to them. And I will not dehumanize them in the process. I will listen to their story. And I will believe it.