How would Mauritius react if France was struck by famine? If pictures of French kiddos with bones sticking out of their rib cages went viral? If the United Nations said that the French had to survive on fallen fruit after an unexpected natural disaster? If the UN begged the whole world to help save French lives, how would Mauritius react?

We all know that it would set off an unstoppable empathy feast in this country. The prime minister would make a touching speech about how France’s pain would be ours. He’d send off a ministerial delegation to Paris (and the Government Information Services would go wild, issuing a million press releases on the same topic). The private sector would donate money and food packages. We would all tweet #jesuisfrance or #jesuishungry, or whatever the hashtag catchphrase of the day would be. The attention-seekers would take selfies of themselves filling up cardboard boxes with Mine Apollo to be shipped to France. Tabloids would write heart-breaking stories about Mauritian-born Kavita who could die from starvation in Montpellier anytime.

The whole scenario was strangely believable, wasn’t it? Now, imagine if this was more than just a cognitive exercise. Because the truth is that we do have a famine crisis, right at our doorstep. It’s happening a lot closer to home than Paris and yet, Mauritius is doing nothing. In Madagascar right now, 1,5 million people are desperately trying to find food for the day because of a severe drought. The UN reports that people are surviving on whatever wild fruit they can find. Parents are taking their children out of school so that they can help look for something edible to fill their stomachs before nightfall.

Where is the Mauritian solidarity? We already knew that European lives seem to matter more here than Africans. The government declared two days of national mourning after a terror attack in Paris, but did not even acknowledge a similar one in Kenya. We know it – but it’s time for a change. First, the postcolonial confusion that makes us worry more about people halfway across the world than our own neighbours is not reciprocated. Do we honestly believe that France would prioritise Mauritian lives over, let’s say, Germans? Secondly, Madagascar cannot wait. It needs regional solidarity now. The UN says that food supplies have been low since August but that they are nearly empty now. The cost of delaying help further would, according to a spokesperson from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), be “too ghastly to contemplate”.

We can’t sit back and assume that international aid organisations will solve our neighbours’ predicament. The UN and the FAO both say that they are short of funding for providing the Malagasy with food up until the next harvest in March. Will Mauritius show solidarity or will we let mothers who live just a two-hour plane ride from us continue to look for fallen fruit to give their starving kids for dinner? Perhaps even fire off a Marie Antoinette-esque smile and a collective “Let them eat fruit cake!”?