[blog] Reflections on Ayiti
An interesting blog entry about Ayiti: The Cost of Life recently came from a blog entitled "Once in the morning sunlight...Take a moment to reflect on the World." In it the author, Nenya, talks about her thoughts on playing the game.
You can read her heartfelt entry below:
I'm probably going to post something about this on my other blog, as well, but from a different perspective.
Has anyone ever tried www.costlife.org ? A little game for anyone to play, and reach one simple conclusion: the poor can achieve very moderate success in life, and may be reduced to living in pityful conditions if they should make the slightest mistake, or encounter the slightest unforeseen hardship.
The poor aren't equally poor everywhere; a poor man living in New York can stil beg his way around to a couple of dollars a day, eat a burger or two, and keep clean, maybe even get some free education, or read a paper; it's not pleasant, but it simply doesn't compare with poverty in the "Least developed countries" (read, poorest), such as Haiti (or Ayiti, where the game is set). The game, which is made in cooperation with Unicef, drives home some pertinent, if sad, facts. I discovered that some things I consider crucial_ the wonders of education, children needing to be children, not wage-earners_ are, in fact, luxuries which our economic state allows us... Beautiful principles, indeed, but... how realistic?
...A lesson which, I believe, many "westerners" (or wasterners) might well to heed, before judging the poor to be lazy or sufficiently aided already.
So play the game... show it to your children. Learn for it, as I did. A la bon bagay!
