Playing 'Ayiti - The Cost of Life' was eye-opening, and made me see how bad life really is in Haiti The game was about a family living in Haiti, and how they struggle to make it through each year with barely enough money to keep them from starving. In the game, you control the decisions that the family members make each season, and you see how it affects their lives. In the game, there are four main objectives you can play for. I chose to play for money, because having enough money ensures that the family can have a good education, be healthy, have enough food and be happy for their entire lives.
While playing the game, I had to make choices in the family members' lives. I had to make choices concerning food, employement, health, education and happiness, all of which changed the lives of the characters dramatically as the game went on. A strategy that I used in the game was sending the mother to school. The mother in the game could use her education to take care of the family, and to snag higher-paying job opportunities. I also sent the father to work almost everyday in the game. He had the most strength, letting him work harder and for longer periods of time than anyone else in the family.
Parents would devote a lot of effort into sending their children to school because having a better education ensures that you will have more chances to get higher paying jobs. Having a higher education would also allow the children to know how to protect themselves from disease. At the beginning of the game, I only had enough money to send one person to school. Although the children would need a good education in the future, I decided to send their mother to school first, so she would have a higher chance of getting a better job. Because I did this, the mother was able to earn enough money to send all the children to school in the end. When trying to keep the children in school, I was faced with the obstacle of the tuition.
It was difficult to make enough family to support the childrens' education, as well as buy them enough food to keep them from starving. The situations and options in the game also apply to our own community. Although parents in more developed countries may have more money than the Haitians, they still have to work to earn enough money to afford healthcare, food, a house and an education for their child/children. Access to an education is also a challenge in other countries. In some less developed countries, gender equality has not yet been achieved and many girls are forced to stay home while their brothers are sent to school. Having more money and more stable health would help the children in the game gain access to an education. In order for this to happen though, a lot of things would have to change in Haiti, especially the weather. A lot of the poverty in the country can be attributed to the frequent natural disasters. Hurricanes often cause a lot of crops to be destroyed, leaving many Haitian families with nothing.
Haiti- Destroyed.
Hell has erupted from below the ground, the evidence of which lies in piles around me: corpses buried in the mounds of rubble that had come raining down from the sky just days ago. Haiti is carpeted with the mangled remains of tens of thousands of people, their bloated bodies filling the streets and blocking the road for the few cars that were not crushed by falling buildings. Houses, schools, factories, offices, shops, and hospitals lie in piles, abandoned along with the hopes and dreams of the people of Haiti. I listen for just the slightest sound of happiness, but hear nothing other than the wails of the innumerable people who had lost their beloved to the monstrous earthquake. Wives are without husbands, husbands are without wives. Some children are without the parents that had provided them with food and care, and some parents are without the children that they had loved and raised for years. Families that had already lived each day on a budget of less than two dollars now have even less. My ears ring with the din of depression, and my nostrils burn with the stench of rotting flesh. The smell of decay fills the humid air, and the only place that seems free of the misery that burdens Port-au-Prince are the mountains in the south, which lie vacant of corpses. I can see the putrid juices oozing out of the dead, but I can feel the agony and despair oozing out of living as they weep for their losses. Families, friends, and lives- buried beneath the buildings of Haiti.
Image: 2010. Bodies line streets in shell-shocked Haiti.. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201001/r497812_2615096.jpg
