Ayiti!

Yesterday, I wrote about some games that help build financial savvy and geographic awareness. Well, what about a game that combines a bit of those things with social justice skills and planning prowess, and even teaches kids about what sorts of things are essential for health and well-being?

Introducing Ayiti! I absolutely adore this game, partly written by a group of great youngsters themselves.


You have to balance this Haitian family's monthly finances with their emotional and physical needs, the swing of the seasons, available work and education, and their altruistic endeavors to enhance the basic offerings in their town (through a library, night classes, a soccer field, UNICEF initiatives, and the like). It's a perfect holistic game to help kids (who live in countries affluent enough to offer access to internet games) understand one form of day-to-day life in less-affluent locales, while also nudging kids to consider their own life choices and the requirements of a healthy routine.

While looking for an image of the game, I read a blog post that said it's been called "the most depressing game ever," but I think it's still kid-suitable. Of course, it's a good project in itself to research the complex history of Haiti, from the independence won by Toussaint L'Ouverture to the political roller-coaster suffered by the country ever since (but especially in the past century), as well as explore the richness of artistic expression it has inspired (Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is Edwidge Danticat's powerful Krik? Krak!, along with her other works, the most recent of which is an autobiographical book, titled Brother, I'm Dying, but I also think of Alejo Carpentier's El Reino De Este Mundo, or The Kingdom of This World, translated in one recent edition by Harriet de Onís, not-quite-incidentally featuring an introduction by Danticat).

When I read Caryl Churchill's play Cloud Nine years ago, it had very much the feel of being set in Haiti, but of course it actually takes a cheeky, gender-bending, subversive look at British colonialism in Africa, which of course doesn't feel that, that different from Spanish colonialism in South America and elsewhere, Portuguese colonialism in Brasil, and French colonialism in places like Haiti. One of the most interesting things I learned about Lewis and Clark through Academic Decathlon's 2003-2004 SuperQuiz topic (Oh, the insanity of high school!) was that the loss of New World goods imported from Haiti to France prompted Napoleon to less grudgingly (and so, more readily) sell the Louisiana purchase and give away the bulk of France's claim to the Americas (Gosh, it sounds so obvious now! I mean, I can only think, "Of course France left! Without a tropical, and hence highly productive, country as a stronghold in the New World, why bother?"). I had an idea back then in 2004 to write a book of poems from the perspectives of all the politicians involved in the dealings, at the turn of the nineteenth century, because, after all, back then, it was not a sealed deal and people could still have imagined the United States as remaining always that Eastern sliver of the continent, a fraction of its current size, which would give me plenty of creative elbow-room to imagine the different courses America could have taken from that defining historical moment. As with most things I wish I could spend my time working on now, I've indefinitely postponed this fun, ambitious project.

Well, it looks as though I've strayed a bit from my initial raving about the game. ¡Hasta pronto!