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!

Keep reading: Ayiti!...

Living from Hand to Mouth

"He who cannot draw on three thousand years
is living from hand to mouth."

- Goethe

I've been thinking a bit about the epigraph to Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World (above).

Several notes:

1. It's definitely a poignant statement about what happens when people don't bother to learn from history (in terms of the lessons about stupid ideas, things to never do again), or at least learn about history (in order to advance with new ideas rather than repetitive ones).
2. Sophie's World might have been the first seminal work in the development of my ideology, but coupled with the second, Ishmael, it becomes clear that three thousand years is a little arbitrary in terms of human history (4 million for species' existence, perhaps 1 million, 60,000 by conservative estimates, of modern-day mettle). Why did Goethe fixate on the three thousand-year mark tied up with perhaps the origins of Abrahamic faiths and their whirlwind push around the planet?
3. What in heaven's name is wrong with living from hand to mouth? Requiring less--remember? God forbid any group live simply on meagre (by the standards of our over-consumptive culture) but plentiful (by the standards of tribal cultures, which term Quinn claims, in Write Sideways, he should have settled for in place of the shorthand of "Leavers" in Ishmael, those who leave their fates in the hands of the gods--a concept he also hashes out, clarifies, in Write Sideways) means! (Apologies on the painful parentheticals!)

Keep reading: Living from Hand to Mouth...

Baobabs and Toubabs! (An Irreverant Introduction to Colonialism?)

Yoff, Senegal.

This is only the beginning of what will (I hope!) be a much longer paper or project, perhaps integral to my thesis (no, not Honors Thesis; the Rock requires 8 credits of thesis work to graduate). I so like the sound of this particular rhyme (and usually rhyme just annoys the hell out of me!)!

Actually, I'm not sure where to start, but the idea is to trace the decline of animism (hence the baobabs) and the ascent of salvivic religions in certain places in recent centuries...Here I'm trying to distinguish between so-called "Taker" culture--very useful shorthand, but that has its problems--in the Fertile Crescent for millenia and in places like "the New World" and "l'Afrique" for only a handful of centuries. As such, the decline of traditional human societies, the tribal configurations, that is, and all the beneficial aspects and elements that go with them (this clearly includes animism) can be woven in with questions of colonialism (and here the toubabs, or white people, the people known here very acutely for their ugly history as colonists and enslavers and tormenters and rulers, etc., enter the picture) and its detrimental qualities, commodifying and transforming "the Other" with that capital "o."

That's the snapshot. To be continued...

But I must say, it`s been incredibly fun having people here ask me about my religious "persuasion" and be able to answer "animist" and have people not only understand what I'm talking about but have some idea how it is lived. Of course it's weird being one of those attempting to be part of "Taker-Hohokam," but I am perfectly willing to accept and affirm the integrity of my directionality in coming to animism--counter to most people in the world moving from traditional spiritualities into the salvivics, I'm going from Christianity and spiritual tumult to clarity and substance. La!

Keep reading: Baobabs and Toubabs! (An Irreverant Introduction to Colonialism?)...