Thursday, February 6, 2014

G&D #2 - Ayiti Reflection

Describe your experience in the Ayiti game.  What have you learned from this activity?  What does it tell us about the state of globalization and development?

13 comments:

  1. I wasn't able to finish the game, but it was an interesting game. It's about trying to keep the family alive, and getting the family to work. I tried to work some of the family while the children went to school, but while I was in the middle of playing the game it said I was working the family too hard and most of them got sick. Then I didn't have much money so I wasn't able to send the people to the hospital. It was an interesting experience, and I didn't know what to expect from the game.

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  2. In the end of the game, both parents ended up dying. During the first season, I was not sure how to assign people jobs, so we can say that they were just merely unemployed during this period. This set them back greatly. They were in hundreds of dollars of debt. Next, they were all assigned to work on the farm because I didn't realize that they could work somewhere else. As a more realistic situation, we can say that the family could only get a starting job on their farm. They did not make a lot of money, for the debt was still greatly increasing. Slowly, each person became sick and unhappy. They could not afford personal items, education, or medical help. The healthiest people then got work at a real job. The debt was reduced from hundreds to -70 goud, but unfortunately, they were still in debt. Because the people could not get well-paying jobs immediately, their debt grew to such an amount that it could not be reduced, resulting in a lack of medical care and happiness, killing the parents.

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  3. I didn't get to finish the game, but from what i did play it showed just hard hard living in a developing county can be. For example money is a hard thing to come by, mostly due to few jobs and low education. Another problem is that medical help is either not the best or is very expensive.When the hurricane session came it cost money to board up so i worked everyone harder and they all got sick and their health went down. This goes along with global development because it shows what living in a developing country is like when resources and money are short.

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  4. I did not finish the game but I got to the Hurricane season in year 3. I started out with excellent health and happiness but eventually they both went down. Most of the characters got sick or got a disease. I then could not afford to send all of them to the hospital. Then, I decided to work them hard and received a lot of goud. After a while, they all had a health of 1. I learned that diseases effected families tremendously and they may have not been able to give them any medical attention depending on their social class and wealth. I learned that getting an education was difficult because of the income of their jobs and the cost of schooling. This tells us that different civilizations and cultures developed at different times depending on the education and jobs offered in that area.

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  5. I was not able to finish the game but it was very interesting. It was very difficult to provide all of the kids in the family with education because there is very little money to make in a developing country. Some of the kids had to stop going to school because they did not have enough money to afford it. In order for the family to have enough money to survive at least one of the kids had to work while their siblings went to school so they would have enough money. It was also very difficult to maintain good health and have a good education because of the amount of money needed for both. The working conditions were also very poor and made your health deteriorate. Also in order to make enough money to support the family they had to work hard at the jobs they did. Living in a developing country is a large struggle for the countries people to live in because they have to work hard in order to end up achieving very little.

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  6. I did not finish the game, although while playing the game I found difficulty in finding equilibrium between family members working, going to school, resting, etc. was very difficult. So I tried working the entire family on the farm in the rainy season, but still wound up losing money. Therefore in hurricane season and the summer, I could not afford to send the other family members to do other things, then wound up owing money and almost the entire family became diseased and they could not work. The game taught me about poverty ridden countries where the people work very hard, and they may not be able to afford necessary things such as education and medical care.

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  7. Although I did not get a chance to finish this game, I do feel like this game could be a similar situation when it comes to a family. I was aiming for education at the start of the game. I sent the young boy and the girl to some form of education. I then sent the older boy to work. The parents then maintained their farm for the first half of the year. After that, I lost all of my money from the kids being in school, so what I did was make them all work for more money towards more education. The was a cycle until 2 of the people in the family got a cold. This is a very probable lifestyle in more poverty stricken country.

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  8. Since, I wasn't able to finish the game, I wasn't able to see my ending. I started off with an educational path, since education earns you everything else in life. I started off the game pretty well. I sent some of the people to find gold and others to do work. This helped me gain a lot of money. After gaining a lot of money, I kept doing what I was doing. Before I had to end the game, I ended with a good amount of money, and some gold. My people didn't have the best education. Overall, I enjoyed the game,

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  9. The game was incredibly hard. Having chosen education as my primary goal, I sent two of the kids to school, cheaply, and one to work on the farm. The parents went to work to be able to support the child's education. After the first season, my money was down, but in the following seasons, the farm began to do better. I decided to make everyone work hard which made everyone sick. From then on, it spiraled down, getting worse and worse with health, getting to -300 goulds, and not being able to work. Eventually everyone died from cholera. The game shows that many people must make hard decisions in the present, and planning for the long term is not always the best option. The game displays that globalization does not spread equally to everywhere. Many places have not experienced the first-world amenities that we have today, so they must make do in very poor conditions with very little opportunity for advancement. All in all, Ayiti showed that tough living can result in tough choices even while the rest of the world is seemingly happy and healthy.

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  10. Even though I was not able to finish the game, I still thought that it was interesting. I decided to go with the educational path so I sent two kids to school while the other worked on the farm. The mom stayed home and the dad went to work. After year one, which is all I was able to complete, I finished with 158 total goud. The family finished in good health and happiness with the kids having an education. Overall, I thought this was a good game.

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  11. This game was extremely difficult and I was not sure where I should have placed the children. I chose an education oriented game strategy which did not pan out too well. In the first season, I sent some to work in low paying jobs. The jobs that offered a higher salary but required education. The constant tug of war between not having any money, not having an education, and not being able to acquire jobs to raise more money grew very frustrating. By season two I was in negative gouds. I did not get to finish my game but I am assuming that my parents die. This game has a correlation to real life development and globalization because it demonstrates how hard it is to make a living in these third world countries. Without having any money, these families cannot survive.

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  12. I thought this game was very interesting. I thought it was interesting to see how trying to work and get an education could actually cost you your health and money. It really made you think about your decisions and how those decisions would affect each family member. I did not get to finish, but I did get to see how so many factors affected your family. For example, wanting to give your family a nice, big, full out Celebration could lead to poverty. I enjoyed playing this game and seeing how certain choices could lead to either a happy life, or a devastating one. I was also surprised that this happened to real people and this game really opened my eyes to these hardships that people faced. I have a better understanding of the lifestyle that some groups had to live throughout history.

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  13. In my first attempt to play game, money took precedent over happiness, education, and health. I made the father work as a rum distiller, a hazardous job, the mother and the daughter work as market women and farm hands, and finally I made Patrick work as a farm hand throughout the year. Additionally, I made the youngest son rest at home due to his inability to work, and I chose decent living conditions, so the family would not get sick extremely fast. Occasionally, during the rainy season, I would make the youngest son tend to the family farm, so there would be a chance of a bumper crop, and during the dry season I would make him go to school for an education, which was not very successful. On the flip side, I disregarded medical treatment until one of the family members had a dire need of it. All of the family members were healthy until the fourth year when disease started to spread. Even though I made a hefty income, it was difficult to pay off the families medical treatment; in fact, I could only afford the cheapest medical treatment due to the fact that two to three family members needed treatment each season in year four. Eventually I could not upkeep the sizable income because of depression and sickness. In the end, both of the parents died of cholera and the children were left ill and impoverished. With the importance of health in mind, my second attempt at the game had a more fortunate outcome. I focused on health from the very beginning; moreover, I made the mother and daughter work as market women, and, one by one, I sent all of the the family members to the medical clinic, which increased their health. When the father and youngest son were not in the medical clinic I had them working on the farm, especially during the rainy season. I had Patrick, the older son, volunteer, so the family could receive benefits from the community center. After two seasons of this repetitive strategy I had enough money to send Patrick to school while providing cheap medical treatment to other family members. However, at the end of year three Patrick and Yves fell ill, and they rested at home for one season only to develop cholera. This major setback made me focus my income towards cholera medical treatment. At the end of the game, I had about 750 gouds, and everybody had great health and happiness. Patrick had a decent education while everybody else had a job, including tending to the family farm. In this game, I learned that medical treatment and education are costly for families in third world countries like Haiti, and health and work must be of paramount importance. People must sacrifice common, first world conveniences, like education, when living in destitute countries. This game shows that families in third world countries who laboriously work will not always receive the chance to modernize and compete with families in first world countries who mildly work and receive advantages unheard of in these deprived countries.

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