A day in the world’s shoes
On international day, last thursday, people from Cross roads came by and helped us with activites and gave presentations.
In the moring, David.J gave us a speech of the develpment of Cross roads, like how it came to be the organization it is today. Then he told us about a story how a mother and her daughter and her daughter’s kids depened on living by making paper bags. After that story he made us all form into “families” and made us sit on blue and white plastic mats that was supposed to be our new home. Then David told us to start making paper bags out of newspaper and glue made out of flur and water in 10 minutes and to sell them. Twice my team’s 10 paper bags were ripped out by the unsatisfied shop keepers. Becuase of this, we couldn’t pay our rent. So, we had to move under the bridge becuase we borrowed money from the man who lived under the bridge. In order to pay him back, we had to work for him until he was satisfied.
From this activity I learned how hard it was to survive, supporting all my team members. We didn’t raise enough money for ONE person to go to school. I also learned what it was like living in poor conditions, and to live in poverty. Our profit was very low and when half of our family members became sick we had to work extra hard.
This gave me a real life experience of what it was like to live poorly. Even though we were in a huge air conditoned room ( i don’t think i would’ve survived outside in the heat.) and had comfortable clothes, but imagin wearing ragged clothes and out in the heat working hard to survive. This was an activity that really affected how i now look towards poverty.
