Poverty Prayer Night

Shortly after I arrived on the ship, we had a poverty prayer night. The goal was to learn more about the harsh realities faced by the poor in developing countries. We learned about a family that lives in Bangladesh. The mother has five children and lives in a shack 2m by 2m. In order to survive she must makes paper bags out of glue and newspaper. The family lives in a shack village with 300 other people. There are three toilets for everyone. Yes, three. Many sanitation problems arise as a result of this practice. As an exercise, we broke into groups of 7 and had to pretend we were a family. We had to make paper bags out of news paper and glue and one person had to sell them to pretend vendors in the boat for monopoly money. Sometimes the crew members playing the roles of landlords would ask us to send the women in the group to mock brothels in order to pay for rent. The object of the exercise was to make enough money to pay for rent, food and to send a child to school. Sending a child to school is the only way to break the cycle of poverty.

While we would never know what it truly feels like to walk in the footsteps of those living in poverty, the game was a good way to get us thinking about why people do the things they do to survive. Stealing cash from vendors were sometimes the only ways that we won the game. We did however receive many points for going to fake NGOs for education and medical relief. Sending a child to school gave us exponentially more points, allowing us to win the game.

Afterwards we had a time of prayer. There were stations set up all around the room that talked about sex trafficking, sanitation problems and other horrible realities that individuals living in poverty face. Over 30,000 children have been forced into sex trafficking in Cambodia alone. 4500 children die every days as result of poor sanitation.

With an renewed outlook, I thought differently of the slums we passed en route and the aggressive tuk tuk drivers we had encountered only hours prior to our arrival on the ship.