Slumdog Millionaire

Watching this movie was very much a cross-cultural experience for me. Prior to seeing this I had little understanding of anything that occurred in India apart from the Taj Mahal, the beautiful fabrics, and that areas of poverty existed. The plot line of the movie was fascinating, thrilling, and yet painfully eye opening to the kind of life that exists just halfway around the globe.

One thing that stuck out about the geography of India was the fact that whenever the characters traveled between places, each area was so drastically different, yet each area had the common element of extreme poverty. There was the rural slums where the boys lived with their mother, the orphanage in the jungle, the Taj Mahal, and then the city with tall skyscrapers. In each of these places poverty was evident, because their were always orphaned children and slums of some sort. It was interesting to see how much more crowded India appears to be than even the busiest of cities like New York.

Looking at the cultural side of things there were also some distinct characteristics. The gap between the social classes in India was much more drastic than the gap in the United States. There did not seem to be much of a "middle class." There were the extremely wealthy gang leaders, and the poor people of the slums. Everyone else seemed to fall somewhere into a hierarchy between the two extremes. The economy in India also appeared very strained in the movie. So many of the buildings that they stayed in were either unfinished or abandoned. This is probably due to the lack of distribution of wealth that was conveyed in the movie.


Everyone seemed to be concerned with making money. Those who had it, wanted more, and those who didn't have it saw it as their way out of the slums. That probably also explained why "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" was such a popular show. At one point Jamal asks Latika, why people like to watch the show. She explains that it is an escape, and she is right! It is the one hope that the majority of the people of India have to turn their lives around. They do not have a voice if they are poor. This is especially true for the women of India, who seemed subject to the highest bidder, as it was in Latika's case.

I am glad to have seen this movie, but I am also troubled by the amount of hardships that the people of India live under every single day. It was interesting to see what Jamal and Salim did to earn money as they grew up, like managing a toilet or leading fake tours. They never seemed to stop and feel sorry for themselves. Whenever they met a dead end they simply looked around for a different avenue, and then set off whole heartedly down that new path. Slumdog Millionaire was a very powerful and great movie, but one in which the viewer needs to be ready to see the harsh realities of the world that we live in.

My Spring Break travels this year took me across the Midwest. They began Saturday, March 7th, at the Lincoln airport, where my 2:40pm flight was delayed until about 5:40pm. This also happened to be the exact time at which my connecting flight in Chicago was departing. So after my late arrival in Chicago I sat in the airport until about 11:40pm, when I finally caught a Standby flight to South Bend, IN. However, my bag ended up in Grand Rapids, MI, and I did not see it again until Wednesday, March 11th.




I finally arrived at my home in Stevensville, MI at about 3:40 AM (that' with the time change). I spent the night there and then took off again the next day for Upland, IN.

The drive from Stevensville, MI to Upland, IN is about 3 hours through mostly rural country towns. It had been raining a lot that week so there was a lot of flooding in the fields along the highway. I arrived safe at in Upland at Taylor University (the picture shows Taylor's library and Bell Tower) where I was able to spend sometime visiting my boyfriend of 5 years, Peter. (He's the guy in the profile picture :-) with me). We had lots of fun together going out for dinner, playing cards, and watching a movie. I also got to listen to his Chorale practice and hear his worship band play at a Veteran's Hospital in Marrion, IN.

Tuesday of Spring break, I headed home and spent the remainder of the time visiting my family and friends. It was nice to see my parents and my brothers. My whole family does Tae Kwon Doe, so I got to watch my brother P.J. (who is testing for black blet this summer), and practice with my brother Jacob and my parents. The picture below is of the studio where we take lessons, but none of us are in this picture. One Thursday I got to spend time with my friend Laura, who is getting married the summer of 2010. I'm her maid of honor, so we went over lots of wedding plans and had a great time. Laura lives in Baroda, MI (check the of Southwest Michigan above) and we went to high school together.

Friday, I had breakfast in St. Joseph, MI with my friend Alison, who I've known since middle school. It was nice to catch up and we enjoyed homemade bagels at the cute Broad St. Cafe, which had been the original firehouse in St. Joseph. This is not us in the picture, but you have see the old firepole and the largewindow used to be the garage door for the firehouse.



Saturday I went to a ladies tea at The Chapel with my mom, Laura and her mom, and my boyfriend's mom, Mrs. O'Neill. Then, that evening, my friend Sydney, who I've also known since middleschool went with my family and I to Kalamazoo, MI to see Brian Regan, a clean and hilarious comedian. (Here's a link to his site: http://www.brianregan.com/) This is a picture of the inside of the State Theater in Kalamazoo where we were at.



Sunday, I went to church, packed up, and had one last amazing homecooked meal with my family. We had homemade mashed potatoes, prime rib roast, and fresh green beans. It was delicious! Then I went back to South Bend, and had smooth travels all the way back to Lincoln, and then Seward. It was really nice to be home and have a break; I didn't want it to end. Summer isn't too far away, so I guess I can finish out the semester.

Sub-Saharan Africa - What next?

After reading the Aid Versus Investment, The Used Clothing Trade, and the Economic Development Bulletin I have noticed several trends. First, donations become back market items. Second, since 1960 the United States and other governments have been pouring money into Africa and there has been hardly an improvement, but many problems that have gotten worse. Finally, the problem lies with a lack of responsibility: the responsibility of governments giving aid to monitor how it is being used, and a responsibility of African governments receiving the aid to use it appropriately.

In my opinion the aid money that governments pour into African countries would be best spent on anti-corruption programs, and on creating more stable governments. Like the Economic Development Bulletin article stated, the current situation is simply, "the blind leading the clueless." The aid given to coutnries needs to be monitored, otherwise the coutnries may as well not have given the aid in the first place. If there has been no improvement in the past 40 years of giving aid, and the leaders simply continue to pocket the money, then why would countries who desire to help the people of Africa, not closely monitor or instruct governments there on how best to use the aid that is given them? It just does not make sense, because you would only be supporting the corrupt leaders.

In fact, if there are corrupt leaders, why are we handing them aid anyways? Shouldn't the goal be to help African nations by helping them to establish a solid, healthy government. There is already much civil war going on in many of the coutnries, so I don't know how exactly this would work best, or how it would look, but I think that in some cases we should use the aid money to establish a new government. I feel like a random selection of 10 average African peoples from the country could form a better parliamentary government, that would actually use aid money to address peoples needs, than having politicians or war lords leading these countries.

Either way, something needs to change, and I do not think that it is wise to continue giving aid to Africa and not monitoring how they use it or helping them make wise decisions with it.

Human Development Index (HDI)

Variables in Calculating HDI
When calculating HDI the Human Development Report Office examines four things:
1. They look at the life expectancy from birth rate, or how many years a child expected to live as is estimated at the time of their birth.
2. The literacy rate for all people above age 15 is looked at.
3. The percentage of the population that has combined attendance to primary and secondary schools in the country.
4. The piece of data that is considered is the country's GDP per capita in U.S. dollars.

While these numbers do provide measurable data that can be examined from one country to the next, they do leave out the qualitative things of life, such as the gender equality or human rights, in each country which do also play a role in the real HDI.

Geographic Patterns of HDI
The countries in the high Human Development Index range include the MDCs, or the most developed countries. These countries are primarily in the Northern Hemisphere, specifically in North and Middle America and Europe.
In the middle are the medium Human Development Index countries which include the counties of Asia, Northern Africa, South America, and the Middle East.
Finally, the trend for countries with the lowest Human Development Index, is that they are primarily all within Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa and HDI
Almost every country in Sub-Saharan Africa is on the Low Human Development Index list. I think that this rating comes from the fact that the life expectancy for many of these countries such as Sierra Leon, Central African Republic, and Ethiopia are all under 50 years of age. Barely half of the population is literate and less than half of the population goes to school. I think that as we discussed in class, Sub-Saharan Africa has very little room for an industry of any kind. They cannot afford to farm or have a textile industry, so there are no jobs there. Without the schooling and literacy skills, Sub-Saharan Africans have little prospect of finding jobs related to the growing technological industry, so there is very little income available for them to use. Since Sub-Saharan Africa has such a low GDP per capita, they cannot afford substantial health care and therefore do not have a high life expectancy. There is no way for them to break the loop of lack of education, lack of jobs, lack of money, lack of health care, placing them in a perpetual state with a low Human Development Index. This problem is a sad reality, and I do not really know what could be done to help them out of this state. I think that it is important to help people, if we have the resources to do so, but the aid from the U.S. also inhibits the industries available to Sub-Saharan Africans. I think that we can only do our best, pray a lot, and just trust God to work his will in their lives through us.