Marbles (Cont.)

As I explained an in earlier blog post, we were all given a cup with 30 marbles at the beginning of the week. Between then and now, hundreds of marbles of come in gone during games, betting, gambling, paying people to do things, random hand outs, and very unfair gifts from the staff of EM.

A few things that were unfair were:

• Giving men marbles just because they were men
• Taking marbles from women
• Asking a question like "how many have you guys have stolen and gotten away with it" and then deciding who (out of the people that raised their hands) are worthy of marbles. 
• Picking people randomly to give away all their marbles

It was very frustrating, especially for us women because we never got a break. The men always got more marbles simply for being men so it was obvious that at the end of it, a man was going to win. There was no way around it.  It's not like it was a huge deal, we just kinda gave up.

Today after lunch they called an end to the marble game and we all played a game in the end, a man did win and was followed up by two other men. Between the three of them, they won $175.

The EM staff then stood up and said, "what was the point of this game." And none of us had a clue. They were simply making it clear that life was unfair and that men always had an unfair advantage in the countries we were going to visit and it made it hard for women to keep up.

It actually made a lot of sense. In the end, we all understood completely what the point of it was.