After doing that, I teleported to one of the places suggested, Better World Island, where I found several places to visit. I explored a little bit, but didn’t find anybody. The place is very nice and peaceful, is located by the sea and you can hear the waves…very nice!I also found (later) that this place has a Ning site where people interested in learning more about it can get together and comunicate.

Mostly, this part of the island that you see in the snapshot above seems to contain places to teleport to, so I chose the Streets of Baghdad tour. As you can see from the snapshot below, when you arrive you have several objects that you can touch before you actually go into the “streets”. They contain information, newspaper articles, there’s a donations bin and more. Once you start walking along the streets, it can be a bit confusing, which I think was done on purpose to give people some idea of how chaotic it is to live in Baghdad. There are objects that you can touch along the way that do different things(I’m not telling you! It would ruin the experience) and contribute to this atmosphere of chaos and despair.

Once you leave the city through one of the exits (there are at least two, it’s kind of a maze in there…) you can go back to the entrance. Behind you there is water and from there you can see the display about Darfur. I got curious so I decided to visit.

The display about Darfur was really sad but at the same time it encouraged you to do something about what is going on. Tomorrow we have a visit to the Holocaust Museum in SL, and although it is important for us to remember what happened there, I believe it is even more important to remember that unfortunately genocide is not part of our past history, but of our present. Especially because we’re educators, we need to help our students understand that these things are everybody’s business. The Darfur display calls visitors to action. You can collect free t-shirts to wear on SL, touch a wall that will take you to a page where you can ask Mr. Obama to do something about it, learn about the situation and become involved. You can read stories about people in Darfur, hear flies in the background that remind you of decay, hunger and fill you with infinite sadness…at least that’s what happened to me. I invite you to visit all these places and invite your students to do it too. We all should know about these issues. Just because it happens far away, it doesn’t mean it’s not our business. After all, it’s our world, right?