There are many things we cannot choose in our lives, and one of them is the place where we are born. Depending on the region you are in, you may have access to certain levels of security (social, economic, medical, educational, sanitary, etc.), while many people in other parts of the world did not have that privilege. If This Were My Home is a portal that helps you calculate what your life would be like if you had been born in another country, what you would gain, and what you would lose.
What kind of difficulties would you be forced to face if you had been born in another country? What privileges would you have? What would be your impact? What would your consumption and health quality be like? These are questions that do not have an easy answer, but they can be investigated or calculated. You and I are currently in front of a screen, which means we have access to technology, connectivity, electricity, heating-cooling, and more.
But somewhere else in the world there is someone walking with a bucket on their head trying to get safe water, waiting in a precarious hospital to see a doctor, or escaping bullets in a war zone. They could also be at a Starbucks with their unicorn-blood mint-banana-strawberry frappuccino, arguing with a police officer for speeding, arriving late to a first date, starting a new business... or lowering their shutter after declaring bankruptcy. Our birthplace is a lottery, and although it does not determine everything (after all, there is the possibility of moving), it has an enormous influence.
If This Were My Home helps you visualize these differences, and much more. Let's suppose you were born in Spain. Now, what if instead of Spain it had been Uganda? This site will tell you that you will die 27 years earlier, that your chances of dying in childhood would be 18 times higher, and the same applies to ending up infected with HIV. You would earn 95 percent less money, and the gap between classes would affect you 38 percent more. On the other hand, your electricity and oil consumption would drop by almost 99 percent, as would your health spending... but there is one of the cruelest details of the equation: You could not access those things, you could not pay for them, or you would be dead.
The page allows us to change regions and measure two countries that interest us, or that share a border (this last one makes it even more interesting). Another option is to evaluate the impact of certain disasters. Currently it offers two: the massive flood that hit Pakistan in 2010, and the BP oil spill that same year. If This Were My Home is an excellent source for studying, comparing, and above all, thinking.
