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A young girl is born in a dirt poor Ugandan village. She has an entrepreneurial spirit, and moves out of her small hut, which houses her family of twelve, at age 11, to work as a domestic servant. She saves, and she saves, but it becomes clear to her how difficult it will be to make anything of herself in her podunk town, given absolutely massive inflation. She's uneducated, having been pulled out of school by her parents after only one year, so the odds of going to college are slim to none. So, she does what any sensible, reasonably attractive young girl would do. By age thirteen, she's bagged the closest thing her village has to a wealthy young man, and convinces him to use his money to illegally emigrate to Sweden. Once there, she drops him like a hot potato. She gets a decent paying factory job and keeps her head down. After about five years, she meets a handsome male of the Ugandan diaspora, who is upper middle class by even Western standards. She marries him, and gives him three children. They remain happily married for thirty years. Then tragedy strikes. Our plucky, Machiavellian heroine is injured and can no longer continue to work at the factory. Almost immediately after, her husband dies of a stroke. She remarries a wealthy Swede (which nets her legitimacy), and opens a bakery with her ex-husband's cash. They live happily for another ten. Then he dies, murdered by thugs while walking home. Things begin to take a downturn. Her old injury is acting up, and she can't run her bakery anymore. That same year, her daughter, who she was so proud of for being the first in their family to graduate college, drinks herself to death, and her grandson, who had just received a masters in Economics, dies of a severe asthma attack. Reluctantly, she is forced to abandon her high standard of living, and lives off of food stamps in a tiny one room apartment, playing the lottery in the desperate hope of getting enough money to move back into her beautiful neighborhood in Stockholm. She outlives all but one son, and dies penniless, age 91, in 2010.

A boy, born in similar circumstances in a village in Western Kenya, grows up exceptionally intelligent, but uneducated, as he is forced to work from a young age to support his family. He's bored, and fathers two children, who he'll never know, by the time he's nineteen. He's a lover of women, but he can't help but notice how they are mistreated in Kenya, and begins to speak up, spending his time, once used for practicing his singing, to raise awareness for women's issues. He meets a beautiful young feminist firebrand, and they move to Mombasa. He works as an automotive repairman, and the family lives well below their means in order to raise issues ranging from feminism, to political repression, to ethnic tribalism in their community. His thriftiness allows him to send all three of their children to school, the first in the family's history. At age 50, he receives an unpleasant gift. He had been hassled by the government before, but this time, they imprison him for a year. He's had enough, so he withdraws his meager investments, and emigrates to Ghana. Suddenly, those investments, thanks to the relatively amazing economy of his new homeland, allow him to purchase a home, modest by western standards, but more than he'd ever dreamed. He can continue pouring his money into charity, but can also afford to allow his wife to go shopping, and can put enough food on the table, for a change. He is in heaven, and even remains silent. That is, until the rebels arrive in Tema, his adopted town. He is forced to take his family and flee to Accra, where he spends the rest of his days shouting to the heavens for the rights of refugees. He and his wife die a year apart, age 86 & 85 respectively, in a beautiful home in Accra, but not too soon to miss seeing their youngest son become a doctor in America.

A young man from rural China marries his sweetheart, and is immediately drafted into the military. He stays in well after his tour is over, but when his wife bears him a second child, he flees to Hong Kong. He was always smart, always savvy, and he quickly finds himself in a job as a factory foreman. His wife becomes a trader of used goods, and between them, they can afford an amazingly luxurious lifestyle, and with his smart investments, they find themselves amassing a fortune, and the young couple adopt two more children. By the time our hero is age 60, his net worth is $15.2 Million, and his family's monthly income is over $200,000. Then disaster strikes. Two years later, his wife dies of cardiac arrest. She had always made more money than him, but alone he can support the lifestyle that he's always enjoyed. Yet, a year later, his investments tank. After that, he is forcibly retired by the factory owners. He moves into a much smaller house, abandons his Bon Vivant lifestyle, and decreases the size of his charitable donations. By opening a domestic cleaning business, he covers his expenses, and is able to maintain most of his fortune. He remarries, but a year later, the ^&*%( runs off with half off his money, leaving him with only $5.1 Million. He lives out the remainder of his years alone, watching as his progeny turn their backs on the education he strove to give them, working as street vendors in Wan Chai, or construction workers. A chain smoker, he dies of lung cancer in 2010, still a millionaire, still a success.

A devout young Buddhist attempts to live his life as virtuously as possible in Rangoon. He's already an outcast, for he is gay. When he raises his voice against the myriad human rights abuses committed by the government of Myanmar, he is imprisoned. Upon release, out of devotion to his Buddhist principles, he lives as a beggar, and gives almost everything he takes in away as charity. This is his life. When he is not on the street, he is either in prison or an interrogation room. He meets a long string of men, but none of them stays for very long. He dies, alone, of pneumonia at age 65 in 2010. He was in prison. He had spent 70% of his life there. He passed quietly, content in the knowledge that he had been as true to the Buddha's teachings as possible.

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Good luck. It's pretty cool, I think. Let me know how it goes.