‘Hunger games’ with a purpose? Thousands are playing for food in Bangladesh

Well before the sun rises in Chapra, a small village in the northwest of Bangladesh, Mohammad Abdur Rouf is on his feet.

Well before the sun rises in Chapra, a small village in the northwest of Bangladesh, Mohammad Abdur Rouf is on his feet. He travels six miles to a neighboring village, where he joins hundreds of other people in line to play a carnival-style game. But instead of throwing darts at a wall of balloons or tossing rings at beer bottles, Abdur, 35, hits a small yellow ball repeatedly with a plastic putter. Try as he might, he can’t manage to whack the ball with enough precision for it to travel upside down along a track and emerge perfectly between two goal posts. But instead of leaving a sullen loser, the rice farmer beams as he hoists a consolation prize: a modest 8-ounce bottle of vegetable oil. “Any day, I’d play again! Any day!” he says cheerfully when the game wraps up for the day. Abdur — the sole breadwinner for a family of nine including his three children, parents and two brothers — is one of thousands of Bangladeshis who have played the SS Food Challenge, a game developed by content creator Omar Sunny Somrat. The challenges are reminiscent of those on iconic 1980s show Takeshi’s Castle, in which players have to overcome a series of physical obstacles to win.