From Tucson to India, Kids are Kids!
For
two weeks in June, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to India with
my parents and several people from my church. I have been there once before,
but it was at Christmas time, so the weather was really nice - a lot like
Tucson in December. But June in India is another story!
Even though we arrived in the city of Bombay at night, it was still about 95 degrees outside and the humidity made it feel like 115! In Tucson, we know it's hot, but sometimes we forget just how hot it really is because we have air conditioning everywhere we go - in our houses, in the car, at the mall. It's not like that in India. We stayed in a small town called Sangamner. Most of the places we visited did not have any kind of air cooling system, other than a fan. It was hot!
That made me
think about the differences between where I live and how I spend my summer
vacation, and how the teenagers I was meeting in India spent their vacation.
Our vacations are at about the same time, so while we are swimming in our
pools, headed to summer camp or hanging out with friends, what do teenagers
in the village of Sangamner, India do for fun?
First of all, you need to understand that most Indians do not swim because they do not have pools or even bathtubs. They shower using buckets of water. So, when I asked my cousin, Chintu, to swim in the pool at our motel, he was really scared. He finally got in the water, but didn't want to let go of the side (by the way, the pool was only like four feet deep!). Once he got over his fear, he didn't want to get out of the water!
Two friends I had met on my last visit were Robby and Bobby (their parents wanted these two boys to have American names, so they named their kids Robby and Bobby…I didn't have the heart to tell them it was the same name - Robert!).
Robby
and Bobby love to play cricket with their friends during their vacation.
Cricket is really fun to watch. It's kind of like baseball - but even more
fun! The ball is pitched differently (they call it bowling) and the players
run back and forth rather than around bases.
Punam,
17, was spending most of her free time working. When she is not at school,
she has a job helping to clean and do laundry for my cousin's family. Her
family does not have much money, and in order to pay for her schooling,
she has to work. When she's not working, though, she and her friends like
to sing and draw mehndi on each other. Mehndi is a temporary tattoo done
using henna dye. The drawings are beautiful designs that usually cover
your hands or feet.
Although we live on the exact opposite side of the world, we speak different languages and eat different foods, we have a lot in common. We enjoy being with our friends, laughing and having a good time. I hope you get the opportunity to experience another culture someday. It's neat to see how different we are, and how much we are the same.
Happy Summer!
-Bethanie
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