What’s the most exotic vacation you ever took during your childhood?
I would say I’ve got nothing, that my biggest vacations were to visit grandparents in Ohio or New York, but in 1967 — the last summer of my childhood — we went from our home in Virginia up to Montreal for Expo ’67.
That’s not bad, although it pales in comparison to the lives my grandchildren are living.
I didn’t get onto an airplane till the summer after my 18th birthday. My grandson Lexington flew completely around the world, although not all in one flight, before he was a year old.
My granddaughter Arti will be 14 this September. She was born in Beijing and has lived in Surabaya, Jamaica, Guatemala, Tunisia and Falls Church, Va.
Arti, her sister. and her four brothers just returned from a short spring break trip … to the Sahara Desert.
Kinda makes a trip to Disney World pale in comparison, although they did a trip to Orlando just two spring breaks ago.
Their trip from their home in Tunis to the southernmost part of their vacation in Ksar Hallouf was about 500 kilometers, which may sound like quite a bit, but Africa is huge. If they had wanted to drive from Tunis in the north to Cape Town at the other end of the continent, it would be nearly 11,000 km and a 185-hour drive.
If you’re like me and see distances in how far American cities are apart, a north-south route from Bangor, Maine, to Key West is about 3,100 km and would be 29 hours of driving.
Yep, Africa is huge.
Just for the heck of it, try asking 100 random people in your hometown if they have ever been in the Sahara. Unless your town is a major American city, you’ll probably find zero who have. In fact, you probably won’t find more than a few who have even been to Africa.
You have probably heard the expression “military brats” to describe kids who lived all over the country because one or both of their parents were in the military. Well, these kids are “diplomatic brats” with parents working as foreign service officers for the Department of State.
In fact, possibly the strangest years for them are the ones in between overseas postings. Arti was a toddler in the year after the Beijing posting while Pauline took language training to go to Indonesia, and all six grandchildren had to homeschool for a year due to the pandemic while their parents were learning Arabic to go to Tunisia.
Pauline grew up bilingual — French and English — and has learned four other languages at least at a basic level for various postings. She had two tours of duty for which no language training was required. Her first posting was in Cameroon in 2004, and they speak French there, and her fourth tour was in Jamaica, where they speak English.
Sort of.
“Jamaica, mon …”
I grew up in Ohio and Virginia, two states that would probably rank somewhere in the middle of interesting places in the U.S. They aren’t California or Massachusetts, but they aren’t Nebraska or Arkansas either.
And they sure aren’t Tunisia, with a history that goes back 2,000 years to when it was called Carthage.
Anyway, when they got back from the desert — the one that is actually THE desert — they went to a concert and saw the legendary Yo-Yo Ma.
These kids are going to have so many great stories to tell when they grow up.