Searching for Similarity

I followed a group of teenaged Indonesian girls through the streets of Kuta Beach, Bali. They led me through filthy alleyways, haunted by young men selling drugs. Next to these men, barefooted toddlers played blissfully in the potholes and puddles. Bali was beautiful. The marriage of East Indian and Chinese influences resulted in a unique cultural identity. Not only was I wholly consumed by the allure of everything that was Bali, I was captured by the evident paradox of life which existed so blatantly. Affluent tourists lay sunbathing adjacent to seemingly neglected locals who appeared blind to the aesthetic beauty of their own land. Being from an island in the Caribbean, I identified with this completely. Sure I grew up in Trinidad, but the term ‘local’ always carried a negative undertone. Why do tourists receive better treatment than a ‘local’? Why are ‘locals’ painted and treated as primitive beings who are completely oblivious to the modern world? For the first time, I was not a ‘local’ and I was the one in the oversized sunglasses, swimsuit and floppy hat. I wanted the real Bali, not the postcard version.
Having spent an entire evening with my teenaged tour-guides, I became completely overwhelmed by it all. This was eventually subsided by their infectious laughter and their curiosity to learn about my life. They seemed completely unfazed by the fact that I was scantily dressed in my swimsuit and sarong and they were covered head to toe. As we parted ways, the eldest, Fatima, asked to take a picture with me and she reached for her iPhone. I’ll never forget the day that I found myself guilty of my own pet peeve. At that moment, I was shocked that Fatima, a fifteen year old girl in Bali, had an iPhone. Immediately I recalled the countless times when I would get asked if I had water and roads in Trinidad and how upset these questions made me. I felt angry at myself. Why shouldn’t she have an iPhone?
I believe that when we are faced with the unfamiliar we have one of two choices. We can allow ourselves to search for differences and consequently give ourselves the permission to be appalled by what we are not used to or we embrace the foreign albeit strange. And as we travel, and we become immersed in the exotic, we can sift out the differences which separate us as a people. These differences, obvious as they may be, are minuscule. Because I believe that the more we notice how different we are, the more we realize how much we are actually the same.