It`s a small world, after all

Call it a hunch, but being locked away with the dead is probably not on one of your to-do lists. It`s something Hawken parents Richard and Robyn Fearon realized years ago on a trip to Lima. They were touring the catacombs beneath a cathedral when the gates were mistakenly locked and the lights shut off. Their tour guide, a novitiate nun, was none too pleased. \"She was scared to death,\" laughed Robyn. \"She didn`t know what to do.\" They eventually escaped. But that wasn`t before walking through the rat-infested cemetery in darkness, using walls that were embedded with skeletons as their guide and being exploited for a bit of cash by a man who wasn`t that moved by their plight. It wasn`t an adventure sought by most, but the experience was a telling reminder that wherever you go - Milwaukee or Lima - people might not be that happy if they`re trapped underground with a bunch of dead people. And for over 30 years, the Fearons have learned that the similarities among humans don`t just end there. They`ve learned that from traveling to every continent on the globe, a feat Richard and Robyn accomplished in December when they visited Antarctica. \"I`m always struck as I travel around the world about how common humanity`s issues are,\" Richard said. \"The issues facing some villager in Northern Nepal are really not that different than the issues facing - at a very basic level - somebody living in Sao Paulo or somebody living London.\" One person may live in a Nepalese teahouse and eat rice and lentils for breakfast; another may dwell in the opulence of West London. But they both probably don`t enjoy getting pelted by rubber bullets. The Fearons witnessed that too, during the same trip as the catacomb debacle, in Cusco, a city in the Andes Mountains. The Peruvians, enraged by inflation, waged a riot that was subsequently squashed by government tanks rolling through town and shooting rubber bullets. \"The people in the town were apparently so used to it that [people in] the bar immediately rushed out and put up big wooden shutters to protect the glass, because [they thought] +óGé¼-£Ok, here go the riots again,`\" Robyn said. That aside, both she and Richard hope their children, Robert `12 and Erica `14, who hadn`t been born yet to experience Peru, are learning what it means to be a part of the human race through all of the traveling they`ve done since birth. Robert, who was born in Singapore, has only one continent to go to have visited all seven; Erica needs three more. \"They have to be - not international - [but] they have to think of themselves as part of the planet Earth in all its complexities and all its responsibilities,\" Robyn said of people today, including her children. Richard agrees, adding that he thinks that his children will grow to be more globally minded and adventurous than he and his wife are. They`ve had a heck of start at global exposure. It`s likely they`ve learned, or are beginning to learn, about those basic, primal needs common to a girl in Buenos Aires or a boy living in India. That they feel joy. They want to be happy. They want to be loved. But let`s hope that they won`t have to learn some of the similarities that their mom and dad learned some years ago. Like how people don`t like rubber bullets. And how they really don`t like being locked away in underground cemeteries with dead people.