If the sun at noon is “up above and in the middle of the sky”, as Jamaica Kincaid puts it, then you live in the tropics, the part of the earth where it is always summer.
If on at least one day a year the midday sun is straight above so that there are no shadows, then you live in the tropics. It is called the tropics because it lies between the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees North) and the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5 degrees South). In most of the tropics, the midday sun is to the north part of the year and to the south the rest of the year. In North America and Europe the sun is always to the south in the middle of the day.
Because the sun is so high in the sky all year round and the nights are never very long, even in winter, it is always warm. It never snows there except in the mountains. People grow up there having never seen real snow. Seasons, if there are any, are a matter of wet and dry, not heat and cold.
Most of the tropics get a lot of rain, so this is where you find the rain forests. It also has fruits, like bananas, that can grow nowhere else because they need lots of rain and warm weather all year round.
Hurricanes (also called cyclones or typhoons) come from the tropics. So does most of our air and the deadliest diseases known to man.
Places in the tropics that I have been to: Costa Rica, Panama, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St Thomas, Tortola, Java and Bali.
Florida is close to the tropics, so it is somewhat like the tropics. That is why it is called subtropical.
The Mayans were the first to build cities and empires in the tropics. Not at all an easy thing. Europeans, after all, have never done well in the tropics unless they have others (who are used to living there) do all the hard work. So, for example, the British brought in slaves from West Africa and later labourers from India, to work the land in the Caribbean.
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The tropics are full of lush rainforests. The tropics are inhabited by Black people – continental Africans (Equatorial Africa), African-Caribbeans (West Indies), Melanesians (South Pacific), Andamanese (Bay of Bengal) Orang Asli (Northern Malaysia), Mani (Southern Thailand), Agta (the Philippines), I’m very tropical. I can’t stand the cold weather.
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