First, it’s best to already have a hearty blaze of wood going so that the continued burning of books is not dependent on the fickle flammability of previously burned books. Then, you should weaken the deep-rooted bonds of fealty that fasten one page to another by tearing the pages out of the book in clumps and spreading them throughout the fire. Even then, you’ll still need a long stick to push the papers apart and ensure that each individual page alights. Finally, as much smoke is created by book burning, and it has been proven that the elements in the printed word are dangerous if inhaled, some sort of filter is recommended. A gas mask would be best, but a bandanna fastened tightly above the nose will do. I bet if you had a big enough bonfire and lots of help my advice could be ignored, and it would be quite easy to turn bunches of books into ashes and dust. Which explains why totalitarian regimes are so efficient at it. Alas, I am but one man in the mountains of Honduras, ten miles from the nearest town, tasked with reducing 50 books to nothingness.
But, since I can remember, I’ve loved books, and fire too, yet I have never in my wildest dreams considered combining the two. Let alone enjoying it. Isolated living in third world mountains can do strange things to a man. How did I get here again?
Relatively recently I was living at home enjoying the comforts of suburban living. A fridge stocked with food and drink to consume, a room of my own in a spacious house to lounge in, a couple big TVs to shut my mind off in front of, a nice Hispanic lady to do my laundry and dishes for me, a car to drive me around the sprawl, expensive bars and restaurants full of safe white people to talk to, and a decent paying job where everyone talked about each other behind one another’s backs.
After a couple months I decided those things weren’t for me, and I started to look for opportunities to escape South of the Border. I chanced upon an organization, Art for Humanity, which ran a small university for girls in the remote mountains of Central Honduras. I applied and after a phone conversation was offered a position as a volunteer teacher at the school. I accepted, and after dealing with the misgivings of my parents who weren’t thrilled with me going to a country judged to be one of the most dangerous in this hemisphere, found myself bouncing on a bucket in the back of a crowded bus next to a hefty old lady whose toothless smile wasn’t exactly reassuring.
The director of the school, Ira, and I disembarked from the bus in a sleepy little town of one story brick houses which had one paved road, the highway, running through it. We then drove around completing errands that could only be achieved in this bastion of civilization. This included buying massive amounts of vegetables, filling up the truck with gas and taking it to a mechanic who fixed the steering for the reasonable price of 50 lempiras (about $2.50), and picking up two more volunteers, Martina and Ben. The two of them recently got married in England and for their honeymoon decided to quit their jobs and travel around Latin America for an indefinite amount of time (until they’re broke). Not the worst idea in my opinion. Being English, they do, in fact, talk funny, like tea, love cheese, and hate Bush. They also assert that in England there are more types of food than crumpets and fish and chips, but there aren’t any cheerleaders or policemen with guns or Thanksgiving. What a shame.
With our errands completed we proceeded on the final leg of the journey to the school. This involved driving for an hour down a bumpy dirt road, over hills covered in pine trees, and through three streams that are almost impassable in the rainy season. After an hour, we made it to the school and met the students and final volunteer, Ashley. As it is so remote, the population and campus are appropriately small. There are eleven students, four volunteers, Ira and his wife Sara, and their two little girls living here permanently. In addition, a cook and farm workers from the local community come and go as needed. So for the next couple of months most of my human interaction will be with about twenty other people who were complete strangers several weeks ago. I hope we continue to get along. If we don’t, there are some chickens and cows and dogs and horses I can talk to.
Now a little about the school. The Leadership University was founded one year ago by the non-profit Art for Humanity in order to to provide a free education to young Honduran women. The education system in Honduras is shit. Students graduating high school are on an equivalent level to students graduating from middle school in the USA. So college education here is high school education in the states, which is why the teachers here can be young volunteers like me who aren’t super qualified. Art for Humanity’s mission is to help Hondurans help themselves, it doesn’t just hand out money or food to the poor of the country but instead participates in building small businesses and valuable skills within the population of impoverished.
The school reflects that in its curriculum which focuses on English, leadership, and Business. As we are within the first year the students are still learning English, as well as basic math, history, health, leadership, literature, and art. As their English improves they will advance to more intensive subjects such as sociology, psychology, algebra, and more leadership. Finally, in the third year they will focus mostly on business, and with their strong base in English and leadership will graduate as innovative community leaders ready to make a difference in their home country. That’s the idea at least.
As I said, the education provided is free to the girls here. In return, they work on the organic coffee farm six mornings a week, and take turns cooking for everyone else. I myself am teaching grammar, vocab, music and history. Being a history major I am really enjoying teaching it especially since they have almost no base and I can teach them whatever I please, like the military tactics of Alexander the Great. However, I’m not sure they all share my enthusiasm for the subject, so if anyone has any ideas on how to make history more appealing to 19-year-old Honduran girls, let me know.
Many times, but not always, remoteness and beauty go together. In my case they do. The school where I live sits at the base of a slope littered with pine trees, right before it drops off into a deep ravine of stone and water. Hills and greenery proliferate, and the river provides both waterfalls and calm pools ideal for swimming as it slips through its rock-strewn path. Here is a collection of pictures to help the visually inclined.
My house for the next couple months.
Me in the mountains.
As you can see, it’s a beautiful place, but its not paradise. While the sun shines I don’t lack for things to do, but at night it’s another story. The term social life doesn’t even apply here. Granted, I knew that coming in, but it has still been a shock. In the four weeks since I’ve been here I have read six books and halfway finished two more. I’ve also watched several movies, played a dozen games of chess, and started to teach myself the guitar because we have two, and I am not lacking for time.
On the other hand, I have only spent eleven dollars in that time, and if you know me at all, you’ll know what I spent it on. Though the life here is not thrilling, I can’t say my former one in the suburbs was either, and if I had free time there the allure of passing it in front of a TV or computer screen was often too great. Here, with finicky Internet and no TVs I have to find other more productive ways to entertain myself. Not gonna lie though, I do miss bars and live music and dancing and staying up past eleven.
If you’ve read up to here I thank and commend you. I didn’t realize how much I had to say until I got to this point. Of course, there’s more too, mostly about what I’ve done in the daytime, but I’ll save that for the next post. To end, I’ll try to rationalize my egregious sin of book burning. Here at the Leadership University almost all of our textbooks and learning materials are donated, and all of our trash has to be burned as the trash collectors refuse to come all the way out here to clean up for us. The bastards.
Anyways some well-meaning but misunderstanding soul sent us fifty copies of The Confident Consumer, a textbook dedicated to teaching people how to buy stuff well. It covers the whole glut of ways to spend your money ranging from how to buy fruit properly (“avoid soft, shriveled, leaky grapes”…no way!) to how to decorate your home (“color and style preferences play an important role in any decorating plan”…ya don’t say). The book assumes its audience, American high schoolers I believe, lack any form of common sense. Its almost like it was commissioned by the Bush administration at the same time we were told to spend spend spend to boost the economy. We all know how that turned out.
Since our students know what a ripe banana looks like, and can’t afford school let alone a house, Ira judged the books superfluous and ordered them cast into the purging flames of the pit of refuse. I volunteered to guide them through their immolation and spent the next couple hours battling flames and smoke and stubborn books who did not go easy into the oblivion. Well, it wasn’t that dramatic, but you get the picture.
