One of the biggest surprises for me this year has been the realization that our school, San Jeronimo, is beset with a huge array of student-related challenges. But if I think about the realities of Cofradia and Honduras long enough, then the biggest surprise should be-why am I surprised at all? Behavioral and academic difficulties are widespread at our school, and the root causes for many of these have to do with external conditions that are beyond the children’s control-broken family structures, abusive parents, parental neglect, unmet material needs related to living in poverty, poor hygiene and sanitation at home. Some factors, such as learning disabilities and psycho-social disorders, are internal, but are exacerbated and encouraged by the aforementioned external conditions.
Honduras is a society which has not been allowed to be a winner, because the aggressively myopic and heartlessly spoiled winners, who continue to strut their illegitimate might, use this place merely as a source of their own enrichment, leaving little in return but unpaid overtime maquildora workers, boxes of rotting banana peels, global warming related eco-devastation that has everything to do with Western development needs, a hopelessly corrupt government of the rich affiliates of U.S. and Asian business, and forgotten, miserable towns like Cofradia that are sinking ships kept afloat only by the occasional arrival of Western Union money transfers. The "Open Veins of Honduras," to quote Uruguayan radical Eduardo Galeano, mirror the open veins of San Jeronimo School children. Our kids bleed and suffer, are used and abused, and when and how will it stop? These questions that torment concerned minds...
Our teachers and myself arrive at school each day full of passion and heart, but we are never sure what we will encounter regarding the students’ behavior, and their mental and emotional states. It often feels like we work less in a school than at a grossly understaffed group home. I spent the last two years working in Vermont in just such an environment, and see many children at San Jeronimo who would benefit greatly from a closed-in, fully structured living and school situation, which will never be possible here at this rate. It is the unwanted freedom many of these kids have, a result of their neglect by, and unimportance in, their homes and the larger community, that sets them up to go nuts on us gringo maestros. This freedom leads our kids to make bad decisions and do stupid things, because they do not know any better, and why should they, and then the parent/community response is to sanction them harshly. Cofradia is full of kids who become adults before they can even fully appreciate childhood, and our students at SJBS are far older than their few years would attest to.
Our kids appear to be very taxed in ways that relate directly to the oppressive circumstances that govern home and community life in any so-called Third World milieu (there are plenty of these milieu’s in the Western world, too, just check out Chicago’s South Side, for instance). It is not their fault that their parents decide to risk everything and undertake an extremely perilous journey to the fabled land of the United States, whose powerful and self-serving myths have ripped apart the social fabric of Cofradia. It is not their fault that their parent’s have been socially conditioned, by their culture, to discipline them with lashes and beatings, a form that is becoming less prominent in my native culture, but which is rife here (parents do not call it abuse). It is not their fault that their town has almost no resources to support their academic experience at San Jeronimo School-there are no public libraries with free internet access, no quiet, shady parks where they can study, no preponderance of volunteer adults who can mentor and tutor them on a regular basis. It is not their fault that academic support at home is often very limited, sometimes because of willful negligence, but more often simply because parents who only had a sixth grade education or less do not know how to give academic support (quite a few of our parents are illiterate).
The big question is-how can our kids, whom I love dearly, rise above the unfair obstacles and challenges that have been placed by the failures and treacheries of adults in their paths, and what is the best way that we BECA gringos can support them in their struggle for a better present and a worthwhile future?
This monologue, this public search for a meaningful response to a profound rhetorical question, will continue through the year, as the answers (hopefully) become clearer…
