Read Online The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun - Free Book Online
Authors: Adam Braun
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by providing greater opportunity to others.
Six days later, I was on my way to Joel’s village, bumping along dirt roads in a microbus filled with local Guatemalan families. Two farmers smiled silver-capped-toothed grins at me. To my left a baby cried on his mother’s lap and to my right an elderly man gripped his field machete tightly. Although my friends at Las Pirámides thought I was crazy to head into the mountains alone where I might never return, I trusted Joel and knew this was the kind of experience I was seeking.
True to Joel’s description, Palestina had no street signs or house numbers. When I asked a local woman for Joel Puac, she pointed down a long dirt road. “Todo derecho,” she said, straight ahead . A neighbor pointed me to Joel’s home, and upon my arrival he introduced me to his dogs, chickens, and his ancient father, who lived in a one-room house next door. Though the old man was hunched, he clenched my hands with tight, clawlike fingers and led me, the first American he’d ever met, into his home to show me a treasured relic. He slowly wiped away the dust on a framed photo: a black-and-white aerial view of New York City. A friend of his had given it to him. The Twin Towers had fallen six years earlier, but in the photo they still dominated the skyline.
Joel showed me around the house: a broken toilet, a small fridge. He then showed me where I would sleep: a single bed on one side of a small room. He and his wife, Aurelia, would sleep in the double bed on the other side of the same room.
“We should start,” Joel said abruptly, and placed a small, red plastic table in front of me. On it was an English Bible, a Spanish-English dictionary, and a large cassette recorder. Joel spoke intently of the human need for spirituality. He told me of the issues facing Guatemala and the dangers of Guatemala City. He showed me a scar on his abdomen where he was recently stabbed by vagrants at a nearby market and told me how many people watched it happen but no one did anything.
To teach English to his family, he needed to learn the proper pronunciation, so he used the text he knew best: the Bible. We started at the beginning of the book of Proverbs. He asked me to read aloud into his old-school cassette recorder. He then detailed his plan to listen to the recordings of my voice every evening, saying the words in English, again and again.
Over three days, I spent as much time as I could, legs crossed on the dusty floor, reading into that tape recorder, in the room where we all slept. The space was small and the lights were dim, but the room was vibrant in detail: turquoise and yellow walls decorated with cartoon characters, old calendar cutouts, and pictures of faraway places from magazines. Each afternoon Joel and I made sure the cassettes played back properly. As we listened to my voice crackling through the ancient tape player, I couldn’t help but laugh at the beautiful irony of a Jew reading the Christian Bible aloud in a town called Palestina.
Joel had a tiny TV, and at night we would watch movies. It was March, but one night Elf was on. We laughed hysterically at the dialogue spoken in Spanish, but Joel focused on the English subtitles. After the movie, he listened to the day’s recordings through his oversize headphones. Hearing him whisper each of the words my voice was speaking into his ears gave me goose bumps. When Joel caught me smiling, he smiled back and said, “I don’t wanthandouts. I want to teach myself, so that when you leave, I can teach my children and the others in my village.”
I’d always operated under the vague notion that charitable work was about giving aid to the poor. In Western culture, we are taught that those of us with ample resources and money should share our prosperity with those who have less. I’d thought of charity as a simple transaction, a one-way street.
Joel taught me that my assumptions about the nature of charity had been wrong. When we give handouts
Six days later, I was on my way to Joel’s village, bumping along dirt roads in a microbus filled with local Guatemalan families. Two farmers smiled silver-capped-toothed grins at me. To my left a baby cried on his mother’s lap and to my right an elderly man gripped his field machete tightly. Although my friends at Las Pirámides thought I was crazy to head into the mountains alone where I might never return, I trusted Joel and knew this was the kind of experience I was seeking.
True to Joel’s description, Palestina had no street signs or house numbers. When I asked a local woman for Joel Puac, she pointed down a long dirt road. “Todo derecho,” she said, straight ahead . A neighbor pointed me to Joel’s home, and upon my arrival he introduced me to his dogs, chickens, and his ancient father, who lived in a one-room house next door. Though the old man was hunched, he clenched my hands with tight, clawlike fingers and led me, the first American he’d ever met, into his home to show me a treasured relic. He slowly wiped away the dust on a framed photo: a black-and-white aerial view of New York City. A friend of his had given it to him. The Twin Towers had fallen six years earlier, but in the photo they still dominated the skyline.
Joel showed me around the house: a broken toilet, a small fridge. He then showed me where I would sleep: a single bed on one side of a small room. He and his wife, Aurelia, would sleep in the double bed on the other side of the same room.
“We should start,” Joel said abruptly, and placed a small, red plastic table in front of me. On it was an English Bible, a Spanish-English dictionary, and a large cassette recorder. Joel spoke intently of the human need for spirituality. He told me of the issues facing Guatemala and the dangers of Guatemala City. He showed me a scar on his abdomen where he was recently stabbed by vagrants at a nearby market and told me how many people watched it happen but no one did anything.
To teach English to his family, he needed to learn the proper pronunciation, so he used the text he knew best: the Bible. We started at the beginning of the book of Proverbs. He asked me to read aloud into his old-school cassette recorder. He then detailed his plan to listen to the recordings of my voice every evening, saying the words in English, again and again.
Over three days, I spent as much time as I could, legs crossed on the dusty floor, reading into that tape recorder, in the room where we all slept. The space was small and the lights were dim, but the room was vibrant in detail: turquoise and yellow walls decorated with cartoon characters, old calendar cutouts, and pictures of faraway places from magazines. Each afternoon Joel and I made sure the cassettes played back properly. As we listened to my voice crackling through the ancient tape player, I couldn’t help but laugh at the beautiful irony of a Jew reading the Christian Bible aloud in a town called Palestina.
Joel had a tiny TV, and at night we would watch movies. It was March, but one night Elf was on. We laughed hysterically at the dialogue spoken in Spanish, but Joel focused on the English subtitles. After the movie, he listened to the day’s recordings through his oversize headphones. Hearing him whisper each of the words my voice was speaking into his ears gave me goose bumps. When Joel caught me smiling, he smiled back and said, “I don’t wanthandouts. I want to teach myself, so that when you leave, I can teach my children and the others in my village.”
I’d always operated under the vague notion that charitable work was about giving aid to the poor. In Western culture, we are taught that those of us with ample resources and money should share our prosperity with those who have less. I’d thought of charity as a simple transaction, a one-way street.
Joel taught me that my assumptions about the nature of charity had been wrong. When we give handouts
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