Paradise in Front of Me – Realizing Life’s Beauty in an Unexpected Place – by Kevin G. Finch (Honduras 2004–06)
The recurring image in Kevin G. Finch’s Paradise in Front of Me is that of an impoverished Honduran child looking up at a locked schoolhouse door. Shut out again. The author and the residents of El Paraíso repeatedly find their plans scuttled: by naked madmen in San Juan, cancelled classes in Monte Cristo, failed transportation to Cuyalí, striking teachers, impassable rivers, travelinggringo evangelicals . . . there’s no end to the obstacles in this Honduran state near the border with Nicaragua. “The teachers are on strike,” Finch writes towards the end, “and another day is wasted in the future of Honduras. The child blinks his eyes to bat away the drops of rain running down from his soaked hair. He looks left and then right. Slumping his shoulders, he heads for home, his empty notebook in hand.”
Ben East Books 