What would Smokey the Bear do?

The other day I had come back to my house to get ready to cook lunch, when to my surprise I found that the electricity had gone out. Actually, this wasn't a surprise at all. It was the third time it had happened that day, and about the 6th time that week. Unfortunately, when I went shopping for a stove, I did not know this little fact about our town. Therefore, I had bought an electric stove, which I can only use about half the time here, since the electricity goes out so much!

So I decided to be adventurous, and instead of having peanut butter crackers for lunch (thanks mom for sending those!) and cook on the wood stove the family I live with has. Now, I have always wanted to be a boyscout (yes, that's right....a BOYscout. They are the ones who actually go camping and learn real things. I remember being in girl scouts and to my extreme disappointment, learning nothing but how to make pot holders) and loved to go camping. But I have never claimed to be an expert on building fires. In fact, I am pretty sure I never have built one in my life, or even come close to attempting.

So I thought to myself ¨I'm here in Honduras, where most of the women cook on wood stoves. I should definately take a stab at it!¨ So I entered the room where the stove was, and saw that there were still glowing cinders inside it, from the previous fire that had been made. ¨It's my lucky day!¨ I thought to myself ¨this should be a cinch!¨ Well, boy was I wrong. About and hour later, after about 10 matches and 20 old tests from my english class, I had finally gotten a small fire started. By that time as well, I had gotten ash stains all over my clothes, and my eyes were filled with tears from the enormous amount of smoke that blew in my face every time I tried to lite the logs on fire (about every 30 seconds, I had to run out of the room and close my eyes in order to get rid of the sting from the smoke).

Finally, almost 2 hours after I had started this entire extravanganza, I sat down to a horribly unsatisfying meal of bland beans, hard rice, and cold tortillas (at this point, the peanut butter crackers were much more tempting to me). While taking my first bite, as if it had been a mean trick played on me by God, the lights came back on. Looking down at my ash-stained jeans and almost revolting meal before me, I grinned widely thinking to myself ¨now THIS is why I joined the Peace Corps!¨