Neo

I'm returning to the blogosphere with a Honduras update. I really thought my previous post would be the last- I do not usually revisit things like blogs after finding closure in them; I like clean endings. But alas, life is often messy and things rarely end neatly or where we think they're going to end. So here I am again.

A few months ago, I posted about my missionary neighbors. The situation with them provided me with the most heart-wrenching challenge that I faced while in Honduras. On a weekly basis, I listened to them beat their 5-year-old son, Neo, while blasting Christian music over his cries. I reported their behavior to the school administrators, who looked on. I can't express the weight that comes from listening to a child suffer like that- that experience changed my life forever.

I'm returning to this blog because several people had expressed interest in this particular family, and a couple of days ago I received some news from Honduras. Last week, Neo died. He contracted dengue, which is a highly treatable and common illness that is carried through mosquitoes. Neo's parents don't believe in medicine- his mother told the girls and me once that she believes that people get sick because they don't "walk in the fullness of the Lord" and that God decides who should live and who should die. In her opinion, medicine interferes with God's decisions.

So, Neo became very sick. According to our neighbors up in Villa Verde, his parents knew he had dengue and knew he could die without treatment, but they continued to refuse to give him medicine. He ended up having a very painful death because he was too sick to sleep or find any sort of peace in his illness. His parents' abuse and neglect eventually killed him.

When I found out about what happened to Neo, I felt overwhelmed with emotions. I have never before known a child that died at the hands of his parents. I listened to them abuse him for a year, I listened to his parents express their radical views on discipline and medicine, and I watched the school administration look the other way when I asked them to intervene. I even brought the problem to the school superintendents, who treated me like a spoiled, naive American girl. But I knew these parents were dangerous, and the worst possible outcome came to fruition- their child died. In the United States, both parents would be in prison. In Honduras, everyone gossips about it and then gets on with their lives.

After having spent the summer in the USA, I can say that I am so relieved I'm not going back there. I'm so relieved I'm not going back to work for a school that looks the other way when they hear about child abuse. But I also feel desperately sad for the people and the children who are stuck in Honduras and can't leave. I feel so helpless to know that other children, children that I know and love, could be in situations similar to Neo's. As much as I wanted it to be, Honduras wasn't poetic, and beyond the landscaping, it wasn't beautiful either. Honduras was raw and difficult and impoverished and undereducated and without infrastructure, and what I'm left with now is grief, vacancy, and guilt.

So that's my update. Thank you for reading this post. The whole situation is still pretty unprocessed for me so I have a lot of unresolved emotions, but I wanted to tell Neo's story because it speaks to the story of so many Honduran children- and because he will never be able to tell it himself.

*Photo by Jacki Warren

Seasons, chapters, paths, the children

For everything there is a season. Today I ended one of the most important chapters of my life when I said goodbye to my students for the last time. I am not going to write details about what happened today. It is too close to my heart, and writing the details will only turn the raw emotions into inadequate words that could never truly convey how I felt, or feel now. I will simply say that it was one of the hardest days of my life and it left me absolutely drained.

I want to write more about the end of this experience, but the truth is, I don't know what to write right now. I'm too deeply in it to be able to properly reflect. I am too emotional, too exhausted. I don't know how I've changed or what my future holds for me. I don't remember the person I was before I came to Honduras, and I don't know how to explain this experience to anyone who wasn't here, doing it with me. It feels impossible to explain because it was a world of paradox that, on the surface, probably makes no sense. It felt both impossibly difficult and overwhelmingly rewarding. It was beautiful and ugly. It was a learning experience and a teaching experience. It was joyful and painful. It was confusing and painfully simple.

Six years ago, on the morning I was supposed to leave to go to college for the first time, my alarm went off and I hid under the covers of my bed because I dreaded leaving home so much. My dad came into my room and sat on my bed and told me it would be okay. He talked to me about the many lives we lead within the scope of our lifetimes. Doors open and close, experiences begin and end, and we forge our paths to take us somewhere meaningful. Nothing is forever, and goodbyes and salutations are integral parts of life. Change is hard, but extremely necessary.

It has been a beautiful year. In the end, for me, it was all about the children. As trite and cliche as this will sound, they did far more for me than I did for them. I don't know exactly where I'm headed next, but I do know that I will forever carry those children with me in my heart.

I have three more nights here on my mountain, and then I'm headed home on Monday to start the next chapter of my life. A year in Honduras... I did it.

The strangest year of my life

This has been, without any shadow of a doubt, the strangest year of my life. In fact, I can't believe that it has been a whole year. I remember when I first arrived in Honduras, everything was strange and new. I would constantly, for example, try to guess what time it was...I was usually about an hour or two late in my guesses. Honduras moves so slowly! The pace of life here is just incredibly slow. But, I adjusted to it. I quickly learned that there are very few forms of entertainment on the top of a mountain, and, with my friends, figured out ways to entertain myself. We talked endlessly, sang a lot, danced, had fires, chopped down Christmas trees, made our own Thanksgiving dinner (onion rings and corn dogs!), listened to lots of music. We struggled with the food, we struggled with the language, we struggled with the school administration, but we got through all of it and now here we are, with less than a week left to go.

It has been one of the strangest years of my life because all of my days blend together. Other than slight changes in weather and seasonal bugs (and now mice), it's very difficult for me to differentiate the days in my mind. It's like a big blur. Everything is so slow here! Things slowly happened, one thing after another. The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. Honduras was a time warp. It was also very me-centric. My life here consisted of me, my friends/co-workers, and my students, and everything else fell way outside of that. I have kept in touch with my family and closest friends, but pretty much lost touch with everyone else. It's like I have Honduras-blinders on or something. I kind of forgot that there's a big world out there, that hasn't stopped moving while I've been here in the mountains. In all honesty, I'm nervous to rejoin the world.

I can say that I'm fully satisfied with the way I have lived my life here. I truly appreciated every day that I spent in the mountains. I basked in the sunlight, I spent ample time staring at the night sky, I noticed the clouds and the flowers and of course, the magnificent mountains. I spent many, many days at the river. I sunbathed, swam, played in the waterfalls. I have made wonderful, life-changing friends here. I spent time with my neighbors. I learned how to make baleadas. I learned how to teach second grade. I learned Spanish. I learned exactly how much I don't know. I learned how to ask the questions that might help me seek some sort of greater truth. I spent so much time with my students. Teaching them, playing with them, observing them, hugging them. I love them.

I have never known love quite like this before, either. It's not like family love or friend love, it's really unique. I love these children so much, but they aren't mine! I am just their second grade teacher...I don't know how much they will even remember me. I wish I could stay with them forever. I want the very best for them. When they misbehave, I love them even more. I want to help them in every way that I possibly can. I'm probably going to end up dedicating my professional career to them by studying immigration law. I just adore them.

This is hard. I'm teaching for the last time. I want to enjoy it and maximize my time while also remaining reflective and soaking in every moment here. I want to psych myself up, but not so much that I'm devastated on Friday. I also recognize that I have been pretty down on Honduras for a while now. I feel that it's time to go, I just don't know how to leave. I don't know how to say goodbye to my life here. My life here is so comfortable that the idea of leaving feels...overwhelming. But in my heart, I know that the only thing worse than leaving would be staying. I know I can't stay....I guess I just also wish I didn't have to say goodbye.

Running on empty

The last time I remember feeling this exhausted was at the beginning of this school year. I remember that I would come home from school and just collapse on my bed. Every day wore me out. The type of exhaustion I feel now is just as overwhelming, but in a different way. Now, I feel absolutely empty. I feel like I have given everything I have to give this year.

Physically, I can feel that my body is angry at me. The diet here is so oil-heavy, so starch-heavy. I don't feel healthy. I'm also very tired all the time, always ready to go to sleep. I just don't feel good.

Mentally, I'm frustrated. There is no intellectual stimulation here for me. None. I read as much as I can, and I look at the news websites, but in the US I was always surrounded by news and articles and discussions of politics and current events. I have always craved intellectual stimulation, and there is just none of it here. The national newspaper in Honduras, "La Prensa," is an absolute disaster of a newspaper. No one seems to know anything about current events or politics. I miss spending time with an informed public, and my mind is bored.

Emotionally... I'm already spent, and I know I have an emotional goodbye to prepare myself for. The emotional element of this year has been...tumultuous. It's hard to live in an impoverished country and fall in love with a group of great children who have grown up there. Their lives include so many hardships that no children should have to face, and helping them navigate through those problems for a year has been a very challenging (albeit very rewarding) experience. I know that saying goodbye to the children and leaving the place I have called home for the past year is going to be extremely difficult. I don't feel like I have the energy for it.

Today we went to town (like we do every Wednesday), and I just felt like I couldn't do it. I couldn't go to the bank, I couldn't walk through the dark aisles of the store to buy groceries (it didn't help that the electricity across town had gone out), I couldn't go to the market, I couldn't even walk to my student's house to make dinner with his family. Of course I did do all of those things, but I just felt like I was dragging my body to do them.

I want to stay positive for the last week and a half, but it's so hard. I'm aware of my dual and competing emotions of both being sad to leave and anxious to leave, and I'm not entirely sure of how to deal with that. It's just a really weird time.

Second Grade Photo Session

I have a wonderful friend here, Jacki, who has kept me sane during the past ten months. In addition to being a great friend, Jacki takes beautiful photographs! (If you need a wedding photographer, contact me and I'll give you her number.) Anyway, I asked her to come by my classroom one day and just take some pictures of my students, and these were a couple of the photos she took. They look like they're from a magazine, I swear.

My students are so beautiful.

Ada:

Adelso:

Jesariel:

Jeison:

Sofia:

Carlos:

Abi:

Bryan:

All of us:


So much love in second grade:

Rainy season and La Union

I'll start off with a few ear bug pictures, taken in my kitchen:






I have heard that the ear bugs only mark the beginning of the rainy season and that they're just about over, so I'll just hope that's true. We haven't had them for two nights now, so maybe their time is done. But that's what's happening here: the rainy season has started with a vengeance. The rain has always made me feel really spiritual. I just love the rain. However, my love for the rain dwindles when it pours nonstop and I have to walk to and from school in it, and when my roof leaks, and when my clothes and towels don't dry because the air is wet. I live in a cloud forest!! However, even though the rain makes living here a little bit more difficult, it's still pretty amazing to me. I have never seen rain like this before; it just pours all day and all night. The seasons changed from sunny and hot every day to chilly and wet. It's strange that it's summer back home, because it feels like the months approaching winter here.

We've come in a full circle; we arrived during rainy season and we're leaving during rainy season. Having the rain here again makes me remember the fall. I spent so much time in the girls' house; I was there today, napping on the bed I used to sleep on, and I remembered the fall, and what a beautiful time that was. I would wear hoodies and jeans every day in the fall, and bundle up to go to bed. This past week, I pulled out my long-sleeved work shirts again. Has it really been a full school year here? It's a strange sensation, because in the USA, summer marks the end of the school year. Here, the best weather happened from February to April.

Nevertheless, we are heading into our last two weeks. We've been having fun, both in school:


And in town (We always celebrate when the grocery store here has something new, and we were delighted this time to find Koala bear cookies!):


Last weekend, Jacki and I took a trip to La Union. It was pretty awesome to be in a new place. We left school at 11am and took a bus. We were in La Union by that afternoon. All the La Union photos are compliments of Jacki.




We had a really fun time seeing the Vida Abundante school and finding a place where we could buy baleadas for 5 lemps (about 25 cents).



One of the highlights of our trip was when we were serenaded by a mariachi band! It was pretty awesome.


I also rode on a motorcycle for the first time. And I tried on one of Jake's shirts, which was one of the biggest shirts I've ever seen!

Jacki and I had a small moment of panic on Sunday morning, because the ONLY bus to Gracias from La Union left at 5am, and we slept right through both of our alarms. We knew Jake was annoyed, and we were annoyed too! And worried that we wouldn't get back in time, or that we might have to take a chicken bus to San Pedro Sula and then back to Gracias. But we are really lucky, because we are good friends with our neighbors and co-workers here, and we asked two of our friends to come get us, and they came! We rode all the way home from La Union in the back of our friend's truck, and it was so much fun.

Here I am with Juan Carlos:


Trying to teach him something!


We had a great time in La Union. And now, there are only two weeks left. I am trying to give my students as much love as I can, and enjoy my time in spite of the rain and the bugs. My students have become very, very affectionate with me because they know I'm leaving soon, and they've also become really rowdy because they're ready for school to be over. I love them so much. I am still ready to come home, though. Only 2 weeks left.

Ear bugs

So, the last time I blogged, I mentioned the ear bugs. They are tiny little bugs with four wings each, and they came to Gracias when I was in town last week. When I left town to come up to Villa Verde, however, they weren't here, so I figured they didn't come this high up the mountain. Well, I was wrong... they arrived tonight. Jacki, Julia and I were just finishing dinner in the kitchen when we noticed that outside there were thousands, literally thousands, of small black bugs in the air. Then they started to come into the kitchen, through every crack in the wall and hole in the window.

They are small bugs (maybe 1 cm long long) and they each have four wings. They fly around and then shed their wings, which land everywhere, and then the body of the bug just starts going on the land. They're pretty horrible, because their wings get all over everything (in food, in dishes, in our hair, on our clothes, in our drinks) and then the creepy crawly things are everywhere too.

The worst part about them, though, is that they nest in people's ears. They crawl deep into people's ears, trying to burrow as far in as they can. Julia's students told her that if they get in there, people hear an unbearable buzzing sound in their ear, and they have to go immediately to the hospital. So, we have been walking around our houses with toilet paper stuffed in our ears so that the creepy bugs don't get in. Agh. And in the meantime, we have to keep cleaning up everything, rewashing our dishes, and shaking out our clothes and hair to make sure we don't have wings or bugs in them. Get me home.