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
