This Week Sucks.

This week has sucked. In fact, it’s been kind of a rough month altogether. Lots of rain, lots of mud, lots of work, lots of bleh. But this week has definitely been the worst one for me yet.

First has been the boiling over of my constant frustration with the inadequate support our school receives from its wealthy administrators in Tegucigalpa. (Although I’m sure your curiosity has piqued, I will leave those details out for now, for the sake of brevity and focus and some good old-fashioned self-control.)

A lot of things have not gone the way I would have liked them to go, but it wasn’t really any of those things on its own. It wasn’t the scorpion that briefly decided to join my eighth grade Language class, until its life was stomped out by Star Student of the Week, Nimrod (yes, his name is Nimrod – don’t judge). It wasn’t the two days without water followed by two days without electricity, although they were definitely contributing factors. It wasn’t the US team’s loss to Honduras in the World Cup qualifying match, after I had done my fair share of smack-talking with students. It also wasn’t that we found out about two sets of our fellow teachers (not in La Unión) being robbed at gunpoint.  It wasn’t even that I haven’t left our tiny town since Christmas, although all of these realities have left me feeling a bit antsy and stir-crazy.

What really put me – and everyone nearby – over the edge was a string of deaths that have plagued our village and the small communities surrounding it over the last three weeks. There have been two accidental gun deaths of teenagers (I hate guns, now more than ever).  There has been one not-so-accidental gun death where a young teenage boy repeatedly shot his brother. Then this week brought two more unexpected deaths – one was the wife of our town mayor, a prominent figure here in La Unión and throughout the region. She developed a lung infection and died in the town soccer field, while waiting for a medical helicopter to pick her up. 

About a quarter of our school was related to this woman in some way or another, so it was a tragedy that sent rippling effects throughout the town. The night of her death, as is the custom for all deaths here in La Unión, people came to pay their respects to the family and to say their last goodbyes. The whole town came out, with a line of people streaming out the house and all along the street. We stopped by for a few hours to talk with our many grieving students and to be a part of this intimate town experience. It was a sad but moving communal event, and we felt privileged to be a part of it in some insignificant way. The open house lasted all night, as they always do here, until the next morning when the funeral took place. Then the family and many of the townspeople walked with the body up to the cemetery, as is their custom. Again, what a moving picture of community, demonstrating, “You are not alone; we will walk this long and difficult road with you.”

The day after that funeral, we found out that another death had occurred. The 22-year-old sister of Edan, one of our most volatile and yet most beloved eleventh grade guys, had been killed. What we know of the story is that she was working in a Honduran city a few hours away, got into a taxi after work, and was never heard from again. Her body was found the next day, showing that she had suffered unimaginable horrors before she was murdered: rape, torture, violence, death.

Again we spent an evening with our students at another home wake, trying – and failing – to be comforting and wise in the midst of unspeakable tragedy. It was hard to hug Edan, who was openly weeping, and not be a total mess of my own anger and tears. (I would also like to go on record as saying that – yes, I understand that it is local tradition to ALWAYS have an open casket, no matter what – but sometimes traditions should be abandoned, sometimes things are better left hidden, sometimes my students need to have the chance to sleep at night without seeing the evils of the world evident in a bruised and battered face.)

It’s been a rough week. It’s been hard to know how to teach and reach a bunch of kids who are sad, confused, angry, solemn. I have tried to remind them that this is not the way God intended our world to be, that this is the result of sin and brokenness, that death and evil don’t have the final say. But still the heaviness is hanging over our town, dark and uncomfortable.

And so maybe the best thing we can do is wait. Together. Through the night. Walking. Together. Up the hill. Waiting. Together. Waiting – for the truth of the gospel to fully sink into our grief, and for hope to intermingle with the heaviness.