Block 1 Travel Day: 2
Block 1 On Ground Day: 0
5:15 Wake-up call. That was not nearly enough sleep. I woke up to Bryan telling us the time, and then I really woke up to Teddy shouting at him from the bunk above me “Bryan, why do you have to be so CHIPPER?!” We don’t have many morning people in this group.
At 6ish the bus rolled in. It was a private bus for Reynaldo’s group and ours, which is really nice. No stopping like the public bus every time someone waves it down, lots of space underneath and in the racks and just for seats. Plus the Ecuadorians really like the front of the bus and the gringos really like the back, so we all sat together (which in retrospect was really worthless because all we did was sleep).
Incidentally, Reynaldo is a Columbian missionary who does camps like this all the time. His ministry is who is really putting on the VBS this week and we’re just doing backup, extra manpower, maybe some skits and songs. We don’t really know.
We hit Atahuno pretty early and hung out at the outdoor gymnasium of the local school. Turns out that having 13 Gringos and a bunch of strange South Americans show up is an excuse to not have class all day. Some of the kids had only seen white people once or twice before, so we were quite the attraction. We played basketball with the kids and had some breakfast in the bleachers, untoasted bread with jelly and orange juice. Surprisingly good, actually.
Everyone got a bit of quiet time while we waited for the planes. I totally forgot to explain this in yesterday’s post, but our original plan to fly from MAF in Shell was nixed because of lack of fuel. All the aircraft fuel is tied up in customs, and they literally have enough fuel to get us in, but potentially not out. We’ve prayed a lot about fuel. We could be potentially walking out of the jungle, which would take a Huaorani 10 hours non-stop or a Gringo 2 days. We really don’t want to do that and then have teams come in immediately after. So it was a little bit tense “quiet” time, and not that quiet at that as there were several games, including the lively gringos and Fabian vs. tons of kids basketball competition going on.
At some point one of the kids noticed the guitar. A guitar case is one of those things that is hard to disguise under a Christmas tree, so it certainly sticks out of small backpacks and gas tanks piled up in a gym. Sarah told them it was mine and manged to get me to play. It was actually pretty fun. They asked me if I knew any Christmas songs, which I don’t out of my head (on guitar, anyway) so I just played Relient K in English and they didn’t have a clue what I was saying anyway. I did decide to brave “Eres Todopoderoso” in front of them about half-way through the ad-hoc concert. That whole gym exploded into song.
(Notice the shirt I’m wearing in the picture below. If you’re viewing this on facebook, you’ll have to go to my site to see it.)
When the planes weren’t there by mid-day, we mosied on over to the restaurant down the street. Apparently 14 people is an extreme amount to be cooking for, and the owner/chef let us know that in no uncertain terms, and how he wished we had warned him at 8 or 9 in the morning. We told him we were fine waiting and letting the meals come out plate by plate. Fortunately for ease of ordering, there was only one thing on the menu.
The first plane did show up about then, and some of the girls stayed at the restaurant to calm the nerves of the frantically grilling businessman while the rest of us moved our luggage, equipment and bodies to the airstrip (which is basically a long, semi-flat line or dirt rather than grass just ten or twenty steps off the road).
We sat around on the runway for what seemed like a long time, getting on boots and bug spray and sunscreen but suddenly we were moving and with Nicole up front, Sarah next to me and Teddy and Chet in the back, we were all in the plane and taking off. For the third time in about three weeks I can say that was the smallest plane I’ve ever ridden in.
A discussion yesterday had involved the new people group that was just discovered, a tribe in the Brazillian jungle that had never had contact with the outside world. Chet said that they estimate around 100 tribes have still never been contacted by other human beings. How unfathomable I thought that was in 2008 with airplanes and satellites and mass-communication having been around for so long. But as we flew over endless trees, I thought how perfectly sensible that there are still so many undiscovered people. Just this little patch of the world that takes 10 minutes to fly over is unbelievable. Trees as far as you can see. I just marveled at God and His Creation. How I can’t even comprehend it, and what a small part and yet what a special part I get to play in His plan, particularly this week. Who else gets to see this?
I thought that the coming and going of planes would be pretty normal for the Huaorani, so even though I was told that they would all run out and greet the plane, I was a little bit surprised that they did. I would learn as the other planes came in that the adults were there because they knew how important it was to help get a plane unloaded and back in the air as fast as possible. The kids were there to see the Gringos. It’s always hard for me to talk to people the first time I go to a new place in Ecuador. Even saying “hola” seems strange when I know that I won’t be able to strike up a conversation with them in Spanish, much less in Wao. But we waded through the kids and the mud (SO glad I had my boots on- was not expecting it to be muddy to the point of being stuck in it every four steps) and unloaded everything.
As the other planes came in Chet took us through the town up to “the river,” which is actually a part of a stream that’s been directed under the stilts of a house and up four feet through pipes to come down with a little bit of pressure in enough of a waterfall to have a small shower under and continue flowing in a stream back to the real river after passing through the town. We filled up the two buckets that had made it in on flight 1 and took them back to the guys’ porch to filter.
I somehow expected the water to seem more clean when we got through. The $1000 water filter is pretty tough (and not a joke to work. I’ll be buff after a week of pumping water through this thing) but the river water still has just a hint of yellow to it and a few floaters. After looking at the water that Lane was pumping for a while, I finally decided that it didn’t look to far removed from our drinking water at home. I’m sure this is cleaner than the Pasquotank. Qualms removed.
Setting up house was pretty simple too. The classrooms that we’ll be staying in (at least until the children arrive tomorrow night or maybe Thursday morning) are single-room wooden buildings with a porch. Instead of windows or solid walls on the front and back, the wood comes up to maybe chest level and then there is basically chain-link fence from there up to above a foot below the ceiling. Air flows through and it’s basically like being under cover rather than being inside. But in jungle weather that’s exactly what is needed, and I was able to recognize that instantly whereas last year I’m sure I would have been very skeptical about this situation. And it was great to run the line for the mosquito nets. We tied up to the fence on the front, ran the line across the room and tied it off on the other fence, and viola: mosquito nets could now be tied in place along the line.
By the time everyone was fully in and unpacked and set up and a few more buckets of water had been gotten and pumped, through the filter, there was just enough time for the girls, then the guys to troop up to the “shower” where we’d gotten water earlier. I’m going to be really tired of being cold and washing my hair with soap. After that it was dark and way past time for dinner. We trooped across the muddy field to what was designated the kitchen. It’s a building very similar to where we are staying except that it has a fire-pit style cooking area outside and is not on stilts. It has a totally uneven dirt floor and the benches along the two tables that span the length of the building have dug holes into the floor so they sit at angles between those and the bumps. It’s very hard to keep 15 people on one bench without it falling around. The trick seems to be leaning it up forward against the tables, which are slightly more stable.
We ate in just about total darkness with a few candles. We had bowls of rice and lentils with chicken in some sort of sauce, along with a sort of tea or juice that tasted like lemon drops (Chet says it was more than likely a grass that they boil rather than actual lemons). Surprisingly good and definitely filling.
After that it was debrief. Matt and Angela were the pareja of the day and led debrief under the covered area in the middle of the town in the dark. We talked mostly about changing plans and not knowing if we would even make it in, God’s faithfulness throughout our travels, and what we want the next week to hold, despite still not knowing exactly what we’ll be doing. Angela make a wonderful word-picture for us about the basket we saw in the Nate Saint house yesterday and how she’d been praying to just be that basket for the Huaorani, that link between God and the people we are here to serve. It made me think of a Caedmon’s Call song about missions. One of the lines says “We put the walls up, but Jesus keeps them standing. He doesn’t need us, but he lets us put our hands in.”
I know I’m not the most important part of our team, and certainly not a necessity to God in getting his plans accomplished this week in Toñamparé and the hearts of the Huaorani kids that will be here for the camp. But I pray that I can be useful.
EDIT: We finished debrief and Sarah and I, who will be the pareja in charge for tomorrow got to talk about jobs for each of us. Chet told us that six need to be in the kitchen, four need to be on sports, and the rest can be floaters, with a translator in each group and each one consisting of roughly even numbers of males and females. We designated Matt, Angela, Nicole and Bryan on sports, which left Sarah, Teddy, Danielle, Lane, Necia and myself on kitchen, leaving Chet, Dana, Fabian and Jerry as floaters. I’m writing this at a later time because of how much that changed over just a few hours the next morning and how initially disappointed I was because I felt that kitchen is just a “filler” role and I wouldn’t get to do any useful work for the Kingdom. How wrong I would be.
