Travel Day: 7
On Ground Day: 5
Father’s Day 2008
I’ll just skip right over breakfast and lunch. The highlight today was the sports.
Normally the kids go play basketball and soccer after the afternoon program until dinner. Today it rained. And I mean it RAINED. The town was soaked and the mud that we’ve become so accustomed to walking through (and having all over us) was amplified by an immeasurable magnitude. While we were cleaning up lunch, Gustavo and Carlos (two of the younger guys on Rey’s crew, both about 18) asked Bryan if four of us gringo guys would play soccer with them in the mud. This was eventually extended to all of us, as many as wanted and girls included as well. I wasn’t keen on the idea, because I like to be dry. And clean. And dry. And not uselessly exhausted by dinner. And dry.
Knowing there was no way I was going to remain dry if anyone was playing anything in the mud, I went back to the church and changed into my swimsuit. Good thing. We got owned in gringo vs. Ecuadorian tug-of-war (twice, no less) and then th kids did all of the games from the other night… just in the mud. It started raining even harder for a while there and mud was everywhere. By the time it stopped, the games had dissolved into a giant mud fight with everyone involved. Not wearing a shirt, I looked clean even when I was covered in mud, and I got taken down about six times. Jonathan and a couple of the guys even carried me to a huge puddle and just dropped me in.
We took down Chet, and even Reynaldo and by the end, whether you were gringito, Ecuadorian national, or Huaorani, everyone looked the same: COVERED in mud. We looked around at the end and realized Fabian was nowhere to be found. I think he heard the first hint of mud and vanished back to the church to sleep or play with the parrot. Pastors!
We decided the best way to get clean would be to trek back to the Curaray River and Palm Beach (though the beach itself was actually fully underwater at that point). A long and muddy hike later we were back at the river, and all able to just jump in (nobody brought boots or other “stuff,” thank God). The current is intense, and I now understand why Ed McCully’s body was never recovered. Even swimming against the current, which doesn’t look like much from shore, it was very hard to even stay in the same place.
We got all the mud off, but entirely missed the “shore” downstream where we needed to get out. It was really stressful there for a minute, especially trying to make sure the girls (who could not touch the bottom and who also had a really hard time getting to the side to grab something) were all alright. We found a place to climb out, with Chet basically dragging most of us out of the water, but Teddy and Bryan had to get Danielle and Nicole out even farther downstream when they couldn’t get back up to us.
It is something I’ll never forget, and every one of us had a different experience there. But as we trekked back through the mud (requiring another shower when we reached “home” again) the question again arose “Where the heck is Fabian?” He always seems to miss these mishaps. He’s probably better off.
We made it just in time for serving dinner and everyone pitched in with dishes again to “git ‘er done” and get to the program. We were first up tonight, and did the songs we’d planned on yesterday. It was very cool to see how into it the whole camp was, and how appreciative they were, especially since we were hard to hear with a plugged-in guitar but basically no amplification of the voices. Everyone joined in when we sang “Lord I Lift Your Name On High” because the kids know it in Spanish.
We stayed for a bit of the award ceremony and end-of-camp activities, but we had debrief to do ourselves and knew it would take a long time on the last night, so we took off early. Debrief was “Pass the Staff” (except it was actually “Pass Chet’s Machete”). The idea is that you take the “staff” and give it to someone else in the circle and say something positive about them. I got a chance to pass the machete to Sarah, Nicole, and Fabian and jump in while Chet, and Jerry had it. (My comment to Fabian was- in short- that we tend to wonder where the heck he is, but he picked a project and stuck it out. If he wasn’t at the church, he was in the kitchen doing those benches and it was a testament to his perseverance that I really admired). It was passed to everyone at least once and everyone had some really great things said. I don’t think anyone was really flattered out of their minds. Quite the opposite, most of us seemed to feel (I know I did) that what everyone says was just “who we are.” But that was the point. Just being who we are, we’re unique and special and each have our own God-given abilities and personalities that compliment the team as a whole and it was really great to know how much we can be appreciated.
It was a muddy day, but it was fun for everyone in that town, and a bonding experience for thirteen gringos and a pastor.
