The past four days have probably been the most incredible days of my life. A glimpse of life in a secluded jungle village in the Ecuador, a visit with the passionate missionaries working there, twenty hours of curves and bumps in five buses, a swim in the Curaray river, fourteen hours of sleep in four days, airoplane malfunctions, and amazing answers to prayer have left me overwhelmed with gratitude and marvelling at the work of God. What can I compare to the feeling of watching the engine of the plane sputter and fail to start on the sandy air strip of the jungle village? Or to the hope of reliance on God as hands were laid on the dashboard of the plane and the motor started minutes later? God is surely at work.
Our adventure began at midnight on Wednesday, June 3rd 2009. Justo had been working with five youth from the church for the past several months putting together a video with the scripture and the gospel message in the Shuar and Quichua languages. Videography of animals and nature were edited to include music in Quichua and Shuar, with naration in the different languages. These were the first videos of this kind to be made in these languages. The purpose of our trip was to share the gospel with a Quichuan village through use of the Quichua film. With Justo and I, the group totalled seven people, three guys and four girls. Mateo Flores just graduated this year from high school and is intersted in missions work. Felipe Torres is in grade eleven and attending the colegio bilingue here in Cuenca. Paolla Gomezcuello (we call her Cocoa) is also attending the bilingue. Raquel Gomezcoello is 20 and studying to become a teacher (I have been staying with her family while I am here). Mateo, Cocoa and Raquel are all cousins. Finally, Maríe José (Majo) Proaño is studying to become a lawyer… and she has a great sense of humor. Justo and I brought the total to seven. What a memorable group.
We arrived at the bus terminal in Cuenca just before midnight and after a group prayer in the middle of the reception area we loaded our sleeping bags and foamies into a cargo bay and boarded a Mercedes bus with the Santa coach service. Each person got a “Fiora Vanti” cola, which is a type of Ecuadorian pink fruity pop, and banana chips to munch. The route from Cuenca to the small town of Ambato was supposed to take up to eight hours, but we had a fast bus driver, so we made it in less than six. Sleep wasn’t easy because of the curves and bumps (remember, we had a fast driver), and periodically the lights would go on for the boarding of another passenger. We drove through the mountains due North. A cold draft from the windows was an indicator of the high altitude that we reached along the way.
In Ambato, we were dropped off with our gear at about six A.M. on what looked to me like a piece of empty parking lot between buildings (it was the Santa head office terminal). After a bathroom break in the empty terminal building, we headed across one street and down another to a bigger bus terminal with other carriers. I had asked Justo about what time our next bus left, and he had assured me that he had no idea, but that “there are so many buses that they will be calling for us.” Sure enough, as soon as were trooped into sight of the next bus terminal building, they started calling to us, literally! While Justo purchased our tickets for the next bus, I noticed an elaborately decorated and lit statue of Mary in the otherwise dingy building. There had been another decorated statue set up similarily at the Santa bus office a couple of blocks away. People walking by would murmer prayers to Mary. Clearly there is quite a strong Catholic presence here in Ecuador.
Outside was a chaos of roaring buses arriving and departing and people hollering the names of places to which the buses were going. The pavement around our next bus was trash littered and the air smelled of urine. This bus had smaller seats and was a lot more crowded. The scenery on the route from Ambato to Shell was stunning. Lush green forests on steep hills and cliffs surrounded the gorge through which we drove. Crashing muddy rivers and dozens of small waterfalls told of the frequency of rainfall in the area. We were definately entering jungle territory. Along the route, there were five ro six long tunnels through steep areas along the edge of the mountain. I timed some of the tunnels, and they took almost a full minute to drive through.
The culture inside the bus itself was pretty interesting. The bus would stop for anyone and everyone anywhere and everywhere. The bus fair collector would holler out the door to people to see if they wanted to get on, and the bus would stop right on the road. Some people had ulterior motives for riding the bus. The most interesting seller was a well dressed fellow trying to convince the passengers to purchase an eye ointment that would solve all their health problems. Justo said that last time, it was herbal tea that was the magical remedy. Other sellers would try to sell us empanads, or oranges, or cold drinks. People would transport all kinds of things on the bus. A couple of ladies loaded a plastic crate with about a dozen uncoverd, dead plucked chickens into the cargo bay, and another fellow walked in with a sack of yucca root and an 18 inch machete. Interesting. They don’t exactly have pre-boarding security checks with this type of transportation.
The convenient thing about buses that stop wherever is that you can get off wherever you want. So when the bus passed the missionary house in Shell, Justo waved to stop the driver, and we all lept off onto the street, just part of a block away from our destination. The house of Sharon and Ricardo LaBouf backs onto the Shell airstrip and is about a block away from the house of Nait Saint, the missionary martyr to the Waodani tribe. In the backyard was an orange tree and a hanger with an avionetta (small plane). The house was wooden with a tin roof and had some interesting (authentic) décor of wooded spears. We were greeted with a delicious breakfast of bananas, juice, eggs and buns with jam. Sister Sharon was out when we arrived, but Brother Ricardo was there along with Brother Marco, a new believer from a Shuar tribe, and Brother Diego.
I don’t know what words best describe Brother Ricardo. Amazing, inspiring, Spirit filled, spontaneous, crazy. To be a missionary pilot spreading the gospel to so many remote tribes and villages, each with their own subcultures and languages takes a special kind of person, and I think Brother Ricardo is that special kind of person. And Sister Sharon is the special kind of wife for him. What a blessing they are.
While listening to Justo and Brother Ricardo discussing the activities for the day, I was inspired to re-think my previous ideas about the meaning of relying on the Lord for direction. In response to the questions, “what should we do today?” and “what’s the plan?” Ricardo would replied, “Let’s give it to the Lord and let Him decide.” Then we had a time of prayer.
Brother Marco watched the Shuar film and gave commentary on the coincidence of the words with the pictures, and Brother Ricardo called another sister of the church who spoke Quichuan to review the other film so that any final adjustments could be made. Brother Ricardo took some of us to the air terminal a short ways from the house, and showed us around and introduced us to people. Shell is a town that is so filled with history in the area of evangelical missions. As we were shown other places around the town, I found it interesting how many people that Brother Ricardo knew. He was almost always calling out the window to someone, “Hermano!” (brother!).
In the afternoon, Brother Ricardo showed us around the little Shell airport, which is about a block from their house. Across the street from the airport is the house that Nait Saint lived in, which was amazing to be so close to. Brother Ricardo showed us around the town, the hospital, the radio station, and a restaurant. I made the mistake of stepping on the lawn at one of the places… and I sank in about three inches. Shell is totally in the jungle, and the amount of moisture in the ground is amazing. After we checked back at the house, we all headed out to a place nearby with monkeys. Unlike the caged monkeys at the Calgary Zoo, these monkeys like to climb on your head and steel cameras. It was so strange feeling to have a monkey picking through my hair and pulling at my headband. Their hands feel kind of human… what an experience! We climbed a tree house to look at the view and explored a few man-made caves. The bats were the most exciting part.
In the evening, we ate supper with another missionary family, the McWeenys. The girls slept at the McWeeny’s house and the boys slept at the Labouf’s. In the morning, the girls were picked up by Brother Ricardo, and we met up with the boys and waited at a spot along the street where we were told the bus was supposed to come. We bought some bread and some crackers and juice as provisions for our trip. Sure enough, the bus did come, and Justo managed to fanangle the price down to $2.15 a person from $2.50. That’s the way it works in Ecuador. This bus took us deep into the jungle on a gravel road to the town of Adajuno, which marked the end of the road. Adajuno was basically a collection of a few open wood houses and shops with tin roofs along an airstrip in the jungle. What a place! We dropped off our stuff at the local general store for safe keeping and ate a lunch of Quinua soup, fish and rice at a little restaurant. I am sure the place didn’t comply with Canadian food safety standards, but it sure was good! When presented with strange foods, Justo says, “don’t ask, just eat.”
Out behind the restaurant, we took pictures of a couple of wild scarlet macaws perched in the trees. The area was littered with trash and people were gathered around roasting fish over a grill in banana leaves. There was another monkey in the tree, the same type as the ones we had held in Shell. Justo talked with some people from the restaurant, and got permission to show our Quichua film on the restaurant’s television. Many people speak Quichuan in the village, so it was a great opportunity. Justo ended up talking to a gentleman at the restaurant who was interested in getting a copy of the film. Afterwards, Justo asked around and found out that he was the director of child development for the whole area. We ended up having a private interview with him in his plush office while he copied the disk. It is amazing how the Lord works.
The avionetta (small plane) was supposed to pick us up at about noon from Adajuno, but it didn’t come until 5 in the evening. That morning, Brother Ricardo had flown deep into the jungle to another village. When he went to leave, the plane wouldn’t start. He said that he has never been able to successfully start the plane by hand-propping before, but this time, he prayed and it started. From there he had flown straight to Adajuno. As such, the plane could not be turned off for fear that is wouldn’t start again. We loaded the plane with the propeller running and took off. I was in the first group to go in, along with Raquel and Mateo. It was about a five minute flight over the jungle hills to a sandy strip in the middle of the trees. Brother Ricardo dropped us off again and took off again right away to go for the next load without turning the plane off.
As the drone of the plane disappeared in the distance, there we were. Three people with our stack of sleeping bags standing on a runway in the middle of nowhere. It is hard to describe the feeling of seeing the throngs of people who had watched us land come trickling across the runway towards us. Nervousness? Excitement? Fear? Raquel said to me, “this is why I didn’t want to be on the first flight… I knew they would all come like this.”
The people were kind though, and greeted us in Spanish. There were lots of little boys, who grabbed our sleeping mats and started fighting with them. Raquel talked to the people and told them about the video and why we were there. One of the boys had two baby monkeys on his head. Thank that Lord that it didn’t take too long for the next flight to come. Justo found out who the president of the village was, and set up the television in the community building that they had. If you think of the village as a native tribe, it was quite modernized. If you think of it as a town, it was very primitive. They had a soccer field area with concrete, and a big shelter building also with a concrete floor. Some of the houses had tin roofs.
We showed the video to a captive audience of about thirty people from the village, many of them children. Afterwards, we sang some Spanish songs, and Justo gave a gospel message. I talked with some of the mothers there, and found out that there were about two hundred people who lived there. Many of the mothers had six or eight children even though they looked fairly young. It is hard to imagine what life would be like in a place like that. Their lives are a lot of simple subsistence. Some of them hunt, or grow gardens, or teach, but that is about it.
After showing the video twice, we had to turn off the generator, and set up for the night. As soon as the generator was turned off, you could hear the sound of insects like a dull roar all around. We had one tent for the girls, and the boys were sleeping on the foam mattresses on the concrete floor of the community building. We ate some bread and crackers and tuna, and went to bed. The tent was very small for four girls, and I had to sleep with my legs bent at the knee the whole night. We had one mattress for the four of us… so we used that for our heads. It was so hot that I didn’t go in my sleeping bag the whole night. I think the boys had it worse though. Without the tent, they were fighting with the bugs and the heat all night. In the sleeping bags it was way too hot, and outside was filled with bugs. You should have seen poor Mateo the next day. He had bug bites all over his arms.
The next morning we had devotions and ate some raisins and crackers and such. We played soccer with some of the village boys, and had another study time where Justo shared the gospel again to the boys who where around. We found a big toad in the communal house, and I made the mistake of picking it up. I was informed afterwards that it was venomous. I was fine, but Mateo touched a poison dart frog a little later in the morning. That one was definitely poisonous. It was bright yellow and red. Mateo´s hand looked a little swollen. No one had soap, but we attempted to wash off the various poisons in a pot of water.
Then we headed down to the river. Hiking through the jungle was another amazing experience. Rubber boots are the only suitable footwear for the jungle trails. In some places the mud was six inches deep, and other places you had to jump from rock to rock to get through the mud. I was with Justo and we were following (or more like trying to keep up with) the boys from the village. They took us on the ¨short route¨ which entailed clambering along a steep and totally slippery clay embankment on the side of the river. Clean clothing was not a priority. We aborted that route part way along to prevent total soaking. On the other trail, there were huge leaf cutter ants walking across the trail in some places, and we saw an absolutely amazing blue butterfly that probably had a wingspan of 6 inches or so. In one part of the trail we had to climb down a clay embankment holding on to a vine. The jungle was a lot like I had imagined it… lots of amazing, strange plants with huge leaves, huge exotic red flowers and vines handing down everywhere. In wet and cool places like British Columbia, there are a lot of ferns and moss, but in the jungle, because of the heat, there wasn´t much moss, but a lot of other un-namable types of plants.
We arrived at the Curaray River after about half an hour. This is the same river that the Nait Saint and Jim Eliot and the other missionaries were killed along. We were just upstream of the area where the Waodani live. The boys led us to an area of the river where the water was deep, and they leapt in. Justo had shorts along, so he took a dip as well. On the other side of the river was a tree overhanging the water. The boys would climb up a vine and walk out on the tree and then dive into the river. Justo did it too. I could not resist swimming in a jungle river. Justo said to me as I stepped into the water, ¨the kids say to watch out for the boas.¨ apparently this river has piranhas and crocodiles and other deadly things in it. Mateo said to me in his broken English that he wasn´t going in because of the ¨wild animals.¨ If they were there, at least I couldn´t see anything through the muddy water. Jeans were not the best swim wear, but how often would I have the opportunity to climb a vine and jump off a log into a murky river deep in the jungles of Ecuador? Well, I didn´t jump off the log. I fell of the log. I wonder what all the village boys thought of this crazy gringo in jeans falling into their river. There were lots of laughs. Majo got a picture of me falling off the log. What a time!
After a few mud and water fights, and the building and destruction of a sand castle, we hiked back to the airstrip. The plane was supposed to pick us up early in the morning because the plan was for us to return all the way to Cuenca that day. Brother Ricardo had been up at three in the morning fixing the plane, but rain had prevented him from coming in the morning. Around noon, the plane finally came. I was allotted for the last flight along with Raquel and Majo. The first flight left with Mateo and Cocoa, then Justo and Felipe boarded for the next flight. And the plane didn´t start. Majo and Raquel and I watched from the edge of the airstrip as Brother Ricardo and Justo laid there hands on the dashboard and prayed over the plane. A minute later, the engine started. Does God answer prayers, or does God answer prayers?
Justo and Felipe took all of the gear except for my backpack. As we waited with the village boys, they thought it was fun to throw ants on us. They would chatter to each other in Quichuan, and laugh and laugh. The plane was supposed to return in 15 minutes. After 20, Majo was getting a bit nervous. Every two minutes, she would ask me the time. Twenty-five minutes. Thirty. Thirty-five minutes. Forty minutes. There we were, three girls in the jungle with no food and only one backpack, waiting for a plane that we had just watched fail to start. It was an interesting feeling.
Thank the Lord that the plane came, after forty minutes. Majo and Raquel and I flew all the way back to Shell, which was about a 20 minute flight. Justo and the rest took the bus back from Adajuno. In Shell we bought moté and chancho (corn and pork) from a street-side vender. Was it ever delicious! The boys and Cocoa arrived at about three in the afternoon, and we caught the next bus out. In Ambato, we at a supper of fried chicken in fifteen minutes before our bus to Cuenca came at 8 pm. That chicken was absolutely amazing. But then again, I think any and all foods would taste amazing after being in the jungle.
On the final seven hour stretch back to Cuenca, we felt like we were basically home. The bus had a tire problem at one point, and they decided to turn on music at 2 am. We arrived in Cuenca just before three in the morning. For some reason they decided to drop us off a few blocks away from the bus station. That is the reason why I would be afraid to take one of these buses by myself… walking around downtown Cuenca at three in the morning doesn´t feel particularly safe. I was glad to be with a big group. Santiago picked up Raquel and Mateo and I, and I crawled into bed at three thirty on Sunday morning.
I am awed by the many answers to prayer that we had on the trip, and inspired by the missionaries in Shell. God is clearly at work. It has given me a different perspective on life to think of what it would be like to live in a village like the one we visited. And I am incredibly thankful for simple things like dry feet.
