Jungle Journal

Wednesday

January 19, 2011

Late afternoon, just after climbing the hill from the river

Yoselin spent most of the afternoon crushing lemon halves against her head. Her hair was laden in pulp and I wondered why. Quilmer said it was for relief. Citric acid kills lice. So now I know.

Thursday

The rain did not stop all day. I did not want to leave the mosquito net because of tiny, stinging gnats, so Jujee, Abby, Nano and Chloe joined me. We read our books together, worked through math, memorized facts and listened to the rain. When I saw Alejo chopping firewood in the fury of the downpour, I assumed they must’ve run out. They needed to eat.

Minutes later, he and little Christian were dumping armfuls of slender logs on our platform. He was cutting wood for us.

I remembered how Jeremy said to chip away the top layers because the inside would not be wet, and with a little diesel fuel and trash wrappers we could count on a strong fire in little time. We did, but the in little time part did not work out as planned.

Starting fires in rain that slants sideways is nearly maddening.

Friday

The rain that wouldn’t stop, didn’t stop again through the night. When we woke this morning, the river had risen some 20 feet and the hill above the river that winds to our hut was under brown water. Everyone was saying these kind of floods happen every 5 years or so. Hyoni’s canoe is gone, but all the motors are safe.

Saturday

Abby Gracie brought me the oil for frying platano. One of us didn’t screw the lid on tight. It was not worth trying to expose the culprit. It might’ve been me. Nevertheless, Black ants were floating in that oil-- the precious oil! I figured we’d fry the ants with the plantain and no one seemed to mind.

Sunday

We made a list together, all of us huddled in the crudely painted wood church at Yarina Isla. 18 passages that pertained to God’ promises to us: I have overcome the world. Be of good cheer. I will never leave you. Michael scratched them in chalk and we all copied them into our notebooks.

The men carry hand-woven bags to these Sunday services. Women carry the children. Many people have torn-up, weather-beaten Bibles, chewed pens and dirt-covered notebooks they’ve bought downriver. We sit on wooden slabs in the dirt. Men in the front-- women and children in the back. Sickly dogs and sometimes chickens come and go. We sing heartily. There was a guitar today, but it didn’t seem to be playing the same songs we were singing. And the drum. Someone generally plays a drum. Sometimes people are barefooted, sometimes not. Yesterday Nellie, in her sixties, wore two different flip-flops. They might’ve belonged to the same foot.

We were quite satisfied to have compiled such a list of promises and nearly everyone was copiously note-taking. It made my heart happy. I made sure to take copious notes, too. I wanted to be just like them.

Tuesday

Excessive rain makes it nearly impossible to dry clothes. We wash them in the rushing mud, then hang them on a line if the sky is not threatening rain. Within minutes, however, a sudden, unsuspected downpour is feeding the earth and dancing on the trees, and I see Manuela run for her clotheslines. This happens over and over… I am in language study, sitting on one of those hard benches with Ema, and it makes little sense to stop.

Michael and Julia and Abigail race for the clothes and hang them along the fence around our platform. There is also zig-zagged rope from the our wooden ceiling constructed under the Yarina thatches, so when my talking watch says Son las tres en punto , (It’s 3 o’clock) I go to the hut to see what has become of wet laundry. Re-hung along the half-walls, zig-zagged lines are drooping under the weight. 3 days and the same clothes are still wet. Chloe is wearing Abigail’s stretchy pants again because every one of hers is wet on the line.

After class today, Julia and Abigail boasted of their newly-constructed pulley system which hoists clothes to and from the roof to dry, with seemingly little effort. They were elated. I was distracted. I find that I am often distracted.

Thursday

I can always hear Alejo and Ema singing and worshipping long before sunrise. Their voices are always first to arouse my consciousness. I wake while it is somewhat dark to read and study. After my heart and mind are full, I leave the mosquito net to start the fire. Some mornings it is easy and takes little effort. Others, when the wood is wet and my ambition sags like those weighted clotheslines, a simple fire is a massive undertaking. So much work for oatmeal.

After oatmeal, the girls and I fill three large round bowls with water and wash the dishes. Nathanael sweeps the floor and feeds animals. Left overs are thrown out to woeful dogs and Mother hens with their trailing, devoted broods. Osito, the monkey, can never wait for leftovers, and always shares a bit of whatever Julia’s eating. She feeds and cleans up after and cares for Osito, and he sleeps with her every night, unfailingly entrusting himself to her.

The first four hours of the day Michael spends in language study. During this time, the rest of us do school, too. Sometimes under the mosquito net, Sometimes sprawled out across the floor. Every book and pencil and notebook is lugged back and forth in a water-tight bin between Yarina Isla and Pucallpa.

The thought of studying along the riverbank was always so intriguing to me, but we’ve found it thoroughly impossible to accomplish anything. We must be in our family quarters with the door shut. Even then, little eyes poke through the slats, and toes squish under the door. Neighborhood children sit on our platform waiting…

Que vas a cocinar, hermana? (What are you going to make, sister?)

Ya has terminado tus clases? (Have you finished your classes already? )

They wait and wait and wait…

When we’ve finished, it’s time to start another fire and prepare lunch. We might peel and boil yucca or make soup. Nathanael and Chloe gather cilantro and peppers along the shed. Julia finishes copying a passage from one of the books she’s reading. Abigail details aloud every transaction of whichever story she’s reading…

We eat. I leave for my four hours of language study across the dirt path…

When the talking watch says Son las cuatro en punto (it’s 4 o’clock), I close my notebook and turn the recorder off. We gather our buckets, soap bars and laundry and head to the river. The children are racing and tripping and squealing… we wash clothes and bathe. Michael jumps from the bank into the cold mud. Abigail follows him with Osito on her shoulder and the puppy swimming at her side. Nathanael swims to catch up, and Chloe calls from the hillside, “Wait for me! Wait for me! Daddy, hold me! “

When the sun slips behind towering trees, Michael hauls three 5 gallon buckets of water on his shoulders, from the river or the brook. Those are poured into a big trash can and serve as our water supply for the next day. Some is poured into our water filter, while the rest is used to wash dishes and hands and cook.

As evening falls, the fire is warm and we gather around with other families to share fish caught in the net, rodents from the trap and details from the day’s events. I bring rice. We eat until our bellies are full and moan about the deliciousness of it all, lounging in the hammocks. The children entertain us with their stories and antics and we laugh until our eyelids are heavy when someone says Amayeve Ashéninka for We’re going to sleep. Everything stops… and the day has ended.

It all sounds so easy.

It is not.

These first six months living in Peru, I’ve often found it difficult to say what I’m thinking, partly because I don’t know what I’m thinking much of the time. Learning to live differently than I lived before has been more demanding than I could’ve predicted, but I’ve a sneaking suspicion I might be creeping out of this dense fog of complete shock…starting to form ideas, measure observations...

The stark nature of my person-ness, who I am and what I believe, has been violently stripped from me without my even knowing… Like a mummy wrapped in 50 pounds of cloth, it is as if someone found where that strip of cloth ended and has been pulling on it for 6 months. I’ve been

spinning

spinning,

spinning

… at so fast a speed, I thought I was standing still—hadn’t moved. And now—everything has stopped. In my mind I am standing completely still and it is really so!

The sweetness of following God into a dense, viewless fog is less-frightening than I had thought. Being loved by Him, and led by Him, talking with Him, and listening to Him makes the unseen an adventure. It makes not knowing and not understanding alright. I don’t have to know. I don’t have to understand, or be good at either of them. I’m just following.

Where there is nothing to prove, there is nothing to lose. All the world is before me, and yet does not depend on me. The world does not revolve around me after all… I think Michael will be especially glad to hear this.