Taking a team of Americans through the jungle into… uh, deeper jungle. Call me Miss Important. Helping my daddy and another missionary take this group into a faraway rainforest village. Of course, I hadn’t actually been there yet, like, in person, but I’d been told all about it, and besides– how different from all the other villages could this one be?
“It’s two hours on the bus, half an hour on the canoe,” I recited when asked about how long it would take to get there. I ended with a big smile and barely refrained from a curtsy. I was just that excited.
After answering the one hundredth question about Ecuador (okay, that might be a slight exaggeration), we stopped in the middle of nowhere.
We were ordered to pull our mud boots on and hop in the canoe. The mud boots, backpacks, and mosquitos weren’t the part that bothered me. It was the canoe. Because it wasn’t there.
And we waited for it. For-e-ver. I was starting to get worried there weren’t any around.
But finally, finally, half of the team got in one and headed down the river. I wasn’t in the first group. And the thought that the canoe actually might not come back wasn’t terribly reassuring.
Once we all got in the canoe (it did return for us), there was the normal, totally expected freak-out from just about everybody.
“We are actually riding in this thing?!”
“Where are the life jackets?!”
“Wait– I can’t swim!”
It was awhile down river when we heard: “AAAAHHHHH! HEY, YOU GUYS!!”
And then we saw them. The other half of the team. Stranded on the side of the river, screaming at us.
“Why are you… here?” Dad asked. “This isn’t our village!”
“We know, but this is where he dropped us off.” they said. “So we told him to go get you.”
We rode on, fervently praying that they wouldn’t become an anaconda snack.
Once we got to the village, we unloaded and started working.
“Rocks.” we were told by the pastor’s wife. “Lots and lots of rocks and sand. We mix it with the cement.”
I translated. “She wants us to go get some rocks.”
“Rocks?”
“Yeah. Oh, and sand.”
“From… where?”
She took us back to the river and an old canoe. After Mom hugged me good bye like she’d never see me again, Dad warned me not to drown. (Thanks, Dad.) We jumped in the rickety canoe and rode off with four Kichwas.
“Just to the other side of the river, right?” they asked me.
“Uh… that’s what she told me.” It wasn’t a very wide river, but it was deep. We got out there, and turned into another tributary. That… wasn’t expected. But I was determined to keep my cool. And I was certainly not going to announce my biggest fear: that we were getting kidnapped.
“We’re not getting kidnapped,” I told myself. I got a couple awkward stares. Oh. I must have said it out loud. Whoopsie. Then we stopped at a sand bar and were ordered off our vessel.
“Start filling the canoe.” they commanded, handing us shovels and buckets.
We filled up the eight or nine buckets, and started back to the boat. Where our guides were dumping the buckets into the bottom of the canoe.
“Oh.” somebody said. “They meant… actually fill the canoe.”
When the canoe was filled to their approval, we all hopped back in. Well, minus four of us. The canoe started sinking with all the weight and no, we could not take all the sand back out, according to the Ecuadorians. We promised to return for our friends once we got the rocks and sand back to the village.
I didn’t want to do any more physical labor after digging up sand bars. And I would not after carrying a 20-pound buckets full of wet sand and rocks about a mile. Twice. I sank down on a wooden bench in a tiny house with no walls except for the bedroom. The room was filled with about 10 children, screaming and jumping off of stacks of the teams supplies. Ah-ha! I thought. I’ll watch the team’s stuff. I’ll baby-sit. I’ll supervise. And I won’t fall asleep…
I woke up to Elijah tapping my forehead and yelling that Momma wanted me to watch him. (I later found out the he and his new buddies had been all the way to the river and back.)
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I moaned. “I can’t believe this!” There was drool on the bench. I wiped it off my face. “This never happened,” I told Elijah and the other kids. “Are you hearing me?” I snapped. I looked up as a few of the team members walked in. I just knew I had a sign hanging around my neck that said, Caution: Irresponsible Missionary Kid.
How much worse could it get?
“I’m hungry,” I heard myself complain.
Oh, it could get worse.
Me, Miss Missionary.