Cultural Experiences

Some random cultural experiences from the jungles of Peru:

A couple of weeks ago we decided to grow plantains at the farm. It is not to difficult but it requires starts. For those of you who, like myself,  know nothing about plantains, they don’t grow from seeds but rather the starts from an existing plant. The majority of healthy plantain plants have numerous starts growing around them so getting started is not difficult. All we had to do was find someone who had plantains, ask for starts, and then dig them up. They look like this:

We had been out to a community to church and began asking around and soon we found someone who had plenty of starts and had a field only five minutes from the road. I told him I would be there the next morning and he said he would be there too. So early the next morning the guys that work at the farm and I loaded up and headed for the village. When arrived he was not home. We explained the situation to his wife and asked where their plantain field was located. She responded “por el central.” Which means in the center, away from the road or deep in the jungle and possibly an hour our two walk from the road.

I feel then need at this point to explain the time anomaly of jungle life. For the native people time means little and distance means absolutely nothing. They don’t have a concept of miles or kilometers so when I ask them how far away something is they always respond in time. For example, when I ask how far away is your village they respond 6 hours in boat. But the problem is no one owns a watch so no one actually know how long it takes to go anywhere. And since they don’t own a watch they don’t really understand how long is a minute or hour. As a result, if they say it is an hour walk that could mean 1 hour or 3 hours, no one knows, and if you ask someone else they may say 2 hours. It also depends a lot on who is walking because somehow the barefoot short legged natives walk twice as fast as me.

So when the guy told us it is a five minute walk it could actually be an hour. Who knows? We gave up on him and headed to another person’s house that we know has plantains. We had to cross a river to get there. I had crossed the river in this spot before and there has always been a dug out canoe. But this time the canoe was MIA which only leaves one other option. Praise God the river was low and only chest deep so we took off our pants and walked across the river holding our stuff above our head to keep it dry. Finally, we reached the house and of course he was not home. But his wife told us where the field was and to help ourselves to the starts. The problem was her directions to the field where a little shaky. She said, “go to so-and-so’s house then take a left then a right.” I had no idea what this meant but one of the guys with us is Shawi and knew where so-and-so lived so off we went. The guy leading the way went first and for some reason decided to walk twice as fast as everyone else(because he's Shawi). Soon we came to a fork in the path and our leader was no where in sight. So we do what everyone does in the jungle when they are looking for someone, yell real loud. But he did not respond, so we yelled and whistled and yelled some more and finally we just had to decide which path we thought looked the best to walk down and at that point I was sure we were lost. But we walked for a little bit and came to a plantain field and there was our leader standing there. I asked if he heard us and he didn’t respond, but just stared at the ground. Why? I don’t know. I can’t figure the culture out sometimes. Many times when I ask a question to a Shawi they just look at the ground and ignore me. That means either they don’t know the answer or they don’t understand my Spanish or they don’t want to answer. Either way it is frustrating.

We spent the rest of the morning digging and cleaning the starts and hauling them back across the river half naked to the furgon. The worst part was that we needed 300 starts and we only had 166.

We really haven’t landed on a home church yet. We have lived here a little over three months and in that time we have visited 6 churches. It is hard to have a home church because we are always getting invited to visit other churches. It is part of our life here. And it is not just simply visiting, every time we visit a church we are asked to stand up and say something or to preach.  The churches in town are more formal and will often ask in advance for me to preach (although sometimes only ten minutes in advance), but when we visit a church in the native communities it is just assumed that I will preach because I am the visitor. Many of the churches here in town have very loud music and most have service at 8:00pm Saturday or Sunday night that often go till 10:00pm. It is so hard to go to a church that blows your ear drums and doesn’t start till after our kid’s bedtimes. So we’ve been looking for a good church and the other night decided to visit a new church that one of our friends, who works here at the Hogar, attends. It starts at 7:30pm so we already liked it before we walked in the door. It was a quiet little church on a dirt road with about 30 people. When we go to church we stick out a little bit. First we are tall and very white, second we have blue eyed blond haired children, and third we always have a few extra people with us. Typically, we bring some extra moms, kids, or babies from the Hogar. So when we walked into church they had to scramble to find enough seats as we took up about a third of the church. Right away they asked me to stand up and introduce everyone and explain why we were there. They asked us some questions but where very friendly and accommodating.  We sang some beautiful hymns with an acoustic guitar and hymnals and we really enjoyed some quiet intimate worship time. Then the preacher gave a short and precise message from the word of God. We sang a closing hymn and finished at 8:30pm. Even with the visiting afterword we were still home by 9:00pm. The kids enjoyed it as well. We may have found a home church.

Last weekend I had big plans, but they fell through. There are some communities I have been trying to visit on the Cachiyacu River. Normally it is 6-8 hours in boat to reach them but there is a new road being constructed to the capital of the district Balsapuerto. From Balsapuerto it is half an hour walk to one community and hour and a half to the other (that is jungle time so who really knows?) As a result, I decided it would be easier to go by road and save 4 hours of travel time. The road was supposed to open the 15^th of November so I planned a trip last weekend with Davidcen who works at the farm. We planned on meeting with some of the believers that have cacao to check on their progress and attend church Sunday morning to encourage the believers. When we got to the new road, which is two hours from Yurimaguas, we were met with a large wooden gate across the road. We asked the workers and they told us that the road is finished but has not opened because they are waiting for the regional governor to come, inspect, and inaugurate the road. That was supposed to happen last week but the governor has not made it out yet.

Changing our plans, we decided to meet with some of the guys in that area that have cacao. We stopped at the community of Nueva Yurimaguas to talk with Pastor Orlando. He has about 2 ½ acres of cacao and it is producing well accept some of the pods have spots on them. I said, “can we look at it and where is your field?” “Oh, about half an hour walk,” he said. You know what that means, an hour later we arrived at his field. 

We sat in the field and discussed his cacao while eating the pulp from the cacao pods (photo above) and then prayed together. When we returned to his house his wife had prepared lunch. She had killed a chicken to make chicken soup. Killing the chicken for us is like killing the fatted calf. And one of the men with us, Pastor Roque, made the most of it. I watched him eat two bowls of soup, 6 boiled plantains, and a chicken leg, bone and all! It was a first for me watching someone eat bones but he is good humored so when I razzed him about it he told me the bones are the best part of the chicken and that I am missing out. It still wasn’t enough for me to try it.

The next day we headed back out to the same area for church. We visited the church in Segundo Jerusalem. It is a small community of believers that still don’t have their own church building but they are in the process of building one. They will spend four of five days cutting and milling all the wood with a chainsaw to build the structure. Then they will install a metal roof for protection from the rain and sun. It doesn't sound like much but it will be one of the nicest buildings in the community. We wanted to visit them and encourage them in their building project. They of course asked me to say a few words and to pray for the service. They also asked me to sing which I did not understand completely so I agreed to it until Jennifer stepped in and explained to me what was happening, so then I politely declined. It was a great time in the community as they were so open and friendly with us. We stayed and visited after church while drinking chicha with the believers and asking each other questions. They even taught us some Shawi words. I think they really enjoyed laughing at us as we tried to pronounce them correctly.

They were having a soccer game in the afternoon and invited us to stay and play but we declined as we had to go back to Nueva Yurimaguas and find Pastor Roque and take him back with us to Yurimaguas. When we got to Nueva Yurimaguas they somehow knew that there was a soccer game in Segundo Jerusalem and next thing I know we had 16 people in the back of the furgon headed back Segundo Jerusalem. That beats our previous record of 12 people. 

By the time we finally had the furgon headed back to Yurimaguas we had 11 people and a pile of plantains, yuca, corn, and pineapple that were donated by the believers for the Hogar. What a great day it was of worship and fellowship with our Shawi brothers and sisters!