Writings By Phil

Thoughts On This And That

Sloshing Through Green Hell

The road is a dirt ribbon stretching across an endless expanse of tangled vines and tall trees–Bolivia’s green Hell. Today, I almost believe it. We walk, three strong, and in near silence. The mid-morning sun beats down, unmercifully, till I feel my body begin to melt. My eyes burn with sweat. It runs down my nose, forms a droplet, then falls to the ground. Another takes its place, then another. I wipe a sleeve across my face and trudge on.

Our destination is the Pension (an eating place for loggers), now deserted, and nine and a half kilometers down the road. It is not far, but for me, with unproved pack, and not yet acclimated to the heat, it seems like forever.

At times the road is covered with water. The tire ruts are deep, and our feet slide into the holes. We stagger under the weight of our packs, searching blindly for high ground in the muddy water. Sinking deeper, the mud gives powerful sucks on our feet, as if trying to pull our boots off.

Parrots fly overhead, their cries to me call “Weakling, Weakling!” We push on till dry road is reached, and vines lock arms across our path hiding the nakedness of the brown earth. Water spurts from holes in my boots.

The pack I carry groans, singing in close harmony with my body-I want to give up, to rest. We stop in a shady place and gulp water from a puddle. Such stops become more and more frequent as the morning wears on. With weary stride we start again.

Our company excites a group of monkeys. They scamper away through the treetops, and to me their chatter sounds like laughter- laughing at me.

Countless snail shells litter the ground, their inhabitants long dead or eaten. I wonder, “Is that what happens to those who give up?”

We walk on, and then, under the trees is a dream come true-the Pension. It is a humble place with thatched roof. It is infested with mosquitoes, and spiders wait for the un-suspecting on webs draped over rafter and pole. Its beautiful! We rejoice. I am happy inside; the Lord has given strength, and now our packs lie on the makeshift table. I feel like I’m floating! Is it worth it? Yes, there are Indians here who have never heard the Gospel, that is why we came.

True, at times, the physical burden is great, but soon all our gear will be moved out here. Then, Lord willing, we will set out gifts and wait and pray for a friendly contact.

We return to camp. Under the shade of the thatched roof I lay in a hammock and swat mosquitoes. Nearby on a mound of dirt, a movement catches my eye, and I watch with fascination as a small round beetle, in laymen’s terms called a manure bug, rolls a ball of chicken mud four times its size up the slope. The weeds give him difficulty, and his prize topples over his head and rolls back down. He retrieves it and starts back up. Time and again it rolls away, and each time he retrieves it the necessary times to take it home.

A crude illustration perhaps, but it spoke to my heart. I do not like the heat, the mosquitoes, the chiggers, the mud, and all that makes life miserable in the jungle, but God has given me a ball to carry, a ball I may fumble, but I’m always to pick it up and head for “home.”

End

More Photos And Commentary

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The Pension was a crude thatched shelter built by the loggers. In the dry season it was a place where men could order a meal, a bottle of beer or soft drink. When the rainy season started, it, along with all this area of jungle, was deserted and it became our home away from base for two months as we tried to make a friendly contact with the nomadic and possibly hostile Mbia people group. They called themselves Mbia meaning “the people.” We called them the Yuqui.
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The loggers made bridges by filling the riverbed with trees. Then they pushed dirt onto the logs and brush making a road over which they could drive their trucks, tractors, and skidders to the other side. The water flowed through the trees leaving the dirt packed on top. It worked good until the rainy season started and there was again too much water in the river. Then all the dirt washed away.
Such crossings cost us hours of labor and buckets of sweat, as we cleared, shoveled and restacked brush making a way for our swamp tractor to cross.
Our tractor could float, but if the riverbank was too steep, we would clear a path across the logger’s bridge, or use the lesser incline of the bridge to get down to the water so we could float across.
Our swamp tractor is in the road clear at the top of the picture. Forty-three years have passed since I took this picture, and I have just recently digitized them from Kodachrome slides, but I think that is Denny Decicio on the left and Matt Castagna and Wally Pouncy on the right.
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Alan Foster and Denny Decicio washing their clothes in the swamp.
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Matt Castagna and myself putting our wash through the wringer!
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With a discarded board left by the loggers, and some tree stumps washing clothes became easier. At least we didn’t have to bend over as much!
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We brought in flour, sugar, salt for cooking, just the basics. Our meat was supplied from the jungle, the animals shot while we were out checking gift trails to see if the nomadic Yuqui were in our area, or by those who made short hunting trips into the jungle around camp. We had no refrigeration, so meat was preserved with salt and by keeping it smoking on a rack with a slow fire underneath. Above, Wally Pouncy salts his latest kill, laid out on the smoking rack.
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With the flour, the cook (we all had our week), could make pancakes and skillet bread, but nothing fancy. One day, Denny Decicio found an old barrel in the weeds abandoned by the loggers. He made a crude oven out of it and began baking cinnamon rolls that would rival Cinnabon in the mall. Okay, maybe by that time we had been in the wilderness too long, but they were good!!!
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Paul Short proves to all of us that Tarzan really could swing through the jungle on a vine!
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We would check the gift trail every two or three days. We prayed the Yuqui would come back to the area and take our gifts. When they didn’t, we made a survey farther away to look for them, but didn’t find hide nor hair of them. By the time our two months was up, we decided that because of all the logging activity that year, the Indians had gone somewhere else to spend the rainy season. Camp life didn’t hold a lot of options for us. We read a lot. Some of us kept a journal of our life on the Yuqui contact.
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Alan Foster caught this tortoise out in the jungle. He hauled it back to camp to have on hand to bestow as a gift should the Yuqui come out of the jungle.

This story was from the category Tales From Green Hell. If you would like to read more of my experiences in the jungles of Bolivia, please click on that link below.

More Writings by Phil

Phil Burns

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