Writings By Phil

Thoughts On This And That

I’ve Been Working On The Railroad

April 11, 1978

When Matt Castagna returned from the survey down Puerto Greta way, he brought back some lumber. Today, we built our beds using some of the boards for the sleeping platforms and jungle materials for the frame and legs. I built mine higher than normal bed height. It would be a real change for me to see how other people feel when they sit on a bed. At six foot, five inches, it seems that every bed I’ve ever sat on or slept on was made for short people. Okay, for normal people. My problem was I was not brought up short! Nor normal, for that matter!

We ate some of the wild pig for our noon meal. I can not say I really enjoyed eating it, but perhaps that was because thoughts of gutting it were still too fresh in my mind. Sharon Short thought their meat had a slight musk flavor to it, so maybe it was not all in my head.

The Yuqui kids were cute no matter how dirty they became. Cristina, the little Yuqui girl, was very quiet and her big brown eyes often seemed to stare in wonderment at everything new around her. This morning she had one of the baby pig heads in her hand and was pulling off bits of meat and eating them. She would have made a good picture with the long dress, pig’s head, and three bananas under her arm.

April 12

I spent the morning cutting weeds with Paul Short. We cleared the old railroad camp for starters. A group of six Bolivians came in a few days ago to do logging surveys. They arrived by airplane (not our mission plane) and spent two nights. If another group were to come in, we would now direct them to setup camp where we cleared the area along the railroad line. We wanted to put some distance between us and the Bolivians. Hopefully, that way, if the Indians returned to our area, they would not associate the loggers with us.

I called the railroad camp old because it had not been used for five years. The rails crossed the Rio Yapacani, the big river into which our little river emptied, but advanced no more. Only a railroad right-a-way, an arrow-straight swath, had been cut through the jungle heading towards the Brazilian boarder, still hundreds of miles away. Construction on the railroad ceased because the band of Indians we were hoping to befriend where in the way. By one account, the wild Yuqui had ambushed and shot over 200 rail workers. It was a sure thing, also, that a few of the illusive nomads had lost their lives in the conflict.

We spent the rest of the morning clearing around banana trees. All in all, I got stung by wasps twice, bit on the elbow by a Palo Santo ant, and got some weed juice in my eye that had me crying for about two hours and made me sneeze every 15 seconds for most of that time. Matt gave me some Visine from his First-Aid kit. It got the red out and shortly after, the burning in my eye subsided, and my sneezing stopped.

I got a kick out of Tibaquite, today. Although he was afraid of water, he was out there hanging on to the dock with one hand and trying to splash and duck Paul Short with the other. Sometimes he would jump off the dock into the river, but did it backwards so he would always be headed back towards the dock and safety.

Later, he put on his “clean” pants and came over to our house. They like to sit around and watch every move us “civilized folks” make! I am sure they thought we were crazy! We had our tape deck playing a cassette by the Children of the Day which he seemed to really enjoy even though he could not understand a word of what was being sung. We told him they were singing about the love of Jesus. I found it amusing when he began to imitate the singer’s ooing and aahing when they ooed or aahed in the song. Sometimes he sang the words in near perfect English after them. Tibaquite was a good imitator of both animal sounds and a language he didn’t understand!

Daniel loved to swim. He was down at our swimming hole every time one of us went there. He should have been a fish! I’m sure by now, he must be the the cleanest Yuqui in all of Bolivia!

I learned today that Tibaquite was not Monica’s first husband. Her first one was shot and killed by some Bolivians a few years back. Just killing him was not enough for them so they hung his naked body in a tree. I did not know any more details.

Similar things would continue to happen to the illusive group we were trying to reach unless we could befriend them. Yes, our main goal was to teach them God’s Word as revealed in the Bible, but we wanted to protect them from the guns of loggers, oilmen, and railroad workers, too. All of these were making inroads into the Indian’s traditional territory. Once roads were built into the rainforest, colonist, or peasant famers would follow becoming a permanent threat to the jungle nomads.

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.

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Phil Burns

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