Monkey Meat - You can have the hand!

Monkey Meat... recognize the portion?

Hello from Ecuador! Here are a few details (from Jay) of our life in the land of eternal rain.

I flew to a small village called Ashuar of the Ashuar tribe last week. Myself, an Ecuadorian family practice resident, and Jonas, our guide, spent 2 days doing physicals on Compassion children and treating the rest of the tribe.


Jonas is 36 years old and grew up in the jungle as a Compassion Child himself. Compassion paid for his education and now he is a full-time missionary with them serving the next generation of sponsored children. What a beautiful legacy.


Most of you know I’m a hooked on fishing. I took my rod and reel to the village knowing a river would be nearby. Little did I know the village would take us barbasco fishing.


About 20 members of the tribe, two Ecuadorians and one gringo (that’s me) loaded into three very over-crowded wooden canoes and headed upstream on the Cotopaxi River.

Once we arrived at the fishing spot, I started casting with my ultra-light fishing rod. Everyone stopped and stared at me as if to say, “What is the crazy white man doing?!” The children (and adults) were fascinated with the old Mepps spinner and plastic worms. One older fisherman helped himself to some of my fishhooks. I thought it was a fair trade since he was driving the canoe.

After my entertainment value wore off, the people started smashing the barbasco roots with rocks while others damned the river with rocks. (see below) They use these naturally toxic roots to poison the fish. (Check out the videos under this subject on Youtube. Very interesting.)

The people put the crushed roots into woven baskets and then swished them in the water. A white cloud floats downstream and the poisoned fish sink to the bottom. You look for their white upturned bellies among the black rocks. We picked up 200 + fish. Most were the length of my finger but that’s still meat to them. That night we ate them cooked in banana leaves.

The second course at supper was monkey soup. The skin was really rubbery and the meat a little chewy, but good flavor. It is amazing what a little seasoning can do.

 

 I could identify my piece of monkey as an upper thigh. The bowl of soup next to me contained a complete forearm and hand. I could not have eaten that one.

 The head man of the village prayed a beautiful prayer of thanks to our heavenly Father in the name of our Lord Jesus. What an interesting contrast between their culture and ours. Maybe we will all be sitting around the banquet table in heaven and someone will pass a platter of monkey. You can have the hand.

 Some of the more interesting cases at the hospital of late include a 40 year-old-lady with a klebsiella liver abscess in septic shock, a 9-year-old with an epidural brain bleed (diagnosed without a CAT scan) drained by hand drill, and a lady with Tuberculosis abscesses all over her body. Never a dull moment.

Dane and a neighbor kid built a tree house 50-feet high in a huge tree 200 yards behind our house. It is still on the compound but looks like you are in the middle of the jungle. They even rigged up safety harnesses since it is so high. Scares me to death, but the platform was half done before I got back from the jungle. Hearing our concerns, Dane has grounded himself. He says he wants to live to see Nebraska prairies again.

Lynnelle and I spent a day shuffling from office to office in Puyo, the provincial capital, working on obtaining drivers licenses. About 2 more trips and we hope to be able to drive.

The weather has been so dreary here in Shell. Rain fell for 7 hours straight one day last week. We have had 3 days out of 15 with no rain and a few hours of sunshine here and there. Today, however, was a beautiful day. It's Saturday and we went fishing with another family and a few extra boys on a fast flowing mountain river with rocks up to the size of small cars. Wasn’t barbasco style, just plane ol’ hook and line. No luck but the scenery was great.

 Casting for the Great Fisherman,

Jay for the Allisons

School Days: Giving Thanks and Dunkin' Donuts

Welcome to Nate Saint Memorial School.

This is Jayson's preschool classroom where I help Sharon La Bouef teach.

The school's Thanksgiving party included bobbing for apples for Dane (above) and Luke (below).

Dane and Luke and friends enjoying their wet snacks.

The next round... dangling donuts. 

Guess who won?!! The chocolately grin gives him away.

Angelyn's class with her teacher Ms. Kendrick at the Thanksgiving program. They sang a song and shared their history projects.

A very serious Angelyn. She later told me that she knew if she stared over the crowd she would not get distracted and forget her lines.

The older grades performed skits which they wrote to portray thankfulness. Then they sang. Dane is in the back row toward the left. Luke is at the lower right.

The kids beat the parents to the coffee and cookies afterward.

Jungle Caravan Receives Squealing Gift

School's out but clinic is in at a village outside Macas, Ecuador. This fall a resident of the village came to Hospital Vozandes del Oriente for surgery after his heel was chopped off. After his hospital stay he asked the hospital staff to come to his village. Last Saturday Jay and 14 other staff members traveled three hours by car to reach this community.  In the picture above, the hospital's pastor shares about Christ's gift of forgiveness and love for the world.

Monetary gifts from Sweden and the U.S. purchased Christmas gifts for the families... red bags filled with flour, sugar, cooking oil, rice and soap.

Midwife Gabrielle Egberth, from Sweden, sets up a pharmacy table while Pastor Jose and surgeon Mattias Egberth visit before seeing patients.

Jay visiting with patients in his "exam room"

This little girl can hear but she doesn't talk. What a precious Child of God. She has an appointment now to see the speech therapist at the hospital.

Gabriella, an Ecuadorian doctor in training at the hospital, visits with a patient. After she graduates from residency she plans to serve with a ministry in Pakistan.

Villagers visit during clinic -- notice the red gift bags.

This grandmother does not speak Spanish. Raised in the jungle before today's roads were built, she only speaks her tribe's language; others interpreted for her.

The village thanked the medical team by giving them a pig. The owners lived in this house.

The village banos (bathroom) is in the light green building in the background.

This is a sugar-cane grinder. Sugar cane is fed into a hole in the red box and juice comes out the other side. The grinder is powered by people pushing the long boards around in a circle. The plants behind the shed are sugar cane.

And this is the squeeling gift... a pig...

No loading shute... so a wheel barrow did the job of moving it to the truck that brought the medical team.

On the way home .... caution: "Reduce Velocity Now... Falling Rocks". Rocks didn't fall but a mudslide blocked the road.

A public bus is stuck after it slipped sideways on the muddy pavement and embedded the tail end into the mud slide. 

The view from the vehicle Jay was riding in. The village also gave the team this bunch of bananas which is riding on the roof.

The kids and I knew Jay's team had arrived home because we heard the pig squealing a block away. The hospital Christmas party is this Friday. Guess what's on the menu?!! : )

 

Jungle Angels

 

Welcome to Jayson's preschool class. I helped them make these angels from palm fronds. This craft tied into our Christmas lesson on the angel appearing to Mary. The inspiration came from Luke who, seeing the pattern in the leaves, suggested they would make good angels. 

The angels standing on the chairs are Leah, Violet, Jayson, Isaac and Jake. To give you a cross section of life here: Leah's mom is the school principal and her father oversees construction at the orphanage. Violet's father is a family practice doc like Jay. Her mom does a weekly Bible study with kids from town. Isaac's father is an anesthetist and his mom is a pediatrician. Jake's grandmother is the preschool teacher and his grandpa is a jungle pilot for ministry projects.

The preschool is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. I help the teacher, Sharon LaBouef, by teaching part of the lessons, reading to the kids, helping with projects that challenge little hands and whatever else needs to be done.  

Here's my palm branch inspiration - a silhouette of the nativity. This palm frond covered our little outdoor table. I looked at images on the computer, drew a rough sketch on each branch and then cut them out. We use this outdoor space as an extra room daily.

Jay helped me hang the set on the wall of our home under the carport roof.

Hope your holidays are filled with the reason for the season!
Lynnelle

Amazon Adventure: Kapirna

Welcome to Kapirna. 20+ families, about 120 people, near the Ecuador/Peru border. The river bends wide to narrow on the right side of the picture. The thin tan strip that runs horizontally across the picture is the air strip. The white dots are huts. The village is one hour away by plane, eight hours by canoe and 3-4 days walk on foot.
 
Jay, Compassion International missionary Jonas Lopez, and medical resident Evelyn Herrera flew from Shell to provide physicals for the Compassion International children there.

Villagers did most of the manual labor to build the airstrip. First the trees were cleared by ax then the roots and rocks were removed with pic axes. It took three years to build. Each family is responsible for keeping their part of the strip clear of vegetation. The common lawn mower is a machete. Jay said at night several people would be hacking away. When they finished they just stabbed the machete into the grown to leave it for tomorrow. An odd sight - machete handles standing here and there along the edges of the runway.

Arriving planes are big news! No TV or commercial radio here. In fact there isn't any electricity except for a small gas generator for a few lights at night. Jay says it's incredibly quiet except at night. Subsequently the children have incredible hearing. They will be waiting on the runway for an incoming plane five minutes before Jay can hear it coming. At night the calls and cries of jungle creatures are LOUD. Jay used ear plugs.

Jonas, on the left, grew up in a village much like this one. He was a Compassion child sponsored by a family from America. Now he works for Compassion International visiting villages each week to monitor the children to be sure they experience God's love through adequate nutrition, health care, an education and an opportunity to learn about Jesus and the freedom from sin's consequences that He bought by dying on the cross. As the Compassion mantra says "Freeing children from poverty in Jesus' name." 

Evelyn, on the right, is one of the medical residents Jay teaches here. She has been in Quito for years so the jungle was intimidating to her but she did just fine. As with medical schools in the states, residents are required to spend part of their training in rural areas. Shell, where we live, is considered rural. The jungle is several steps beyond rural.

Surveying the village's version of a community center... it would be the clinic for the next two days. The government helped build this structure which, the sign states, cost $4000. Signs like the one below are abundant in Ecuador. The government keeps these up for years reminding residents of the assistance provided.

This building also serves as the village school. The teacher stands on this raised platform. Note the school work on the far wall.

Jay by a desk. There were a couple of these, a table and many benches.

A village leader blows a tribal horn, made of clay, to call the people to the clinic.

Jay gives it a try.

Clinic starts with Jonas, on the left, checking in the kids and Evelyn, on the right, and Jay, below, doing the physicals.

Jay said the people were very content in their simple surroundings.

Evelyn checking a little girl on a make-shift "exam table."

 

Above: parasite meds and a water bottle. Every child received parasite medicine but because the village does not have a water system, the water they drank to take the pills came from the river. The medicine will work, but parasites are a daily part of life in a community like this. HCJB, the ministry we work with, has a community development ministry that helps villagers build their own water systems. Last week the community developement team split up to build systems in two jungle villages similar to this one.

School supplies, above. Artwork, below.

 

Boys wait their turn and pass the time with a card game. The blue shirts are school uniforms provided by Compassion. 

A mother brings her children.

One family brought these guava pods to share as a snack. They grow on trees.  The seeds inside are not eaten but the white fluffy tissue around the seeds is quite sweet. Jay calls it God's cotton candy.

Here are a few views of village homes. They are spaced apart, most with thatch roofs.

The homes are on stilts because the river floods and to help keep out bugs and animals.

This structure serves as a kitchen.

 

 

Villagers going out to catch lunch with nets.

The village cooked for the medical team.

Fish, platino (cooking banana)

This is the radio building. A solar panel powers a two-way radio. Jungle villages check in each morning and evening with a government office to report medical or other critical needs. Jay and the team slept there in tents to keep the bugs at bay.

Jonas by the river with canoes made of tree trunks. You can see a pekipeki, a small boat motor, sticking out the far boat. It skims the surface of the water and can run when the river is just a few inches deep.

Volleyball is a favorite pastime. Notice the man in back with one leg. Jay says he was a pretty good player.

Supper... members of the village brought the cooked food and sat silently and watched the medical team eat... that's good jungle manners. They usually go to bed at sunset so they yawned often as they waited for their guests to finish their meal. Jay said the fish was terrific.

Fish and platinos baked in banana leaves.

Day 2 - More faces... The team saw about 90 children and many adults. Many of the children walked 45 minutes from a second village.

While each child has a medical record kept by Compassion International, there aren't insurance or other forms to do here.

 

Jay teaching a village medical worker about the medicines provided by Compassion International.

The village health care worker is holding snake bite kits.

Snack time... Jonas and Evelyn eating the boiled seeds of a type of palm tree. Jay described it as almost flavorless but it's a source of carbs.

Jungle rations!

Lunch: soup. Notice the bone in the lower-left bowl.

 

Several older boys hung out to watch Jay. Jungle tribes have very little body hair. They marveled over the dark hair on Jay's arms. They would touch his arms and pull the hair. : )   Here they play with his stethoscope.
To give them something to do while he worked Jay showed one boy how to take pictures and then sent them off to take pictures of the village. Several of the pictures below were taken by the boys.

Pet parrots.

Cooking fire with fish wrapped in banana leaves.

Supper... something with a hoof perhaps a wild pig.

Washing the dishes in the community bathing stream.

To save the work of chopping firewood, tree trunks are left whole and pushed into the fire little by little as more heat is needed.

 

The village garden. Notice the corn. It is white with short ears of chunky white kernels. It is cooked over the fire. It is not sweet corn but more like field corn. Just yesterday Dane asked if we could plant some sweet corn. He's missing it. The family who lived in our home last year tried without success: 3 ears of corn from two dozen plants. It's not Nebraska!

A pineapple plant. Just lop off the top of a pineapple and put it in the ground here. It's so wet, it will often grow and reproduce.

A trumpe bird.

The red pods on this bush are used for face paint for tribal celebrations. It lasts for weeks. Dane and Luke found a bush near our house and have tried dying a few things.

The village boys pose for a picture.

This sign welcomes visitors who come via canoe. It hangs on the wall of the village "hotel." That's the hut below.

This hut is a stone's throw from the river and the cayman that swim there. Jay says he'd have a hard time sleeping peacefully there.

 

The jungle... still wild, still beautiful.

 

The team made it safely home on Thanksgiving Day. Thanks for your prayers for us and the people we serve. We are thankful for everyone back home who supports us. Have a great holiday season.