A Visit to Sinai

Yep, we visited Sinai...but not the mount.  It's a little town on the edge of the Marañon River - the "mother" of the Amazon.  HOT as Hades, you feel like you are living in a sauna.  Bugs of all kinds, all waiting to bite and suck that fresh blood.  We piled into one of the station wagons that make the trip (about 2 hours from bach), driver another kind of Jehu, fascinated by the gravel road curving along the river.  He did slow down when asked, but kept forgetting!  Here lives an elderly lady called Eufemia (around about 84), her husband Alberto, a "mudita" (literally translated, a little deaf mute lady) whose name is Maruja, but they just call her la mudita! And several grandchildren and sons and daughters-in-law.  We went for a bible study or two and the night.

First sight of the River Marañon

Doña Eufemia.

She tells the story of how she first met the workers.  She had been searching for a long time, reading and reading her Bible.  Once she had a dream that she was floating down the river but she wasn't drowning.  A man in white came and directed her where to get out.  She crawled up a cliff, and at the top of the cliff was a house with people sitting in it.  She went in, and heard them singing the hymns (that later she learned when she came to listen to the gospel).  Later in a second dream, she was walking through a very narrow path in the bush.  She came upon a soldier all dressed in uniform who was barring her way, and asked her where she was going.  Then he held out a Bible to her and put on top of the Bible 4 grains of corn.  He said to her these are the 4 gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Soon afterwards, she saw three men in the township, outside, hanging up hammocks preparing to spend the night there.  They were Trevor Loechel and two Peruvian companions, Heradio Coronel and Eliseo Gonzalez, who had walked all day and had another day's walking ahead yet to reach the destination where they were going.  Noone in the town would receive them, Eufemia went and asked them to stay the night in her home.  After much insisting they did.  She didn't have much room, but somehow they managed.  After they had eaten, the first question she asked "who of you is a soldier of the Lord?".  Trevor answered all of us!  That was how she came to hear truth, and was the only one that accepted it.  She knows many people as they used to live down by the river and pan for gold, as many people do.  Her husband Alberto made a start, but has a weakness for drink!

After the little Bible study... Eufemia and daughter-in-law in front, Alberto and Maruja in back, and two little terrors, grandsons.

The "mudita" Maruja.  She has just as interesting a story.  She just appeared one day at their house and has stayed on!  She was just a young girl when she came stumbling by, looked like an old lady, hadn't eaten for 10 days.  Noone knows where she came from, but it would seem that her family were all shot by the terrorists, according to what they can make out by her funny sign-language.  She gesticulates having seen them all shot, and then draws tears running down her face.  When she first showed up people tried to take her back to where they thought perhaps she came from but she wouldn't stay because she wasn't from there.  She went from pillar to post, and eventually turned up here.  They felt sorry for her and invited her in to eat something.  And she never left!!  She's a real help to Eufemia, and inspite of her not hearing anything, she is really alert.  She and Eufemia have a little meeting together always!

The kitchen/living area...no words needed!

Breakfast...rice, chicken, mandioc, fried banana and beans

A really beautiful tree in the backyard

One of the little terrors making mudcakes

Coca plant (this is what they make cocaine from).  The leaves are most commonly chewed as a stimulant.

Handsome rooster

The buckets is where you bath!!  Needless to say, it's advisable to wait till dark...

No explanations needed...

The little terrors rocking the dog in the hammock

Walking down to the river

This is the river that is the precursor to the Amazon.  The Marañon is very westward, and the water flows a very long way east to reach the Atlantic ocean, rather than drop over the mountains and into the Pacific!

Imagine these scenes with an oppressive 40oC...

All elegance is forfeited in favour of bug protection...and even then the beggars bit me through the socks!! Little tiny flies that make big itchy bites.  You don't feel them in the moment of being bitten.

Doña Eufemia's feet!

And mine post-bug bites!

The guinea pigs, cats and chooks all sleep in here under the stove

Star fruit

Driving with the Devil

Everything is relative. I used to think that in relation to New Zealand, Argentina is chaotic and messy. Since arriving in Peru I have decided that Argentina is very orderly and a law abiding!

We went bush yesterday. To get there we took a vehicle for one hour. We arrive at the vehicle depot and sit waiting. There is an elderly man sitting beside me I glance at his white shirt back there is a tick meandering around investigating. I keep a close eye on the tick lest he decide to investigate my bare arm. 

Eventually the driver gets behind the wheel which is a signal for all passengers to board. It's a station wagon so I got in along with two others, that made three of us in the back seat which if we were in Argentina the driver would refuse to let any more in - one person per seat belt after all! Silly me forgot I am not in Argentina. To my surprise two more got in beside me and when I looked in the front there were two beside the driver so all up we were eight in the five seater station wagon. No problem. Start driving the driver has no hair on his head but two black bushy eyebrows.  He has a tattoo of a heart pierced by a sword on his forearm and between his forefinger and thumb  an unidentified black blob tattoo. We drove normally out of the city and once we hit the windy gravel road he was overcome with a great desire to fulfil his dream of becoming a Rally driver. He floored it!  Must have been doing nigh on 100 kmph around those gravel corners on his bald tires.     Drumming the steering wheel to the beat of the music blaring from the stereo.  He was a maniac! I don't get scared easily with "reasonably" mad drivers, but this time I sat there, terrified and holding on for grim death.  The lady and her kid beside me were fast asleep. Palmira wasn't saying anything so I figured this must be normal. She is from a part of the country where the people are unknown for being hotheaded so she would soon put him in his place if she felt it needful I thought. I was very thankful when we started to climb because the car was rather gutless and the steep road inhibited Jehu"s madness what a relief. 

It started to rain. Jehu slammed anchors and leaps from the car to wind up the windows of the rear doors.  Winding up consists of placing a hand on either side of the window pain and tugging with all his might until the glass reaches the top of the window frame this was repeated for both sides.  The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful except for an abrupt swerve or three to avoid colliding head on with a couple of vehicles as we came around the corner and a stretch where Jehu once again briefly translated us  to the Indy 500.  (On the way back we were telling a different driver about our hair-raising trip, and he laughed and said oh you must have gone with El Diablo! - The Devil)

El Diablo in full flight

Paying the Devil...and heaving relieved sighs!

We went to visit this little family, Leyder and Dora and their son Darwin.  Leyder's mother died faithfully, and one of his 8 brothers is professing.  Leyder has been in touch for a long time, and made his choice known a month ago.  His wife is lovely, and listens in the meetings.  Nice to see his joy and enthusiasm....long may it last!

They have a plot of land where they grow coffee and beans amongst other things.  Looking over the coffee plantation

Coffee beans starting to ripen

After seeing all this I realised why coffee is so expensive!  Here Leyder and Darwin are demonstrating how they take the red shell off the beans, which leaves them with a sweet moist coating.  These have to be then dried before being sold to the wholesaler.  They have become very fussy now, and grade the coffee before buying it.  So the grower takes his beans to the buyer and they will roast it and grind it and drink it to see the quality before paying the grower.  

Banana flower

Red beans - cleaning them of the dirt and stones and one or two black and white beans that somehow got in amongst the original seed, then bagging them to take to sell.

No pegs!

Dora cooking in her fancy kitchen...no scullery here!

Going down to the outhouse

Beneath our mozzie net, set to share the bed for the night...

Wardrobe

Our bed from the outside...the family sleep on the other side of the partition.  Gotta be careful who you talk about because every conversation is heard!!

Night in the kitchen, Darwin drawing under a very dim light bulb!!

Some of the fruit...the orange something like a persimmon in flavour.  The white one is guanabana.  A rich fruit with a banana/pineapple/feijoa flavour

Peru!

Let's be honest - it's easy to enjoy experiences when you have a return ticket in the hand! Wouldn't be such a novelty perhaps if it were a one-way!! It was arranged for me to come to Peru for 3 months, as I don't have a companion in Argentina.   What's more I have come to one of the most "adventurous" (to put it diplomatically) fields, the Peruvian Amazon.  This area is very close to the ecuator, and the Ecuadorian border.  It takes in jungle, and mountains.  We have a bach in the small city of Bagua Grande, a comfortable two-bedroom apartment which belongs to our friends.  We can leave our stuff here, and make forays into the surrounding areas to visit our scattered friends.  (You must imagine the following photos with 36oC temps!).

View of the city of Bagua Grande looking over the rice fields.  The mountains in the back-drop are where we make our trips into to visit our friends.

Bagua is just over 400 metres above sea level, in a valley amongst high mountains.  The climate is hot and sticky, lots of rice grown as well as other fruits and vegetables.  Chicken is the main source of meat, tough free-range chooks!  

More of Bagua

There is one church here in this city.  The workers first started visiting this area of the Amazon in the mid-80s.  Derek Clark and then Trevor Loechel and companions did a lot of the pioneering, Norman Nash later too.  In those days there were absolutely no roads, and they walked hours, sometimes days to reach these places.  They would come because someone had a relative or acquaintance somewhere, and that then led to others coming in touch.  No cell phones in those days!  The people that now live here in Bagua have all originated from somewhere else, little outlying towns in the wop-wops, and have latterly come to live in the city.

Scenery around Bagua, rice fields.

With Roder and Gina Mego, the elder of the church in Bagua Grande.  This is the "moto", the most common form of transport in the city!  Three can fit in to the seat, and luggage on the back.  They are used a lot as taxis, and are cheap as chips.  These don't exist in Argentina, we just walk everywhere that the bus doesn't take us, but these things make us lazy.  They took us out for a drive one Sunday afternoon, so that I could see the countryside.

This is how your Whittaker's Peanut Slab starts out!!  Cacao beans drying in the sun.

The moto in the front has a tub of washing on the back...

Stopping at a dairy for a drink of "Inca Kola" - one of the greatest rivals in Peru to Coke.  It's not bad actually, tastes like the old soda stream flavour Creaming Soda

More rice

The Mego family - Roder and Gina and their two sons and daughter, and daughter-in-law.  Lady in white t-shirt is an employee.  They came from the town of Perlamayo (more on that later), a young married couple and their first chile (in red t-shirt) just born.  The Catholic tradition says to baptise the baby, but Roder was very uncomfortable with that, and wanted to know in himself if that was correct.  He started investigating and could find nowhere in the Bible that it says that.  Right at that time, the workers were beginning to visit Perlamayo because of some relative of one of the native brothers, and through the first man that professed, Antonio Delgado, Roder met them, and recognised truth.  He told us recently that when he made his choice, his desire was that all his children should one day go in the work.  (At this stage none of the three have shown a need to serve God.  Very respectful, and sometimes go to meetings, the girl more than the boys).  But, he said, I realise that if that had happened, I would have just become proud of it, and criticised everyone whose children go astray.  They own the little bach we use, and all the friends here do so much for us!  I love our time with this couple.  

The streets of Bagua Grande

View one from the bach

View two - from my bedroom window

The street we go down from the bach into the town

Palmira picking her way through the mud after heavy rain in the night

This is the nearby city of Jaen, ("Hy-EN) where I arrived to from Lima by plane (saved me an 18-hour bus trip).  There is a pair of brothers here, but it's only an hour by car from Bagua.

The two little sisters who met me off the plane! Very cute.

Palmira buying fruit

My co Palmira Rojas is a local, from the mountain area of Olmos.  She and her family heard the gospel when the first workers went up into that area, which was so lawless that not even the police would venture in there.  The people of Olmos are known in Peru for being very volatile and hot-headed!  All the men would go around armed, just in case!  When the workers went, and the Catholics got up against them because people started to profess, the police said well those foreigners are doing what you have never been able to do...the people were changing!  Palmira also has a sister in the work, Celmira.  They are tough people!  

Open-air shoe-repairers!

Roder draining a coconut

This is how Roder and his wife earn their living... they sell what they call "menestra" in the local market.  It's a mixture of beans and pulses, which the people will buy for their meal.  It entails lighting the fire at night, then they get up at 4 am to start cooking it all.  They have some industrial-sized pressure cookers, and use the wood-fire as well as some gas rings.  They sell most of it every day.  A lot of people come into town from the mountains, to do their business and stay all day, so they go and buy that to eat. 

Getting everything ready the night before.

Right, I shall publish this...to be continued!

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