In the beginning years the missionaries who had located in Tribal villages along the banks of the jungle rivers lived by trading items the villagers needed for native food supplies. \u00a0These food items were supplemented \u00a0by supplies from town about five times a year. \u00a0Getting these supplies to the missionaries was no simple matter. \u00a0Depending on the depth of the water in the rivers the trip could take up to three weeks. \u00a0In some locations the boats had to travel 500 river \u00a0miles. \u00a0This distance wasn’t a straight line, ‘as the crow flies’ but rivers don’t flow in straight lines and in the dry season the deepest channel weaves back and forth to the degree you almost meet yourself either coming or going!<\/p>\n
Here’s how a supply run would play out. \u00a0The missionaries would have gotten a detailed food and whatever else they might need from town for the next several months, list, out to the mission buyer in town. \u00a0The buyer would then spend \u00a0the next several weeks purchasing, packing and marking each missionary’s order. \u00a0The challenges of the buyer and what he had or didn’t have to work with is a subject for a whole post in itself. \u00a0When the orders were were all ready, meaning dozens if not hundreds of boxes stacked high in the buyers home, the supply launch would be brought down the river to the port closest to town. \u00a0A series of nasty rapids made navigation right up to town impossible. \u00a0 So a local truck owner, driver would shuttle the supplies and people the 60 kilometers from town to the port. \u00a0He was very fussy \u00a0about whom or what he would brake for. \u00a0A cow yes but anything else, maybe yes and maybe no. \u00a0Loading the boats (usually three plank boats or huge dugout canoes lashed together with long poles) was an art in itself. \u00a0My Father from whom several of us learned the tricks of the trade would have every box and every barrel of fuel loaded where they would fit best in the boats, on paper, before it ever got out to the port. \u00a0That helped greatly \u00a0with the actual loading. \u00a0The work was beastly! \u00a0It seemed the truck loads would always arrive at the port around noon when the sun was the very hottest. \u00a0Fifty five gallon drums, full of fuel, had to be stacked three high. \u00a0Each one was wrestled into place by brute strength. \u00a0On one occasion my father was working a full drum \u00a0weighing \u00a0200 kilos if full of gasoline, a lot more it it’s full of diesel fuel, \u00a0down a steep slope, \u00a0lost his footing and the drum rolled right over him. \u00a0He was o.k but thinking of that incident reminded me of the time he had spent the night sleeping on board the launch in his hammock. \u00a0He couldn’t \u00a0figure out what was so slippery under foot when he got up the next morning. \u00a0It turned out the vampires had been feasting on him the night before and had forgotten to turn the spigot off when they had finished. \u00a0He was slipping and sliding around in his own blood.<\/p>\n
Once the boats were all loaded they would be held in position by long straight poles lashed into place by hundreds of feet of ropes and chains. \u00a0It was of utmost importance each boat hold it’s own position as the rig made it’s way up the river. \u00a0Navigating through the ‘rapids of death,’or the ‘devil’s passage’, (just two of the many very dangerous stretches of river along the way) required that the boats maintain the proper distance from the others or disaster would follow. \u00a0The port of departure itself was located on the very tranquil banks of a smaller river but within a couple of hundred yards the boats would move out into the waters of the big river. \u00a0At that point the big river is very swift and full of rapids and rocks. \u00a0More than one rig has sunk right there because the river pilot didn’t approach the swift current at the right angle or \u00a0any number of other things could have gone wrong. Everyone on board and especially the crew responsible for “getting everything right” heaves a sigh of relief when that first stretch of bad water has been successfully navigated.<\/p>\n
But we must back up and speak of the most precious of all the cargo. \u00a0That would be the women and children. \u00a0Before we had air service the only way for anyone to go and come there in the jungle was by river boat. As the boats were being loaded at the port, there was always a small area that would be used as a kitchen left open on the biggest boat. \u00a0 If possible there would be a palm roof over this area. \u00a0The women on boat would do the cooking, usually over a coleman camp stove. \u00a0I need to do an entire post on the kitchen and cooking on these trips. \u00a0There were no chairs for passengers or crew on these voyages. \u00a0People sat on the sides of the boats or on the cargo, sometimes on fuel drums. \u00a0At night folks hung hammocks over the cargo, this when there was a roof with a strong enough frame to hang the hammocks from. \u00a0 The bilge area was a good place over which to hang your hammock but you’d be awakened several times at night when the designated bailer bailed the boat. \u00a0I see I’ll have to continue this another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the beginning years the missionaries who had located in Tribal villages along the banks of the jungle rivers lived by trading items the villagers needed for native food supplies. \u00a0These food items were supplemented \u00a0by supplies from town about five times a year. \u00a0Getting these supplies to the missionaries was no simple matter. \u00a0Depending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}