Where and how the supplies, building materials and fuel drums were loaded onto the boats has been laid out in previous posts. \u00a0What happened when the boats arrived at their destination is ‘the rest of the story’.<\/p>\n
It’s helpful to remember that the freight and the passengers on these ‘supply runs’ shared what might be described as an open cargo hold. \u00a0There was a ‘rest room’ at the very back of the main boat which every one on board, crew and passengers alike, visited faithfully. \u00a0It was strictly no frills but functional. \u00a0The people were scattered from bow to stern on the two or three boats fastened together by long poles stretched across the rig and securely lashed with strong ropes. \u00a0A visit to the rest room was an ordeal of \u00a0clambering over boxes of supplies, building supplies and fuel drums as the folks made their to the back of the big boat. \u00a0To make matters more interesting those hardy souls riding on the outer boats had to crawl, swing or jump over several feet of swirling water in order to board the maim boat.<\/p>\n
Well, at destination the cargo obviously had to be unloaded. \u00a0Oh and by the way it’s destination may not have been the first time and place that the cargo had been unloaded! \u00a0There were a number of reasons a supply run may not have been happening when the depth of the water was not optimal. \u00a0If for example the water was unseasonably low the cargo may have been unloaded and loaded several times as the rig labored up the river. \u00a0If at a particularly wide place there was no channel deep enough for the boats to pass through, the cargo would be unloaded and ferried further upstream to where the river ran deeper. \u00a0This was done with the smaller runabout we always had along. \u00a0It goes without saying that to unload all those supplies, especially the fuel drums off the boats, unload them again from the runabout onto a sand bar or rock, maneuver the now much shallower rig to deeper water and reload all that stuff again was a real CHORE! \u00a0As told in an earlier post the horse flies and the hot sun were always present to add spice to life.<\/p>\n
It was always preferable to arrive at destination early enough in the day to be able to unload before nightfall. There were several reasons for this. \u00a0One, the missionaries needed those medical supplies, food and all the rest ASAP. \u00a0And two, no crew member wanted to spend another night on board , bailing the boats, guarding the cargo plus fighting bats and mosquitos.<\/p>\n
As soon as the rig arrived Indians, missionaries, horseflies and clouds of bloodsucking gnats were all on hand to either help or maybe not so much help with the unloading. \u00a0All the boxes had to be hand carried to the individual pole and dirt frame houses with their plan roofs and tamped earth floors. \u00a0The heat and humidity made sure that after a few minutes everyone was soaking wet with sweat.<\/p>\n
Usually the boats were secured to the shore for the unloading in a backwash rather than in the direct current zipping by. \u00a0The stern had to be tied off as well as the bow, other wise the boats would swing back and forth in the backwash. \u00a0Everything came ashore via a 12 inch wide plank stretching from the boats to the bank and the more stable everything was the better. \u00a0More than one missionary has gone into the drink carrying a heavy box as they ‘walked the plank’. \u00a0Depending on the height of the river the top of the river bank could be ten or fifteen feet almost straight up from the water’s edge. \u00a0Steps would have been cut into the clay bank but often had been washed away and in any case it was always very slippery.<\/p>\n
Adding to the mix was the fact that as the backwash pushed against the downriver side of the boat, (remember the backwash was flowing up river) the debris caught in the backwash lodged against the boat. \u00a0These leaves. sticks, jungle fruit and who knows what else, eventually became a carpet stretching out several feet into the river along side of the boat. \u00a0At a casual glance one could easily mistake this for dry land. \u00a0I’ve observed several people attempt to walk on this carpet of debris with the predictable result. \u00a0One gentleman was about to go completely under when someone reached out with a rescuing hand. \u00a0Other than a little wounded pride no one ever got hurt.<\/p>\n
After the boxes were safely ashore the building supplies were usually next on the list to unload. \u00a0In the very beginning days almost everything the missionaries built their houses with came from the jungle or the ground underneath. \u00a0As time went on folks would opt for a cement floor (usually a cement, river sand mix), the floor being maybe one half to three quarters of an inch thick. \u00a0Getting the cement powder from town to the missionary’s house in a dry state was was a challenging undertaking. \u00a0The bags had to be handled many times on their way. Sometimes the bags would break and even if a bag didn’t split open, the sweaty handling plus the humidity being thick enough to cut with a knife all conspired to make delivery of a dry sack of cement a difficult task.<\/p>\n
Las of all would come the unloading of the drums full of gasoline, kerosene and sometimes diesel fuel. \u00a0Handling the drums full of fuel was the most dangerous past of the unloading as had been their loading at the port outside of town days or sometimes weeks before. \u00a0A fifty five gallon drum full of gasoline or kerosene will weigh upwards of four hundred pounds depending on the weight of the drum itself. \u00a0The drums had to be manhandled up from the bottom of the boat to one of the sides and very carefully maneuvered to the plank and down to the shore. \u00a0Twelve inches really isn’t wide enough to comfortably roll a four hundred pound drum down and more than one has ended up doing a tremendous splash in the river. \u00a0Once on shore each drum had to be hand rolled over mostly uneven ground to to its final resting place outside the missionaries home. \u00a0Once, rather than wrestling a four hundred pound drum inch by inch up a hill a couple of us decided to lash it to a stout pole and carry it on our shoulders. \u00a0It didn’t work!<\/p>\n
So now the missionaries had medical supplies, food and fuel to hopefully last for the next three or four months when everyone would again be eagerly listening for the sound of the engines bringing the essentials for life in the jungle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Where and how the supplies, building materials and fuel drums were loaded onto the boats has been laid out in previous posts. \u00a0What happened when the boats arrived at their destination is ‘the rest of the story’. It’s helpful to remember that the freight and the passengers on these ‘supply runs’ shared what might be […]<\/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-303","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\/303","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=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}