Hey hey,
Okay, so to keep y’all up to speed, this week has been crazy.
Like usual the team and I get up by 7 to do our daily morning devotions/quiet time before breakfast, which started at 8. After breakfast, we typically had some kind manual labor that involved us using a machete or lifting long wooded polls that had the occasional tarantula, who would come out of hiding and slowly creep towards our hands or face.
(Shout out to Aly for staying calm and not dropping the poll until I was aware of the situation, all the while we carried the poll down a muddy hill).
Around 3 all of us load up on a boat and float down to Las Palmas. It’s a small remote village that can’t have much more than 20 people living in it. The girls and I would take a stroll through a path surrounded by plantain trees and mosquitos to get to a small church, there we lead bible stories by acting them out for the children, sang songs and made up games to play. Our two favorites were a version of duck, duck, goose. Instead of calling it duck, duck, goose, we called it Boa, Boa, Anaconda. Cause why not right, we live in the jungle. It seemed to be an appropriate change ; ) If we weren’t paying Boa, Boa, Anaconda we were playing “football”.
Almost every time after ministry the pastor of the church would ask us if we wanted to see something, and our answer was always yes. The first time we were asked he showed us a live Boa constrictor that he caught near his house. He said the reason they catch them and remove them from the village is so that they don’t ‘hurt’ the toddlers.
Another time he gave us really good fruit to eat and the last time he handed us a live three toed Peruvian sloth!
I always hear people talk about how they love sloths and think they are so cute, man are they wrong. I think they are so weird. This little guy was covered in creepy bugs, and when he blinked it was so slow. If any of yall have seen the movie Zootopia and have seen the scene where the sloth is helping the bunny, that is exactly how they move and blink. Despite my big dislike for them I did get some pictures of me holding the little guy.
Some nights our ministry host would take us out for evening boat rides and help us look for river dolphins. Back in second grade, I did a project over Pink river dolphins that lived in the amazon. Never in my life did I imagine I would be living in the amazon seeing them for myself in real life!
Dinner was at 6, and after dinner it became survival mode for us all. We had two hours of electricity to charge computers and phones. Showers needed to be fast and quick so we could shower with as much light as possible. Some nights (the scariest of nights) is when the power shuts off an hour and a half before it’s supposed to and you’re in the middle of a shower butt naked, or when you’re sitting on the ground making bracelets while sitting underneath a tarantula… but the worst is when the bats get real brave and start to swoop down and get really close to you.
One of the saddest moments was when a bat was lying dead on one of the shower floors… or so we thought. No one wanted or knew how to get rid of it, so I stepped up to the plate and said I’ll get rid of it. As I’m being videoed I thought it would be funny to poke the bat and pretend it was alive to scare all the girls, little did I know that when I poked it, it would begin to squirm around. After finding out the hard way it was alive I had to figure out way to kill is so that I could get rid of it. So, what did I do?
(Caution, viewers discretion is advised while reading this next part. The following content contains graphic descriptions)
So, I’m standing there, cardboard in my hand and one rain boot on my right foot, some girls are crying some are grossed out and others are interested. I take one step in, place the bottom of my heel on to the bats head, and with one step and a twist on my heel the bat was dead. I took the cardboard, scooped it up, and chunked it into the forest.
As of the past 24 hours the gang and I are back in Iquitos where there is running water and electricity which meant we got to have fans and a real shower. This morning I woke up to drink my morning coffee at 6 and watch a few episodes of the office on my MacBook, while I was making my coffee my eyes would wonder to the walls and floors for tarantulas, but there were none to be found. As much fun as it was getting to rough it in the jungle, I’m happy and thankful to be back in this small town.
That’s all for now, thanks!
~Chooch.
