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by Amerileiro The last summer that my siblings were all still at home was the summer of '82. That fall my oldest sister left home to seek her fortunes at college in the United States. My parents were missionaries in Brazil and, knowing that once my sister left for college our family of five kids each would gradually begin to go their own way, my father and mother planned for one last family outing with all of us together. A fishing trip was planned to the Araguaia River, approximately 150 kilometers to the west of Araguaina where we lived. My father's oldest brother and his family were invited to join us on our fishing trip. They readily agreed; so plans were made, a date was set and preparations were taken to have everything in readiness for our proposed adventure. The excitement we felt was hard to contain. On the appointed day we all set out to the river in our family cars, having loaded all the necessary gear along with an abundance of excitement and plenty of good cheer. Although the distance we had to travel to our destination on the river was not great, it would require six hours to cover the 150 kilometers, with no asphalt to smooth the dusty, bumpy, washboard road. Indeed, some might question if it was a road at all. My father was fond of telling people that we called it a "highway" because of how high we bounced from one bump to the next. Yet such conditions did not dampen our spirits in the least. It was a great pleasure to be traveling down the road between stands of virgin jungle that reached as much as 300 feet high around us. The passengers in the lead car might be privileged to spy wild animals, and all were treated to the primitive beauty that surrounded us. The kids would ask to segregate the passengers, with all the boys in one car and all the girls in the other. This made our conversations much easier as neither gender had to tolerate the other's choice of topics. The boys liked to talk about knifes and guns, or using gun powder and firecrackers to make explosions. The girl’s conversations were not as colorful. Their conversation was about such unexciting things such as boyfriends. As usually happened on trips over such terrain, our journey was interrupted a couple of times to replace a flat tire or do some other maintenance on the vehicle. My father was an expert at wiring parts together with bailing wire, or fashioning parts out of whatever materials as could be found in the ever-present toolbox, until we returned home and proper repairs could be made. This trip was delayed by a fuel flow problem. The fuel was not flowing through the carburetor; and then later it started flowing out of the bottom of the fuel tank, through a hole made by an oversized rock. The first problem was easily resolved when my father removed the top of the carburetor and removed the offending debris from the reservoir. The hole in the bottom of the tank was temporarily stymied by rubbing a bar of soap over the hole until enough had caked over the hole to slow the flow of the gasoline to a slow, sporadic drip. Our arrival at the river was accomplished without major mishap and we immediately began loading our gear for transport to an island in the middle of the river. The island was three or four acres in area, out in the middle of two kilometers of water, with a thousand meters to the eastern bank and a thousand meters to the western bank. It was covered with small trees, which were perfect for hanging a hammock, and providing cool shade in the hot tropical sun. The shores of the island were white sandy beaches, perfect for playing and fishing, with two bays, one smaller, and one larger, that begged to be fished. Part of the year, during the rainy season, the island was completely submerged under the great, flowing river, with only the topmost branches of the tallest trees showing, swaying in the current. We loaded our gear into two dilapidated canoes. One of the canoes was a dugout canoe made from the trunk of one of the massive trees found along the river. It was dubbed the 'three-man" canoe, as it took two persons to row while the third person occupied himself with a coffee can, bailing out the water that constantly seeped in through the rather plentiful cracks in the bottom of the vessel. The other canoe was made of boards brought from a sawmill. The canoes belonged to a rancher whose property bordered the river, and who had generously given us permission to use them. There on the island we spent the next two days engaged in glorious sport, fishing with spools of line, with a 50-meter drag net, and with a tarrafa (a one-man cast net). Horseplay, swimming, sleeping on the sandy beach under the Southern Cross and cooking meals of the fish we caught also filled our time. The Surubim catfish, which along with its whiskers sported a mouth at the end of what resembled a duck's bill, was the best fish for meals. There were no scales to remove, and the meat was easy to separate from big bones. Piranha was also plentiful in the river. The flavor of their meat was delicious but required considerable effort to eat as it was wrapped around many thin, difficult to see bones. While five of us were fishing from the three-man canoe, one of us dropped a piranha into the bottom of the boat, which at that time had three inches of water in it. The fish caused considerable commotion among us, as all were concerned about the possibility of losing a portion of our toes. My brother Paul quickly rendered the fish harmless with his machete. At night the light from our flashlights would illuminate the eyes of the caiman, the small South American alligator, appearing as two red embers glowing in the water or on the beach. During the two days we saw humans not from our group on only two occasions. Apart from that we were left to ourselves to enjoy God's wilderness. At the end of the two days we again transported our belongings across the water in the canoes and prepared to leave. At that time it was discovered that there was not sufficient fuel left in the leaky gas tank to return with both vehicles so only one car left, full of the younger passengers, leaving the six oldest children and my aunt Mary, to manage us. Those of us lucky enough to be left behind were able to enjoy one more day of glorious fishing and swimming. Most of that last, unexpected night was spent on the river, fishing from the canoe, as the Southern Cross turned its top from the east to the west. The joys of staying awake most of the night to fish in the moonlight on a jungle island, then sleeping on the sandy beach under the stars is something that many kids never get to experience. I was truly blessed to have parents that encouraged their children to enjoy God’s creation and to spend time together. |
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