How do I begin? How about at the beginning. We arrived at the hangar around 7:00am, had a quick meeting and a prayer and then began getting the plane and cargo ready. I was standing over by the office when Victor waved me over to be weighed. In Latin America (as well as many other regions) when we wave a person to come to you, you do it with your fingers pointed down, not up like we do in the States. Waving with your fingers pointed up is how you would call a dog and is thus considered an insult. This had momentarilly slipped my mind, so the first time Victor waved me over, I though he was waving goodbye, so I waved back. Then I realized he wanted me to come with him, but I though it was to go to the terminal where I would board the plane (they don't like passengers getting on at the hangar for some reason), so I went to grab my bag. Then he yelled at me and I finally figured out what he wanted. This language thing can be pretty difficult sometimes.

Like I said, I had to go to the airport terminal just down the road from the hangars. I waited there for a little less than an hour while Bruce DeVries, our pilot, prepared the plane. On the TV in the waiting room was a program somewhat similar to a Nickelodeon game show with cheerleaders (complete with their insufficient cheerleading uniforms). Between that and the paintings of naked Indianindian girls all over the walls, I spent quite a bit of time staring at my shoes. Coincidentally, right before Bruce showed up a guy came into the waiting room wanting to shine my boots. I had to tell him about a 10 times "no" before he went away. Finally, Bruce got there, we boarded the plane, and took off around 9:00.

The plane was a Cessna 206, I think. It had room for 6 passengers, but it was tiny. That's the smallest plane I've ever been in before, so just taking off was a new experience. I was amazed at how quickly we were able to get airborn. I was also surprised by how smooth the takeoffs and landings were. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Bruce and all these guys are excellent pilots.

About 15 miles outside of Puerto Ayacucho, the roads stop and the jungle begins. It's amazing how dense it is and how wet it is. There were streams and pools everywhere. Once we got into some mountains, there were some awesome waterfalls and huge cliffs. I continue to be amazed at the terrain here. It is so unlike anything I've ever seen before. The cliffs are for the most part smooth, not jagged. It's like a huge pebble. I took lots of pictures in the plane. Hopefully most of them turn out.

Our first stop was in Cosh, which is actually Cosh-something-atelli and means honey village. Back in 1951, a couple by the name of Dawson came to the area to share the Gospel with the Yanamammi people group. I believe they actually founded the village there. Now Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, now in their late 70's, are still there and so are 4 or 5 of their 10 kids and their families. All but 2 are in the area. Some of them are there because they grew up in the jungle and that's what they're used to and others are very mission minded. Anyhow, I was let off and Bruce continued with Bryan to Wanimatelli (or something like that) where Bryan was to upgrade another system.

One of the first things I noticed about the Indians, besides the fact that they're all short (under 5 feet, most of them) was that they all had "modern" clothing on: T-shirts and skirts and shorts. The did seem to lack under garments, but that would just get in the way of nursing, which at least someone was doing at any given time.

We actually brought a computer out with us that belongs to Mike Dawson, one of the missionaries in Cosh who was in the city for a couple of weeks while his house was being remodelled. We had to get a monitor and keboard out of his house which proved to be a little bit of a challenge, since they were on the second story. Normally one wouldn't think that that would be a problem, but since there were no stairs... The setup went no problem, except that we couldn't find the mouse, and I had already transferred mail over the radio by the time Bruce got back.

The people I met a Cosh were nice, but not very outgoing. It took some prodding with questions to get them to talk. It wasn't what I expected at all. You would think people who would dedicate their whole lives to bringing the good news to natives on the interior of a South American country would have to be outgoing, but that was not the case at all. Don't get me wrong, they're friendly, just not talkative.

Bruce got back around 1:00 or so and came over to the house. He's real good with people. It was a side to him I hadn't seen yet. I could tell that this was the part of his job that he really loves. While we were talking, a little girl walked in with some sort of animal hanging on her. Further inspection revealed a small three-toed sloth. I'd seen them at a distance in a zoo, but this was right there in front of me. It was pretty cool.

After lunch we began showing them how to use the new client when a storm rolled in. Now the village was split into two sections, separated by a couple hundred yards. The old village was down by the airstrip and the river. It had just recently been flooded out, so they're building a new village on a little higher ground. They use 4-wheelers and a Mule (gas powered, not grain powered) to get back and forth between the two. We were in the new village when the storm hit and it was raining too hard to go down to the old village where we were supposed to set up the other computer, so we showed a missionary girl (who looked like she was about 16 but had a gold and diamond band on her left ring finger) how to set up the new software. We weren't sure if the storm was going to affect our ablilty to pick up Bryan, so we hurried out of there.

We carried two passengers out with us who needed medical attention. Yesterday, one of Gary Dawson's dogs bit an Indian kid in the face. The kids dad didn't think that was too cool, so he killed the dog. Gary wasn't too upset by that since he probably would have killed the dog himself anyways because it was getting mean. But a couple of the Indians had been using Gary's dog as a hunting dog and didn't like the idea that somebody had killed "their" hunting dog. So three or four of them beat the snot out of the guy who shot the dog. That guy was just recovering from malaria and didn't have very good means of defending himself, so his brothers-in-law came to avenge him with clubs. Well, the other guys decided to step it up a notch and bring out the machettes. The result was that the Dawsons were stitching people up from 4:00 in the afternoon until 10:00 at night.

The member of the tribe who was one of the original believers tried to step in and stop of fighting. He got chopped on the top of the wrist, cutting the tendons or ligaments or whatever is in there. He couldn't lift his wrist. The guy who chopped him was actually his nephew or brother-in-law or something like that. He got chopped on the front of the head, clubbed in the back of the head, and his arm was broken. Both these guys needed surgery, so we were to take them back to PA with us. The amazing thing is that the guy who got chopped on the wrist wasn't mad at all. He wasn't even really upset, other than great sorrow because his people had reverted to such primitive violence. But the fact that he wasn't mad and that there wasn't an even bigger fight today was a testimony that God is working in the Yanamammi.

Gary says that the Yanammami live on emotional extremes. They could be your best friend one minute and kill you the next. He said they'll go into another village knowing that they're going to die, but go anyways and plan to take as many with them as they can. Pride is a big issue for them. For them it's better to stay in the fight and get beat within inches of death than to try and run away once you figured out that you were going to get klobbered. According to Gary, the Yanamammi would look at the Littleton massacre and say the only thing wrong was that they killed themselves, otherwise they would have been heros. It is just so disgusting how little these people value life.

The arstip at Wanimatelli, where Bryan was, was really short and Bruce didn't want to try and take off from there with the weight of 5 people on board. So he dropped me and the other two guys off at Buena Vista, an airstrip at a village 4 miles from Wanimatelli. The strip there was long enough to get up with all the weight, so he was going to bring Bryan back there and pick us back up. After Bruce let us off, and the Indians were running up the airstrip toward the plane, he told me "If you haven't seen a whole lot of breasts in your life, you're going to see a lot today" and he was right. Here, only one of the girls had a shirt on. Now, I'd heard that as soon as the Indian girls begin to develop, they're married off, but it still surprised me to see a girl who looked about 12 or 13 nursing a baby. There were no missionaries at this place, so I was just kinda stranded for about 15 minutes or so. After the plane left, I watched as the two injured guys told the people from this village the story of what happened (I'm assuming). They oohed and awed and seemed to say "you did that to him?" The whole experience was pretty cool, but it occurred to me that if something happened to the plane, I'd be stuck in the middle of the jungle with a bunch of naked people who I couldn't communicate with. Fortunately, Bruce made it back okay.

We took off and headed up to 13,000 ft. to get over a storm system between Buena Vista and PA. It gets downright cold at that altitude. It was 40 degrees in the cabin. We got a couple of radio calls from Cosh asking "how do we do this?" and "how do we do that?" and Bruce successfully walked them through sending and receiving email without a mouse.

The scenery was amazing again on the way back, when we could see through the clouds. Bruce said you could make a killing by setting up tourist camps and taking people rock climbing and to the waterfalls and stuff, but the Indians just don't seem to be industrious enough to do something like that. We arrived safely back in PA at around 6:00. It was wierd to look down and see paved roads. This city, which a couple weeks ago seemed like an uncivilized dump, all of a sudden seemed to be extremely advanced. All in all, it was an amazing experience and I'd do again in a heartbeat. Now I know why these guys are here and why they do what they do.