Stories from the Amazon - Swamp Kids!
Missionary kids are a very unique type of people. There are actually books and studies out about them, although I haven't read too many. Actually any kid who grows up in a country that isn't their parents' native country is called a third culture kid. Missionary kids understand each other. They have a special bond that only they have. We didn't fit in except amongst ourselves. We weren't Brazilian and we weren't American. We didn't have the new clothes, the boyfriends, the shopping malls, the cliques, the video games, the tv and the school clubs. We had experiences that nobody else had. We had depth of knowledge, character and maturity. We knew several languages from a young age. We had seen things and experienced things that most people never would. It was very hard as a kid trying to fit in and find my identity, purpose and destiny. (I finally did, I think) Now I appreciate that childhood and everything that I experienced. Then, not quite so much.
But this story isn't about third culture kids. It's about swamp kids. We were our own little gang. Mostly it was me and my brother, John, and his best friends Paul and Tim, and my best friends Naomi and Marva and then there were the younger ones and the ones that didn't live on the mission base all the time. But every day we would get together and explore, play and imagine up things to do. One of our favorite things to do was the swamp!
The mission base had a road that went sort of in a circle and all our houses were around the road. The road was about a mile or so long. There was a mechanical shop for the men to fix the vehicles. There was a little carpenter shop to saw up wood for house repairs. The termites pretty much ate everything so repair was a constant battle. Of course our other favorite place was the swimming pool. We all learned to swim there. It always seems so big and wonderful, until I went back as an adult and saw just how small it really was! There was also the office building where all the missionaries had a quiet cubicle to work on the Bible translations. And our school was there as well. Missionary teachers would come for the school year or sometimes for more than one school year. We all pretty much had class in one or two rooms and it also had a little library. But in the middle of everything was the swamp! It was full of mystery, excitement and adventure for us kids.
The road that went around the mission base had a steep hill that went down over the swamp. On the side facing the middle of the mission base there was almost a little swimming area, if you were brave enough. On the outside part of the swamp was the "scary part". It was darker, denser and more mysterious. One day in our adventuring we decided to explore the scary side. We decided the best way would be to build a raft and float out there like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. So we dragged some logs out of the jungle that we thought looked like they might float. We lashed them together with vines and got ready for the sink or float trial run. It barely floated and we discovered that only about 2 of us at a time could stand on it before it started going under. We took turns and poled the little raft around through the dense swampy vegetation. It was very interesting, exciting and probably more dangerous than we knew at the time. We did that until finally the logs got so waterlogged they wouldn't float anymore.
There was a little bridge that went across the swamp that started at a house real close to my house and ended up right behind our school. Sometimes I'd go to school that way if I was running late. It was one small board wide, mostly only fit one foot at a time. The boards were attached to 4x4 posts which were stuck into the swamp. They sagged in the middle and kind of bounced if you ran on them. My favorite thing to do was try to run across the bridge, which was really quite long, going all the way from one side to the other. There was a small tree right about in the middle. All the kids got good at their balancing in order to be able to run across as fast as possible. One day we all converged at the tree and decided to explore the middle of the swamp. We divided up into two groups, one for each side of the bridge. We all jumped in and started wading around in the mucky swamp, trying to stay out of the mud by jumping from tuft of swamp grass to the next tuft, sometimes missing, sometimes getting into a patch of razor grass which cut just like the name indicates. We discovered all sorts of interesting swamp creatures (but thankfully we didn't run into any anacondas or other snakes) . At the end of our adventure we were covered in mud from head to toe.
At the swimming edge of the swamp there was a little creek that fed into the swamp. It had cool, clear water and my brother used to go there and catch beautiful tropical fish for his aquarium. Sometimes we would go catch a little bigger fish and make a small fire and roast them and eat them. They were only bite sized but it was a fun thing to do in the shady area next to the small creek.
In the Amazon there are two seasons, rainy and dry. In the rainy season it rained pretty much every day and the rivers flooded. The swamp also flooded and our favorite thing was when it flooded over the road. We would get on our bikes and ride down the hill as fast as possible into the water at the bottom of the hill. The other kids would stand by to get sprayed by the water and we would see who could go the fastest and make the biggest spray of water with their bike wheels.
One time while playing in the flooded swamp, I looked down at my bare feet and there was a leech, stuck to the top of my foot. I ran screaming up the hill and when I got to my house, I dumped a whole container of salt on my foot. Needless to say, we couldn't find the leech under all the salt. We think maybe it shriveled up beyond recognition.
The swamp holds so many good memories for me. Almost all of them involved returning home with stained red dirt clothes from the mud. And looking back I'm truly grateful we never encountered any snakes or alligators, although I'm sure they were there.
But this story isn't about third culture kids. It's about swamp kids. We were our own little gang. Mostly it was me and my brother, John, and his best friends Paul and Tim, and my best friends Naomi and Marva and then there were the younger ones and the ones that didn't live on the mission base all the time. But every day we would get together and explore, play and imagine up things to do. One of our favorite things to do was the swamp!
The mission base had a road that went sort of in a circle and all our houses were around the road. The road was about a mile or so long. There was a mechanical shop for the men to fix the vehicles. There was a little carpenter shop to saw up wood for house repairs. The termites pretty much ate everything so repair was a constant battle. Of course our other favorite place was the swimming pool. We all learned to swim there. It always seems so big and wonderful, until I went back as an adult and saw just how small it really was! There was also the office building where all the missionaries had a quiet cubicle to work on the Bible translations. And our school was there as well. Missionary teachers would come for the school year or sometimes for more than one school year. We all pretty much had class in one or two rooms and it also had a little library. But in the middle of everything was the swamp! It was full of mystery, excitement and adventure for us kids.
The road that went around the mission base had a steep hill that went down over the swamp. On the side facing the middle of the mission base there was almost a little swimming area, if you were brave enough. On the outside part of the swamp was the "scary part". It was darker, denser and more mysterious. One day in our adventuring we decided to explore the scary side. We decided the best way would be to build a raft and float out there like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. So we dragged some logs out of the jungle that we thought looked like they might float. We lashed them together with vines and got ready for the sink or float trial run. It barely floated and we discovered that only about 2 of us at a time could stand on it before it started going under. We took turns and poled the little raft around through the dense swampy vegetation. It was very interesting, exciting and probably more dangerous than we knew at the time. We did that until finally the logs got so waterlogged they wouldn't float anymore.
There was a little bridge that went across the swamp that started at a house real close to my house and ended up right behind our school. Sometimes I'd go to school that way if I was running late. It was one small board wide, mostly only fit one foot at a time. The boards were attached to 4x4 posts which were stuck into the swamp. They sagged in the middle and kind of bounced if you ran on them. My favorite thing to do was try to run across the bridge, which was really quite long, going all the way from one side to the other. There was a small tree right about in the middle. All the kids got good at their balancing in order to be able to run across as fast as possible. One day we all converged at the tree and decided to explore the middle of the swamp. We divided up into two groups, one for each side of the bridge. We all jumped in and started wading around in the mucky swamp, trying to stay out of the mud by jumping from tuft of swamp grass to the next tuft, sometimes missing, sometimes getting into a patch of razor grass which cut just like the name indicates. We discovered all sorts of interesting swamp creatures (but thankfully we didn't run into any anacondas or other snakes) . At the end of our adventure we were covered in mud from head to toe.
At the swimming edge of the swamp there was a little creek that fed into the swamp. It had cool, clear water and my brother used to go there and catch beautiful tropical fish for his aquarium. Sometimes we would go catch a little bigger fish and make a small fire and roast them and eat them. They were only bite sized but it was a fun thing to do in the shady area next to the small creek.
In the Amazon there are two seasons, rainy and dry. In the rainy season it rained pretty much every day and the rivers flooded. The swamp also flooded and our favorite thing was when it flooded over the road. We would get on our bikes and ride down the hill as fast as possible into the water at the bottom of the hill. The other kids would stand by to get sprayed by the water and we would see who could go the fastest and make the biggest spray of water with their bike wheels.
One time while playing in the flooded swamp, I looked down at my bare feet and there was a leech, stuck to the top of my foot. I ran screaming up the hill and when I got to my house, I dumped a whole container of salt on my foot. Needless to say, we couldn't find the leech under all the salt. We think maybe it shriveled up beyond recognition.
The swamp holds so many good memories for me. Almost all of them involved returning home with stained red dirt clothes from the mud. And looking back I'm truly grateful we never encountered any snakes or alligators, although I'm sure they were there.
I can't believe you actually roasted and ATE little fish! Your secret is out!
ReplyDeleteIt was the boy's idea....And everything tastes better out in the woods, right?
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