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Lois made a great

Lois made a great stir fry for lunch today. She also fried some yucca. That's very tasty and I wish I had that more often. It's not something Ellyn has learned to cook. In Papua New Guinea the people eat the same thing, and there they call in taro. We had an interesting conversation over lunch. Dwain and Lois work with the Achuar tribe. They teach Bible classes and work with the church leaders. Dwain spends quite a lot of time walking the jungle trails from village to village. He often is on the trail for a couple months at a time.

The people they work with used to be know as the Jivaro, which means 'savage'. They shrunk the heads of their enemies. Dwain was saying that the anthropologists think the missionaries change the culture too much. Missionaries do change culture, but only the religion. Most of the Achuar think that is a good thing. The Achuar used to be constantly afraid of dying. They usually never died a natural death, but a death that was a result of revenge killing. The people tell you that they'd be afraid walking down a jungle trail because they were worried about someone trying to kill them. Many Achuar will tell you that if the tribe hadn't heard the Gospel, they would have killed each other off by now. Of course the anthropologists say that the revenge killing was OK, even a good thing, because it kept the population under control. Gimme a break!

I also spent quite a bit of time asking Dwain questions about snakes. He's an expert on snakes and keeps them in cages in his house. He's captured hundreds of snakes over the years, and has been bitten more than once by ones that are venomous. Living in Ecuador, where there are over thirty species of venomous snakes, is just right for him. Right now he doesn't have any venomous snakes in his collection, but he usually does. He supplies snakes for the vivarium in Quito. I have a great dislike for snakes and wasn't looking forward to sleeping in a house with snakes. Thankfully I slept just fine.

One more thing. When they came back from their furlough, they found a couple termite nests in their house. They are constantly battling termites in the buildings in Makuma. How would you like to find a nest like this in your bathroom?!