Tião and I in Tiweno

Tiweno

Well, it finally happened.  I was finally able to take Sebastião into the jungle with me for the first time.  As many of you know, we've been going into the jungle communities (44 in total) and performing checkups on the kids sponsored by Compassion, and their fellow community members, over the course of the last school year.  As the school year comes to a close, I knew that my window of opportunity was closing.  After talking to Jonas, the Compassion missionary who coordinates the visits and accompanies us, we settled on Tiweno.  Tiweno is a Waorani community where Rachel Saint lived for a number of years and has a strong Christian presence.

It was hard to get him out of the water

I was able to see about 30 patients throughout both days while Sebastião played in the Tiweno River and learned to shoot his blow gun.  The blow gun was a gift from one of the men of the community.  Along with the blow gun he was also given a Wao name - Kemo, which, appropriately, means monkey.  We had fun swimming in the Tiweno River and got to meet many of the local residents.  One of them, Mincaye, is a wonderful Christian woman who has a big heart for her community and ministers to many of their spiritual needs.  Mincaye cooked lunch for us and showed us around.  For Sebastião it was an opportunity to see how many of those whom he's met at church live.  Afterwards we went for a swim and then settled down for the night.  It gets dark around 6:30 everyday and there isn't any electricity in Tiweno so I wasn't sure how he'd do having to rely on using a flashlight and candles, but my anxiety was unfounded.  After a restful night of sleep and finishing up my checkups we left for Shell.  We were a little tired (and sunburned) but had a great time overall.

Mincaye, Tião (and his blow gun) and Jonas

One tired boy.