Finally, late one morning the radio crackled to life to deliver the message that the plane carrying Mintaka, Maengamo, Betty, and Valerie was on its way from Shandia. Dayuma raced to the airstrip, where she waited impatiently, her eyes constantly in motion scanning the horizon for any sign of the plane. After several minutes Rachel caught up to her at the side of the airstrip. They heard the aircraft before they saw it. As its engine droned across the jungle, Rachel laid her hand on Dayuma’s shoulder to both calm and encourage her.
Soon the plane was bouncing down the runway toward them. As it taxied to a halt in front of them, Rachel could see the excited dark faces of the two Waorani women pressed against the window. As soon as the engine stopped, the door of the aircraft swung open, and Mintaka and Maengamo jumped out and bounded over to Dayuma.
Mintaka and Maengamo both talked over each other as they greeted Dayuma. They stood in the shadow of the wing, talking furiously for several minutes before Rachel suggested that they move to the hut at the edge of the jungle where the women were going to stay.
Mintaka, Maengamo, and Dayuma sat in the shade of a kapok tree all afternoon talking. Rachel watched from a distance, amazed at how furious and animated their conversation was. As dusk approached, the three women lit a fire and roasted some yucca root to eat.
A thick blanket of darkness settled over the Oriente, and still the women talked on. Finally, after midnight their conversation trailed off, and Dayuma crawled into her hammock in the hut she shared with Rachel.
“You have talked a long time,” Rachel commented. “What have you learned from Mintaka and Maengamo about your tribe?”
“I have learned many sad things. There has been so much killing among my people. When one person is killed, that person’s death must be retaliated against. And so the killing never seems to stop,” Dayuma replied with a sigh. “I am sad, too, because my brother Nampa is dead. But a spear did not kill him. One day in the jungle an anaconda attacked him. The great snake crushed him badly. He was able to kill it and escape its grasp, but he was badly bruised and injured. For one month he lingered in much agony, and then he died. I am sad because he did not know God like I do.”
Rachel reached out and laid her hand on Dayuma’s arm to comfort her.
“But there is good news, too, Rachel, and it makes me happy,” Dayuma added.
“And what is the good news?” Rachel asked.
“My mother, Akawo, is not dead after all; she is alive! And for the twelve years I have been gone she has been searching for me. My people told her, ‘Give up this belief. Dayuma is dead. She went to the outside, and the cowadi have surely eaten her. That is what they do. They eat those who come to them from the jungle.’ But Akawo would not believe them. She believed that I was alive. She sent my brother Wawae to look for me, but he could not find me. Then she wanted to come to the outside to find me, but my uncle would not let her go. ‘The cowadi will eat you. You must not go,’ he said. But now Akawo has sent Mintaka and Maengamo to the outside to find me. And they have.”
Tears gathered in the corners of Rachel’s eyes as she listened to Dayuma’s words. She knew how tortured Dayuma had been over the years, worrying whether her mother was still alive. And now Dayuma knew that she was.
By the time Rachel crawled out of her hammock the following morning, Dayuma was already up and sitting beside the fire with Mintaka and Maengamo, engaged again in animated conversation. Rachel moved closer to hear what they were talking about, and what she heard surprised and delighted her. Dayuma was telling Mintaka and Maengamo about God.
“The God our grandfather used to tell us about—I know Him now!” Dayuma said. Then she proceeded to relate to them many of the Bible stories Rachel had told her.
For many days Dayuma, Mintaka, and Maengamo talked together. By late August the three of them were making plans to return to the jungle, since Mintaka and Maengamo had promised Akawo that they would return when the kapok was ripe.
Rachel was delighted by this turn of events, and she asked about the possibility of their taking her and Betty Elliot, who had made great progress in learning the Waorani language, with them. But Dayuma refused to let them go along. “It is too dangerous. I myself go not knowing what will become of me. Wait. We will return for you,” she told Rachel.
Dayuma even asked Rachel if she could leave Sam with her, fearing that it would be too dangerous for him to go with her.
On September 2, 1958, Dayuma, Mintaka, and Maengamo set out for Waorani territory. After saying a prayer for their safety and success on the journey, Rachel, with Sam at her side, and Betty and her daughter Valerie stood and watched the three Waorani women walk off into the jungle. Soon the women were no longer visible as the dense foliage swallowed them up like some great monster. They had left on a full moon, and Dayuma promised that she would return on the next full moon. “I hope and pray that they are successful in their mission and that they will return to us soon,” Rachel muttered to herself and to Betty.
Following the women’s departure, Betty and Valerie returned to Shandia, and Rachel and Sam went to Lago Agria to stay with some Wycliffe friends.
Several days after Dayuma, Mintaka, and Maengamo had set out, an MAF plane with Betty aboard flew over Waorani territory to see whether they could spot the three women on the ground.
“I saw no sign of them on the ground,” Betty reported to Rachel by radio.
“We’ll just have to keep praying and trusting God,” Rachel replied.
“I will take another flight over their territory in a week and see if I can spot them then,” Betty said.
Rachel spent an anxious week continuing with her Waorani translation of various Bible stories and entertaining Sam. Finally, late one afternoon the radio crackled to life, and Rachel raced over to hear what Betty had to report. Betty had made another pass over Waorani territory and unfortunately still had not spotted Dayuma, Mintaka, or Maengamo, or any other Waoranis for that matter.
After she had finished talking to Betty on the radio, Rachel sat outside under a palm tree as the setting sun turned the clouds that hovered above the Oriente into puffs of gold. But she hardly even noticed the sunset. With her thoughts far away in the jungle in Waorani territory, she was wondering what might have happened to Dayuma. Was her friend alive, or had she been speared to death like so many other members of her tribe? Rachel wished she knew what had happened to Dayuma, but she did not, and she would just have to wait and pray and hope.
Chapter 12
Watching the Vision Come True
It was midmorning September 25, 1958, when the radio at Lago Agria again crackled to life. Rachel immediately ran to it just in time to hear Betty calling from Arajuno, saying, “Come in, Rachel. Over.”
“I’m here, Betty. Go ahead. Over,” Rachel said into the radio mouthpiece.
“Wonderful news,” Betty exclaimed. “Dayuma has come out of the jungle with Mintaka and Maengamo, another woman, and a handful of girls and boys. They are inviting you and me and Valerie to come and live with them. Over.”
Rachel sat down abruptly. “Thank God they’re safe,” she replied. “Is Dayuma’s mother with her? Over.”
“I don’t think so,” Betty replied. “But it’s all a bit of a jumble at the moment, and Dayuma wants to talk to you. When can you come? Over.”
“I’ll start packing right now! Over,” Rachel laughed, jubilant that things appeared to be working out and astounded that ten Waoranis had trusted Dayuma enough to risk exposing themselves to foreigners.
As soon as the radio conversation was over, Rachel called Sam and told him the good news, and then they started packing.
Soon after lunch a Wycliffe airplane picked up Rachel and Sam and flew them to Arajuno, where they had a joyous reunion with Dayuma. They all talked long into the night. Rachel was particularly relieved to learn that Dayuma had convinced her Uncle Gikita to return the Quichua widow who had been taken captive. The group had escorted the woman out of the jungle and taken her to her home village on their way to Arajuno.
On October 3, Rachel wrote to her parents:
You have probably heard by now that Dayuma, along with Mintaka and Maengamo, plus one of Naenkiwi’s wives and baby, and three girls and two boys arrived at Arajuno last Thursday.… Dayuma was in the lead, singing, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know’—in English! By the time I got here, she was pretty keyed up, and it has taken me a while to get the picture in focus. She brought an invitation for Betty and me to return with them and has given orders about building a house for us.… She just told me tonight about her trip.
Rachel put her pen down and thought. It was almost impossible to put into words all of the things Dayuma had recounted about the trip back to her people. Dayuma had told Rachel that it had been a long and difficult walk for her, mainly because she was no longer used to hacking her way through thick jungle, clambering over logs, and shimmying down muddy slopes. By the time she reached the bank of the Tiwaeno River, Dayuma was exhausted. Maengamo offered to go and find Dayuma’s mother and bring her to the riverbank. For two tense days Dayuma and Mintaka waited for Maengamo to return. And then, just as it was getting dark on the second day, Dayuma heard the unmistakable yodel of her mother. Akawo and Dayuma were both overcome with emotion as they embraced each other. Then with a nervous giggle, Akawo poked at Dayuma’s clothes and commented on how tall she had grown.
After it got dark, Dayuma explained, two more members of her extended family arrived. And over the next several days, more than fifty adults and children from Dayuma’s extended family gathered at the makeshift camp on the bank of the Tiwaeno River. Everyone marveled that Dayuma had been treated well by the outsiders and had all sorts of questions for her. Why hadn’t the cowadi killed her and eaten her? What else did they eat? How were wood-bees (airplanes) made? And was it true that Dayuma had been across a great water wider than the Curaray River?
Dayuma spent hours every night describing her experiences as best she could to her relatives, though the Waorani language did not have names for many of the things she talked about. No one had ever seen a car or any other mechanical vehicle, other than an airplane overhead, or even imagined that such things existed. Dayuma told how many foreigners lived in very big groups, so big that they did not even know each other’s names, and that they did not walk on trails. Instead they sat down inside “wood-bees that go on the ground” and these wood-bees went very fast in large groups all going the same way. She also told them that foreigners loved to “carve on wood” (write on paper) and that Rachel spent many hours each day doing just that. She explained that Rachel was doing this because she wanted to carve God’s words on wood so that the Waorani could see them anytime they wanted.
This idea of God’s wanting to give them carvings amazed Dayuma’s family, and they plied Dayuma with more questions. Dayuma answered their questions as best she could and then countered with a question of her own. Would her family welcome Rachel and Betty if she brought them into the jungle to meet them? After Dayuma assured everyone that Rachel and Betty truly were “good foreigners,” the family agreed that the two women would be safe if Dayuma went and brought them back with her.
It took Rachel and Betty ten days to gather everything they would need to enter and live in the jungle. While they planned to eat the jungle diet of manioc, monkey meat, bananas, and various roots, they did pack tea and coffee to take with them. Betty also packed a large supply of powdered milk for Valerie to drink, as well as several notebooks, a camera, and rolls of film. The biggest items Rachel packed to take with her were a portable typewriter and a two-way radio, which would be their only way of communicating with the outside world. In addition, arrangements were made for Sam to attend boarding school in Quito, where the Bible Missionary Society had agreed to pay his tuition.
