When Kimo had finished speaking, Rachel translated his words for the president.
Rachel watched as President Ibarra shook his head in amazement. “Amazing, simply amazing,” the president said.
The following morning Uncle Cam told Rachel that the president had talked about the change in Kimo all through dinner the night before. President Ibarra was impressed with the work of Wycliffe in his country and was particularly fascinated with the work Rachel had undertaken among the Waorani.
After three days at Limoncocha, Rachel, Dayuma, Kimo, and Dawa were flown back to Arajuno, from where they trudged back into Waorani territory. Kimo had been most impressed with the airplane ride from Arajuno to Limoncocha and back, and as they walked, he talked to Rachel about building a landing strip at the settlement beside the Tiwaeno River. Of course it would be a daunting task to carve a six-hundred-foot strip out of the virgin jungle, but Rachel assured Kimo that she thought it would be a good thing to do.
Back at the settlement, everyone else thought an airstrip where a wood-bee could land might be a good thing, but everyone also recognized the enormity of the task. Rachel received some unexpected help, however, in encouraging the tribe to start work on the project. A successful hunting expedition had just returned with many wild pigs the hunters had speared. But since the Waorani had no way to preserve meat, the pigs would have to be eaten quickly. Rachel talked the women into preparing a series of feasts for any man who would help clear the landing strip. The idea was a huge success, and everyone soon joined in in clearing the jungle. Rachel was amazed at the progress the workers quickly made. Every now and then she would pause from her digging and clearing and watch the group of Waoranis working together. As she did so, her thoughts went back to Nate. How she wished he were alive to see such a scene.
When the airstrip was finished, Rachel, Betty, and Dayuma talked among themselves about the safety of a pilot flying into the village. Few of the Waoranis had had any contact with the outside world, other than Rachel and Betty, and they were still deeply suspicious of outsiders. Bringing a white man into the village in an airplane concerned Rachel. Would the people attack the plane and strip it as they had done to Nate’s plane at Palm Beach? Would one of them secretly make plans to spear the pilot? No one knew for sure. The three women prayed about the situation, and they felt that the time was right to invite Don Smith, the JAARS pilot in the area, to land his plane on the new airstrip.
It was an historic moment as the airplane slipped below tree level and touched down on the new landing strip. Rachel and Dayuma hugged and laughed as Don waved to everyone from the cockpit.
Don delivered supplies and mail to Rachel and Betty, and then Dyuwi offered a prayer in honor of the occasion. “Our Father in Heaven, we thank You for bringing this day when our people and outsiders can meet together in peace,” he prayed.
Rachel said a big amen to his prayer.
As she watched the airplane take off, Rachel imagined all the ways the new airstrip would help the Waorani. They were now a mere ten minutes by air from Arajuno, thirty from Shell Mera, and thirty from Limoncocha. Now a sick Waorani could be at the medical clinic at Shell Mera in a matter of minutes, not the days it would take slogging through the jungle to get there.
The JAARS airplane soon became an indispensable part of life at the Tiwaeno settlement. Other than Don Smith, the pilot, the first “outside” visitor to be flown in was Catherine Peeke, who had come to Ecuador with Rachel and had accompanied Rachel to Hacienda Ila, where they first met Dayuma. Catherine and fellow Wycliffe worker Mary Sargent had come to Ecuador wanting to translate the Bible into the Záparo language but, after a long and extensive search, had found only ten Záparo speakers in the country. Western diseases had all but killed off the once robust Záparo Indians. After learning that the number of Záparo Indians was so few, Catherine was now in search of a new tribe to work among. In the meantime, she told Rachel, she was studying for her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Indiana and planned to write her dissertation on Waorani grammar. Hearing this made Rachel very happy. Grammar was Rachel’s most difficult area of language study, and she welcomed Catherine’s insights and advice.
Another visitor to the settlement was Dr. Everett Fuller from the medical clinic at Shell Mera. Dr. Fuller came to Tiwaeno to hold a health clinic among the people of the settlement. Dayuma was very excited when she heard that the doctor was coming. “Can he enter the believers in the water?” she asked Rachel.
Rachel agreed that it would be a good idea to ask whether anyone wanted to be baptized. Dawa, Kimo, Komi, Nimonga, Gimari, Gikita, and three other adults all indicated that they were ready to take that step. It was a wonderful day for Rachel. In describing the event in a letter to her parents she wrote, “For me—one who has watched the expression of Auca faces turn from resentment to friendship, from unbelief to belief—the biggest blessing was to see the sweet radiance of their faces as they came up from the waters. Our hearts rejoiced in this answer to the sacrifice and the prayers of many people.”
The baptism was quickly followed by another Christian ceremony—a wedding. Dayuma and Komi were married with all the usual Waorani celebration, with the addition of some new traditions—prayer and a short sermon.
Soon after Dayuma’s wedding, Betty announced that she and Valerie would soon be leaving the village. Based on personality, Catherine was a much better fit with Rachel, so Betty had decided to leave so that Catherine could take her place and become Rachel’s permanent partner. The transition was made, though Rachel soon found herself alone at Tiwaeno for some time when Catherine returned to the United States to finish studying for her doctorate.
Still, there was plenty to keep Rachel busy. By now the nucleus of believers at the settlement had built themselves a thatched church—God’s speaking-house—where each evening they held meetings, which Rachel attended. The translation work was also moving ahead. At times it felt to Rachel that she was making fast progress, and at other times she wished that Catherine would hurry back to speed things along.
When news arrived that her eighty-four-year-old father had died, Rachel did not feel that she could go home for the funeral. A new danger was looming. Big oil companies, including Texaco and Gulf Oil, were flying airplanes overhead, surveying the Curaray River basin from the air. Rachel knew that this could mean only one thing: they were preparing to invade the jungle once again in a quest for black gold—oil.
Chapter 15
The Downriver People
In January 1964 news of a new Waorani attack spread around the world. This time the attackers were not Dayuma’s immediate relatives but their distant downriver cousins, who lived along the Napo River. Rachel could only guess at their motives for the attack, but it seemed fairly certain that it had to do with the twenty-seven oil companies now vying for rights to drill for oil in the Oriente.
Although their own lands were threatened, Dayuma and her clan were greatly concerned about what might happen to their downriver kin. They realized that if the downriver people were not reached with the gospel soon, they would continue their attacks on foreigners. It would then be only a matter of time before the big oil companies lost patience with them and killed all of the downriver tribe.
In response to this escalating situation, Gikita and Dyuwi wanted to visit the downriver tribe and tell them about Jesus. Rachel felt, however, that this would be an unsafe course of action, and she prayed hard that God would open up some other way to make contact. Her prayers were answered in the form of a radio message from a remote jungle settlement. The settler on the radio informed Rachel that he had shot a teenage girl. She was seriously injured and had been wearing nothing but a string around her waist and big balsa wood earplugs. Rachel knew immediately that the girl must be a Waorani, and she radioed Shell Mera for a plane to come and pick her up and take her to the remote settlement.
When Rachel arrived at the outpost, the teenage girl was running a high temperature and looked very scared. She whimpered when Rachel came near her. Rachel could see that the settler and his wife had bandaged her side where the bullets had entered, but blood was seeping through the bandage.
“Two bullets,” the settler said. “We came across her and a man in a canoe. The man threw spears at us, and we shot back.”
“Let me alone to talk with the girl,” Rachel said.
The settler and his wife nodded and left the room.
“My name is Nimu,” Rachel said soothingly in Waorani. “Father God sent me to live with your people in Tiwaeno. Dayuma is my adopted sister.”
“Dayuma!” the girl exclaimed as she tried to sit up. “Dayuma lives? I thought the outsiders shot her and ate her many seasons ago. They shot me. Are they going to eat me now?”
“No one is going to eat you,” Rachel replied as she pulled a thermometer from her bag. “We all live in peace at Tiwaeno, and we want you all to come and live with us. What is your name?”
“Oncaye,” the girl answered. “Titada is my mother.”
Rachel nodded. “Now put this under your tongue,” she said. “It is not going to hurt you.”
Oncaye obediently opened her mouth, and Rachel inserted the thermometer under her tongue. The mercury rose to 102 degrees.
Rachel walked outside and spoke to the MAF pilot who had flown her to the remote outpost. “If there’s any chance of saving her life, we have to get her back to the hospital at Shell Mera and get those bullets out,” she said.
The pilot sprang into action, and soon Oncaye was taking her first airplane ride.
At Shell Mera the medical staff were able to safely remove the bullets from Oncaye’s side, and Oncaye began a long period of recovery. As she began to feel stronger, Oncaye told Rachel more about her life. As it turned out, she had four older sisters who had fled the tribe years before and whom she thought were long dead. Rachel had the joy of telling her that all four of her sisters, including Dawa, were alive and safe and living at Tiwaeno. Rachel quickly sent a plane to Tiwaeno to collect Oncaye’s sisters and bring them back to Shell Mera so that Oncaye could see them for herself.
The sisters were astonished when they arrived at Shell Mera and came face-to-face with Oncaye. They talked excitedly among themselves, and the conversation soon shifted to how the hearts of the Tiwaeno Waoranis had changed after hearing God’s Carvings.
When Oncaye was well enough, Rachel took her back to Tiwaeno, where everyone welcomed her warmly.
“We do not kill our babies when they cry,” the people there told her. “Doing well, we speak of the God who made the world.”
Gikita was moved when he heard Oncaye’s stories, especially when she told how her people were planning to attack the oil workers.
“We must go to them soon,” Gikita said. “They must hear God’s Carvings before they die.”
In February 1965 four Waoranis—Dyuwi, Tona, Oncaye, and her sister Boika—set out from Tiwaeno to find their downriver relatives. Seven days later they were back at Tiwaeno. Oncaye reported that her bullet wounds had opened up again and a tree had fallen on Tona’s leg, making it impossible for them to go on.
Still, the group decided that another attempt to reach the downriver people should be made. Dyuwi, Minkayi, and Gikita, three of the Palm Beach killers, set out. This time, though, torrential rain and subsequent flooding turned them back. Their arrival back in Tiwaeno was a bitter blow to the Christians there, and the three men resolved to set out again as soon as possible to reach the downriver people.
In the meantime Rachel had finished translating the book of Mark into Waorani. Proudly she sent the translation off to Mexico City, where the American Bible Society had promised to print it. The first shipment of the printed copies of Mark’s gospel was flown into Tiwaeno on Good Friday 1965. Accompanying the precious cargo on the airplane were Philip and Steve Saint, Nate’s two sons, now aged eleven and fourteen.
