In traditional Waorani culture, everything had always been shared among tribal members. But now that outside merchandise was coming in, things were different. For the first time, Waoranis wanted to own their own things. Radios, clothes, and blowguns became coveted items and led to arguments and fights.
All of these factors led Jim Yost to write a startling report to the leaders of Wycliffe Bible Translators. At least it was startling to Rachel, and her eyes widened as she read:
Withdraw SIL workers from the protectorate for a time so that the Waorani can learn better to stand alone. Upon returning, workers should spread out among the settlements and not concentrate in Tiwaeno. More translation should be done in Limoncocha with Waorani assistants.…
Stop the migration from the ridge, at least until more land could be secured and newcomers could fend for themselves without becoming dependent on relatives in the protectorate.
For the first time in many years, Rachel was faced with the fact that Wycliffe viewed her as a temporary worker in the tribe, someone who could be recalled at any time. In her nearly twenty years of living among the Waorani, twelve of them alone, Rachel had come to see herself as one of them, not as an outsider. The Waorani were “her people,” and she wept to think of leaving them.
In the end, however, Rachel bowed to the wishes of Wycliffe leadership and removed herself from the tribe. She did not tell anyone how long she would be gone, because she did not know herself. Besides, she needed to leave for a short while anyway; her eyes were getting weaker to the point where she was almost blind. It was time for another operation.
With a heavy heart, Rachel climbed aboard a JAARS airplane that taxied down the runway that she had helped to build with her own hands. A hundred Waorani faces stared back at her as the plane gathered speed. Many of the people had tears streaming down their faces as the plane lifted off the ground. It was the most wrenching time Rachel could ever recall in her life.
Rachel flew to Quito and then on to Florida, where she had two successful eye operations. At sixty-five years of age she was feeling fit and well again and was ready to go home to Tiwaeno. She knew, however, that she could not. Instead she returned to Quito to live in a room at the Wycliffe/SIL headquarters. Rachel continued to want to go home to Tiwaeno but contented herself with working hard at her Bible translation work. In an interview with a biographer, she confided, “Twenty years ago I started out to translate the Bible into Auca. I’ve been sidetracked by helping the people. It seems I helped them too well, at the sacrifice of my prime work. My translations are way behind. People who started in other languages in other parts of the world years after me have long finished. Now I have to get my priorities right. I have to finish the work I started out to do, the work Nate and the others died for.”
Age did not make Rachel any more tactful, either. When the biographer reminded her that some people thought the Waorani would be better off if she had never gone into the tribe, she retorted, “Don’t believe it. There is no way that the Auca were going to be left alone. That is a lovely fairy story thought up by preservationists. With oilmen and settlers in the jungle, there would have been a bloodbath, and I know who would have come off the worst. Within a decade there would have been no Aucas and no language to preserve. These so-called do-gooders just don’t know what they’re talking about.… How many of them have been in the jungle for more than a week, if that, and studied the problems? They fly in, do a lightning so-called investigation, then fly out, talking nonsense. You have to live in the jungle and live with the day-to-day problems to know what the problems are.”
Rachel did return to the jungle briefly in June 1992 to mark the presentation of the entire New Testament in the Waorani language. All of her translation partners through the years, including Mary Sargent and Catherine Peeke, were there. The Saint clan turned out in large numbers too. Rachel was proud to show eight of her nieces and nephews Palm Beach and Tiwaeno, where she had spent so much of her life.
A new settlement named Tonampade (Tona’s village) had sprung up near Palm Beach and was now Dayuma’s home village. Rachel was overjoyed when she learned that Wycliffe/SIL had given her permission to return to the Waorani and live with Dayuma at Tonampade. She had just been diagnosed with cancer and had been given a limited amount of time to live. Whatever time was left, she wanted to spend it among her adopted family.
By November 1994 Rachel’s health had failed, and Rachel allowed herself to be airlifted to Quito, where her friends Jim and Sharon Smith offered to take care of her. Rachel knew that she would never return to the jungle again, and she spent much of her days reliving the special times she had spent with the Waorani. She thought about when she had first heard of Dayuma, and when she heard that other Waoranis had walked out of the jungle. She recalled Dayuma’s first halting prayer and the day Kimo told her they had talked God’s Carvings while she had been away. Then she remembered back to when she was eighteen years old on the ocean liner and recalled the vision she had seen of naked jungle people beckoning to her to come and tell them the Good News. That vision had come true, and Rachel was sure that she had lived the life God intended for her to live.
On November 11, 1994, feeling weak but purposeful, Rachel turned to Jim and Sharon and said, “Well, I guess I’d better go to heaven so you can get back to work.” Then she started to pray, alternating between Spanish and Waorani. Soon she squeezed Sharon’s hand and was gone.
Rachel’s nephew Steve flew from Florida to Quito to arrange a funeral service there. When the service was over, Rachel’s body was taken on one last flight over her beloved jungle to Tonampade. A hundred Waorani gathered on the landing strip to welcome Nimu home. Dayuma and Dawa broke into loud sobs as the plane touched down, and soon the others did also.
The Waoranis carried Rachel’s coffin to the church and held their own funeral service, after which Rachel was to be buried beside the church, a short distance from her brother Nate’s gravesite.
At the funeral service, Minkayi spoke last. “She called us her brothers. She told us how to believe. Now she is in heaven. Happy and laughing, she is in heaven. Only those who believe go to heaven.”
Komi, Dayuma’s husband, nodded and added, “God is building a house for all of us, and that’s where we’ll see Nimu again.”
Dawa joined in. “Nimu’s brother came, and killing him, we did not do well. Nimu came, and believing, we did well.”
