Dodo’s Delimma

The following is a read aloud story for March 2006. This is one of a series of stories especially written for Awana Clubs, home-schoolers, Sunday school classes, VBS, mission conferences, or just the fun of reading about children in a wild land called: “The Amazon Rain Forest”. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others who have children and would like to get these stories. Use them for the glory of God. People now and then write and ask me…did you write that story or find it somewhere else? Yes, I confess, it sort of stews in my head and then boils over into a story. I honestly DO write them from scratch. Well, actually, from “bones”. I hear a story and it is from that “bone” that I construct the entire dinosaur! Like the smart dinosaurologists do. This month’s story is mostly fiction, but I did hear once something very close to it. How the Culinas in one part of the jungle first met civilized people about 80 years ago!
The old story teller, Douemi (Dough-way-MEE)
(Missionary/cultural observer with the Amazon tribes for many years)
Serving with New Tribes Mission, Sanford, Florida

Dodo (dough-DOUGH) was not a dodo (the clumsy, flightless, extinct birds related to pigeons). No, she certainly was not! She stood up from her earthen stove and turned the meat on the coals. She had no recollection of how fire was ever introduced to her people, but she wasn’t a dodo…she knew perfectly good and well you had to keep that fire going and burning and NEVER let it die out!! She had no matches. She had no cigaret lighter. She didn’t even have flint to make sparks…or sticks to rub together until they smoked and burst into flames. She just had fire…and she had to NEVER let that fire go out. NEVER! She rubbed the black ashes on her body. It seemed to help keep the bugs from biting. She wore no clothes. Who needed clothes? None of her people wore clothes, but you did have to do something when the bugs were bad. So, there Dodo stood putting another stick on the fire and looking for all the world like a long-haired black spook. Her world was very simple and very complicated too…especially if that fire ever burned out!
“Dodo!” came an excited cry as her husband entered the big grass house they lived in. “Woman, we have seen the ‘strange ones’ and they are very, very scary. They walk funny. They talk funny. They have hanging stuff on them (clothes) and you can’t see their skins! Are they people? What are they doing in our land?” The news of the foreigners getting ever closer to their village was indeed scary. Dodo and her people had never seen people with clothes on and they just assumed every strange people would eventually attack them and kill them. It was indeed disturbing.
Frightened by the report, the villagers agreed to move farther up the little river they lived on. At least two days farther. And so the months passed and no one saw “the people who wear big leaves”. The day came when Dodo and her family had gone deep in the forest looking for pupunha.,..a palm fruit that is delicious when boiled. The fruit grew in large clusters far up tall palm trees and was red and yellow. They had brought fire with them…down through the years they had learned about special types of wood that will smolder and never burst into flame unless fanned. So the Indians carried these smoldering, smoking sticks on their fruit forages. Dodo got a fire going on the ground and then she lay down in her wild cotton hammock and it was so pleasant that she was almost asleep. People were around other fires and eating. They were all unaware that some hunters had come to that area and smelled the campfire smoke. They were Brasilian settlers and had wanted to make peace with the wild Indians because they feared their arrows and spears. And one of the hunters was especially bold. He decided to just march right into the wild Indian camp and make friends! And that was how it happened…entirely without any warning…Dodo was in her hammock nearly asleep and suddenly a wild looking man wearing leaves came into the camp shouting out in a language no one understood!
Dodo screamed. People ran headlong into the forest grabbing sticks and whatever they could to use in self defense. Dodo screamed again and made a flying leap to get out of her hammock, but her foot had slipped between the wild cotten strings and she sprawled all silly like with her foot entangled and not letting her go. Frantically she tried to free herself, but the big brown-faced leaf covered man was right there shouting at her. He, of course, was shouting, “WE ARE FRIENDS! DON’T BE AFRAID! WE ARE FRIENDS!” But she only heard his roar and she shook with fear. Her people had not gone far and were watching from the cover of the forest. They were scared too, but they did not want to leave Dodo to the mercy of these leaf monsters. And as time passed Dodo calmed down. The monster gave her some food he had and continued shouting those unintelligible words, “WE ARE FRIENDS!”. And finally the men just sat down and talked and Dodo realized they wouldn’t hurt her. And that was how the Culina became friends with the first Brasilian settlers to appear in their area of the big woods. From that day on life began to change drastically and forever. Indians now wear the big leaves themselves. And they have real “fire water”(querosene), and matches…so making a fire is easy! But the biggest change came within a generation…Culinas began trusting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior!
Fire and clothes. You take those things for granted, don’t you? Can you imagine living without fire and clothes? There are people today who live without clothes, but very few without fire. How did our first parents, Adam and Eve, live back in the Garden of Eden? Very much like the Culinas before they came into civilization. Remember the story of Adam and Eve making clothes from leaves for themselves? Gen.3:7? Do you think “foreigners” in your school or play ground are “weird” because they don’t dress like you or talk like you? Jesus came into our world to save sinners…and He wants to save sinners of all cultures, races, colors, and languages. He loves the naked Indian in his primitive forest home as well as the best dressed kid in your class!! Will you be a FRIEND to those who are so different from you?