Corned Beef

The following is a read aloud story for August 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 people in a wild land called: “The Amazon Rain Forest”. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others who would like to get these stories. Use them for the glory of God. We are changing the pace a bit. For the next few months I want to share some true stories of people and events that have happened in the Amazon jungle. This story is bit comical. But if you are in a different world and a different culture…it does make you wonder about just what those long-legged white missionaries are really up too! Natives have studied the missionary’s culture for years and they probably could write books about the strange and weird things that missionary’s eat and do. This would be found in Eretete’s book!
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

He sat on the palm bark floor and watched the strangers as they were coming and going from their house. “Stranger” was the right word, these people got “stranger” every day! They don’t even speak an intelligible language like Culina, or Portuguese, but just that sneezing, sniffling, snorting language. Who could ever learn English? He was hearing the missionary shouting to his wife, “WASPS! WASPS! Look out for the wasps’ nest!” And it sounded like the long-legged white guy was blowing his nose or something!
Eretete (Eh-reh-teh-TEH) was a visitor to the Culina on the Jurua River. He and his wife, Nazare, (Nah-zah-REH) had traveled many weeks from their village in Peru. They had heard about the foreigners, who were living now with the Culina of Brasil, and he got there just in time to help with the work of clearing the forest for an airstrip. This was no small job, as giant trees had to be cut down by axe and then using the same axe you had to chop through them making short logs so you could finally roll the logs off to the side to let them dry in the sun and later be burned. Many, many sink holes had to be filled and tamped with dirt. The “howie”, the Culina name for trail, had to be leveled. Eretete came out for a few hours every day and sweat and strained and chopped until he had callouses on his hands. Meanwhile, the white people with the big straw hats would walk here and there checking everything and forever giving them advice that was hard to understand. This howie, they said, was so one of the big noisy birds could land on it and then fly off of it again! He had seen airplanes up close and they were pretty fascinating. To Eretete they looked like big tin milk cans with wings. He knew some of the Culina people had never seen an airplane up close in their lives…and they were always asking what the big birds were like. They were noisy creatures, that’s for sure. People crawled in the tin cans and went up in the clouds!
“Nazare, have you watched the white people?” Nazare was wrapping the potato root in leaves to let it roast on the coals. Yes, she was watching them closely too. “Nazare,” Eretete remarked, “did you notice that their little children have to wear cloth all around their bottoms? All the time!” He had no idea what diapers were all about. “It is a strange custom of theirs”, she replied, “they must collect the children’s droppings for some reason!” “Yes,” he replied, “I hope they don’t eat it! We just let our children go naked and drop their stuff wherever they want. That’s better!” They both laughed about how silly the white people were.
Day after day after day Eretete worked on the howie. Then came the day that a very old lady died and they had a major ceremony for her wrapping her in her hammock and burying her in an old canoe with a nailed down palm bark lid on it. Of course everyone kept alert and looked for her spirit to be walking around during the day. They were not sure where her spirit had gone or whether she was still trying to find the trail to the Culina afterworld. It was during this time that Eretete happened to see the big white foreigner open a can of meat. It was corned beef. But to Eretete it looked like a something that might be good to eat. “Can I buy a can of that meat for my dinner?” he asked one day, and the missionary gladly gave him a can. He was so curious about this meat that comes in a can. He went home and called Nazare and others to watch as he took his knife and dug out the meat from the can. Then everyone gasped. It was sort of stringy and looked an awful lot like ground human being! Everyone chattered. Were the white missionaries cannibals? Did they eat people? Yes, someone suggested, they dug up Grandma at night and they have ground her up and put her in a can! It was perfectly logical to the Indians. They just sat around and felt sick. Ground grandma. Disgusting.
The next day Eretete came to work and he acted a little angry and upset. “Eretete, did you like the corned beef? Did you eat it?” Then he just blurted out, “I know that was Grandma’s finger in that can! We could not eat Grandma! How could you do that to her?” The missionary just laughed and laughed. It was not funny. Would he eat more people? And for all the explanations about Corned Beef and how it comes from cows and is canned far away in Argentina…the people just could not accept it was not Grandma. From that day on the big white missionaries were very careful not to show the Indians canned meat. What in the world would they think of a can of Spam?
Could you picture Eretete’s predicament? Do you know people who do strange things that are hard
for you to understand? Every culture is different. Peoples of other countries and nationalities eat things that we would never eat. Have you ever eaten a dog? Did you know some people from Asia find dog quite delicious? I have watched the Indians eat a live big white fluffy grubworm…live and wiggling! It must not taste bad because they didn’t even make a face! But, I cannot yet eat a grubworm. Can you? In the book of Acts we learn about giving thanks to God and eating all kinds of strange foods. Acts 10:11-16 God showed Peter “all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and creeping things,and fowls of the air”. God ordered him to KILL AND EAT! Creeping things? No way! But if God asks you, or has to shout at you to just do it, then, JUST DO IT! Missionaries have had to learn this lesson all down through the years!