A Visit from Dad

Leaving members of one’s family to their own devices in a foreign country is considered generally impolite…but that depends on where that family has traveled. My father, on the way to a couple of missions leadership conferences in Senegal and Ghana, chose to fly to Africa via a river island in the Amazon Rainforest.

My Peace Corps colleagues thought I was crazy when I told them I had planned simply to give my father instructions, and reward him, should he successfully make it upriver, by meeting him at the Diitabiki airstrip. My dad has traveled so often that I probably did not even need to give him any instructions for him to appear in my village, but flying to the city was well worth spending an extra day with him. In the city, we went to the Paramaribo Zoo, so that if he missed an anaconda, capybara, or giant anteater in the jungle, he would be able to say he had seen one in Suriname.

On Wednesday, we flew a hundred miles into the jungle in a Cessna Caravan. In flight, I pointed out the magnificent spread of hilly Guiana forest that inspired Green Mansions, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, though nymphs and dinosaurs remained unseen on our journey. Upon landing we paddled the Endurance from the airstrip to Diitabiki Island and dropped off our backpacks at Jungle Hall. We then took an invitation from my neighbor, Stephen, to go bow-fishing. That first evening, we caught thirty-six Waa-waa, bottom-feeding fish, and cooked them over a wood fire on a stone by the riverside. After a card game by candlelight, reminiscent of the nights without electricity during my childhood in Ethiopia, my father and I tied up our hammocks. Though he did not swear off beds as I have, my dad slept soundly his first night in a hammock.

On Thursday we encountered Ndjuka culture. I gave my father a crash course on protocol before our audience with the paramount chief, who was ecstatic to meet my dad. In fact, I had never seen him so animated. Gaanman Garzon thought it magnificent that my father could experience part of my life in Diitabiki, gave a discourse on the meaning of family, and chuckled over the fact that my parents had produced a mere two children. Later, while walking through the village, we sat in a traditional community meeting discussing the upcoming Ndjuka holiday. The meeting included formal debate over settled matters for the purpose of heightening public interest in the event and contained a long circular discussion before reaching the true purpose of the conference: the appointing of a logistics committee for the celebration.

We went fishing again in the evening, and my dad got a strike by, what I believe was a large peacock bass, which followed his lure before it saw us and swam away. It started raining heavily while we fought to regain the fish’s attention. That night, my dad watched me dispatch a huge tarantula that had tried to use my house as shelter from the rain.

The next morning, we rose with the sun and paddled the Endurance around the island, as I usually do several times a week. We finally completed our tour of the village in the morning, for adventure had delayed us in every previous attempt.

On Saturday, we had a relaxing morning. In keeping with tradition we cooked pancakes and made Ethiopian coffee. The plane came a little early. As we were walking to the canoe to make our way to the airstrip, we heard the Cessna land. We paddled across quickly and jogged to the plane, but thankfully, it took a few minutes to unload the arriving plane before I bid my father farewell.