Well, this story happened several weeks ago here at PQQ, on a weekend that turned out to be rather unexpectedly exciting. It all started with a Friday night campus wide game called Bible Smugglers. The object of the game, as you may have guessed, was pretending to smuggle Bibles into the persecuted churches named North Korea and Libya. So the students were the Bible smugglers and got very creative with places to hide their Bibles, and the adults were one of the persecuted churches or drop off points for the smuggled Bibles, a Bible distributor, Secret Police, or jail keeper for the Bible Smugglers caught by the Secret Police. I was a member of the elite Secret Police and was responsible for catching Bible Smugglers red-handed and discovering where they hid their Bibles. I could use only 10 yes or no questions and then had to give the appropriate “punishment” to my captured Bible Smugglers depending on what I found. The kids LOVED the game and ran all over the school campus in the dark smuggling their Bibles and trying to avoid being captured and then having their Bibles discovered by the Secret Police. As for me, let’s just say that that I found out being a big, mean and angry, Secret Police officer bent on torturing Christians for possessing Bibles doesn’t really fit my personality. I did the best I could to be convincing, but the Bible Smugglers I caught got off easy… I only found 2 Bibles on the kids I stopped and sent those Smugglers to jail while the others did a few pushups for me and continued on their merry Bible smuggling ways. After the game was over, it was quite late, but with it being Friday night I joined a visiting family at the guest house next to mine for a noisy game of PIT. About our 5th or 6th round close to eleven pm, we all heard a loud shouting coming from the river. The shouting was soon recognized as the Portuguese word for help repeated over and over again. With the time of night being well after the campus generator had stopped, our best sources of light were mostly small flashlights which were obviously not going to be much help finding and rescuing people. But we grabbed our flashlights anyway, got the men in charge of the campus out of their beds and ran down to the school dock on the Amazon River to see what all the noise was all about. A strong, loud voice continued yelling for help along with saying something about being in the water, but as hard as we tried, no one could see anything or anyone. The voice drifted past our dock and was quickly going down the river with the current, which gets super strong just past the school. So two of the men with a bunch high school boys looking for adventure untied the big school boat, started the engine and lights, and headed down the river to see if they could find the source of the cries for help. The boat rescue party was sent after much discussion though, because we at the school had recently been warned about river pirates in the area who had been stealing things and hijacking boats along the shore. The pirates apparently use all kinds of devious schemes to steal their loot and the possibility that this was a group of pirates doing a little “HELP” routine to lure boats out to them in the dark dominated the lively discussion on the dock. This resulted in appropriate measures of self-defense being carried along by the rescuers and much excitement for those anxiously waiting on land for the rescue boat’s return. This awaited return was rather anticlimactic though, because while the men in our boat continued to hear calls for help all the way down the river, the shouting seemed to be going twice the speed of our attempted rescue and our guys were never able to catch up or even get close enough to see the cause for all the noise. So the twenty or so people watching from the dock finally went to bed, each with their own idea of what had just taken place, the pirate theory being the most popular I think.
Saturday morning soon came with the sun shining bright and hot. It seemed that almost anyone who wasn’t at the dock the night before had slept through the entire event and had to be filled in on the details and theories. To validate our stories, unusual river traffic started to go by the school: police, fire, and river rescue boats, which I was told were called bombeiros. Then a police/military helicopter began following the river on our side of the bank, circling around the school a few times, and soon landing in a small clearing of trees not far from our boat dock. The arrival of a large helicopter on the school campus was a huge excitement alone without all the drama from the night before, so of course all the students and curious staff came running to see what was going on. I even left my faithful post of washing dishes in the dining hall to follow the crowd and not miss out on a single juicy detail. After the police and military personnel unloaded from the helicopter and had a get together with the firefighters/rescue divers who had just tied their boats at our dock as well, we got what I believe is the official story. Late Friday night a boat with 8 people hit something in the middle of the river upstream from the school and broke in two pieces. Half the people went with one part of the boat and half were clinging to the other piece. Three or four of those people floated close by our dock on their way past the school and that is when we heard the yelling for help. Most of them were rescued farther down the river, but sadly one person let go of their boat half and tried to swim for shore. The river current is extremely fast and strong, so the lone swimmer never got safely to land. And this is why the Brazilian search and rescue team had their boats, divers, and helicopter out combing the area. They enjoyed our huge audience and all the attention I think, because the helicopter crew got pictures of themselves with all of us, let the little kids climb in the back seat of the helicopter, and had the older students and staff get up close to the helicopter for pictures or just to satisfy our curiosity. They were parked at the school for a long time, doing what appeared to be just visiting, but I’m sure official business was being carried out at the same time. Then most of the rescue team took off in the helicopter, waving down at their newest fan club. The divers also left in their bright red boats and with that the excitement of the weekend was over as well. The Bible Smugglers game was done, the Pirates were only great rumors this time, and the Bombeiros were gone with the helicopter. But stay tuned for the next exciting ADVENTURES IN THE AMAZON…
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