Trinidad

As we bounced along to the south on the twin-engine plane, I could see the jungle slowly giving way to tropical savanna that spread out like a calm, emerald sea. Occasionally we could see large plumes of smoke where the locals were helping expand the savanna by slashing and burning the jungle canopy. In the late afternoon, the plane touched down on the concrete runway in Trinidad, capital and largest city of El Beni.

We piled our luggage into the back of a taxi and rode into the city to find our apartment. It wasn’t much to look at: a small room at the back of a concrete courtyard. Of the four sides of the room, only two were actually wall. The other two, facing the courtyard and fronting the bathroom, were wood frames to which green mosquito netting had been tacked. On the pale-blue plaster walls, carpenter ants had constructed a network of tunnels.

The landlady was an elderly woman who apparently was a prominent citizen of the community, though I never asked why. Perhaps 75, she always dressed impeccably, her hair always styled and her face made up. She was kind to us, but mostly we interacted with her daughter, a jovial, rather obese woman with dark curly hair and an infectious laugh who spent most of her time in the kitchen, which was just an open area with a stove at the side of the courtyard.

In the middle of the courtyard was a concrete cistern. All the rain gutters from the house emptied into it, and from there an electric pump provided our water, which always came out a cloudy orange, the same color as the soil. We had a clay water filter, which was essentially a large clay pot with a porous bottom, which drained into another pot. As both of these pots were orange, the water still came out looking like weak orange kool-aid. We boiled the water just in case and then put it in the fridge so that we would have cold water to drink.

The bathroom was something out of a horror movie: teal, mildew-covered stucco walls surrounded a toilet set into a concrete floor, a shower head in the middle of the ceiling. There were no windows and no light, so even in the light of day, you showered pretty much in the dark. Going to the bathroom at night was a scary proposition because you never knew what would be in there. I bought a flashlight so I could at least see, and I was always amazed at the company I had: large spiders, scorpions, lizards, mice, and sometimes snakes all made an appearance in that bathroom. But at least the toilet flushed.

The back of the house overlooked a swamp, so the air was thick with mosquitos. That first evening, I opened the door to go into our room, and Cannon said, “No, don’t go in there, at least not yet.”

He took an old-fashioned fumigator (one of those pump sprayers you see in old cartoons) from a nail on the wall and went in, pumping furiously all over the room.

“Now we wait,” he said as he hung the fumigator back on the nail.

We sat at the table and read for an hour or so, and then Cannon announced we could go into our room.

“First, get the bugs off the beds,” he said, brushing a significant number of dead bugs from his bed onto the floor, which was also covered with dead bugs. Then he retrieved a broom and swept the bugs into a large pile in the center of the room. I held the dustpan while he swept, and then we dumped the bugs into the trash. We never could kill all of the bugs, and I was often awakened in the middle of the night by the sensation of something crawling on me. But, Cannon said, who knows how bad it would have been if we hadn’t killed them?

“Let me show you the best feature of the house,” he said the next morning. We walked out the front door, and he pointed across the street to a small sign: “Distribuidor de Refrescos Coca-Cola.” Each night before bed, we would buy a couple of liter bottles and then bring them home and put them in the fridge so we would have something cold to drink with lunch. At one point, we figured that each of us was drinking three liters of Coke a day.

“But it’s OK,” said Cannon. “I’ve been told that Bolivian Coke has no caffeine in it.” I didn’t care either way, but I doubted very much that this was true.

The branch in Trinidad met in a small chapel that the church had built a couple of years before. The outside of the was red brick, and there were floodlights along the eaves to keep it well lighted at night. Every morning there would be a pile of black beetles underneath each light; during the night, the beetles would be attracted by the light, and when they flew too close to the hot bulb, they would be burned and drop to the concrete below in a pile. The custodian, who was also the branch secretary, would sweep each pile off the concrete and into the grass.

The branch was small, perhaps twenty members strong, but they were really good people and were happy to have us there. The custodian unlocked the doors and let us into the chapel, where plastic folding chairs stood in rows on a wood parquet floor. At the appointed hour, the custodian began the meeting, and soon we were listening to a young boy talk about how much he was looking forward to serving a mission.

After church, I asked the custodian where the branch president was. “I don’t know,” he said. “He doesn’t come all that often.”

“What about his counselors?”

He shrugged. “It’s mostly just me.”

After church we visited the branch president at his home. A chubby, balding, bearded man, he sat in a wicker chair in a tank top and shorts, sipping a Coke.

I asked him how the branch was doing. “I think things are going just fine,” he said. “It’s really hot today. I can’t wear my garments when it’s this hot.” Apparently he was one of the few Bolivian Mormons who had been to the temple in Brazil.

We told him we were there to help him strengthen the branch, and he smiled and said, “Whatever you need from me, you have. A su servicio, hermanos.” He pointed to a red motorcycle parked in the corner of the room. “If you ever need the moto, you can use it anytime.”

We thanked him and left.

Back at the house, it was dinner time. As always, our cook, Shirley, brought out steaming bowls of hot soup, which is about the last thing you want to eat in the sweltering heat. If I rested my elbow on the table, a puddle of sweat soon formed. It was miserable. Occasionally she made masaco, a traditional food in the Beni. She would fry plantains or yuca and then place it hot into a large mortar and mash it up with a huge wooden pestle. Then she would add dried beef (charqui, or jerky), some cheese, and then add some hot oil to make it all a little crispy around the edges. I loved masaco, but Cannon despised it.

Shirley was always trying to help me with my Spanish pronunciation. She said that I mostly sounded like a Kolla, but some words I sounded very much like a gringo. I remember sitting with her at siesta while she made me repeat the word “alli” what seemed like a hundred times until she was satisfied that I had it right.

She told me that she really liked our church, agreed with a lot of the teachings, and had once wanted to join, but the bad example of some of the missionaries she had known had soured her on the idea. But like so many other Bolivian women, she had taken us under her wing and was as caring and protective to us as a mother would be.

It was remarkable that I was now going on two months without any illnesses other than a lot of mosquito bites. Cannon and I were still running in the mornings, and I was up to 70 pushups each morning before my shower. I was starting to gain back some of the weight I had lost. But I could tell I was beginning to burn out on missionary work. I was glad that President Nichols had told us not to knock doors because I wasn’t sure I had it in me anymore. In the end, we decided that we’d do a couple hours of door knocking every day to see if we could find more people to teach than we were getting from the members. It was hot and miserable work, and I was really tired of it.