Leticia Part 2

On Tuesday, I was supposed to go on this jungle trip with two other people, one from the UK and one from Canada. I met them the night before and wasn’t very excited about going because the guy from Canada was kind of a jerk and his girlfriend, from the UK, was kind of annoying. But they couldn’t go because he hadn’t gotten his visa yet. So I was kind of bummed, but excited too to be on my own.

In the morning I went with them to the Brazilian Consulate to help them get the visa faster. They don’t speak any Spanish or Portuguese or anything. And they were going to be leaving on the next day, just like I was planning, but on a different boat. You see, to get in and out of Leticia, you have to go by boat or plane. There are no road that lead in; it’s all jungle. They were going to be on the slow boat—4 days, bring your own hammock. I read about this online and did not want to sit on the boat for that long with that many bodies right up against me, and if you leave your hammock people will take your spot or take your stuff! Or both! So I decided to go with the fast boat, 2 days, same price, seats instead of hammocks. They wanted the slow one, but the dude who works with the fast boat convinced them to go on that, and I was not looking forward to 2 straight days with them on the boat. I seem to have people like this that I meet, that drive me crazy, and yet I can’t get rid of them. You know you who are. Ha, just kidding, none of you who are reading this would fall in that category.

Anyway, I went to help them with the visa. It went fast. I had already eaten breakfast, and wanted to go check out Peru. You go down to the dock and ask a guy with one of these little motor boats to take you. It is less than five minutes, across the Amazon. It is pretty sweet. So I got this old dude with like 5 teeth to take me. It was great. There were parts where I wasn’t sure how we were going to get through, because from a ways off it looked like there were only trees! But we made it through. I got to the other side in Peru, and at the dock was a restaurant. A lot of the town is under water, so I just ate there. It was a lot of fun.

They had a bunch of animals there at the restaurant, like monkeys, snakes, an iguana, some exotic birds, two jaguars or something like that. I got there near the animals and this one monkey jumped on my neck and I was kind of freaked out by it because I didn’t know what to do. It was pretty funny. He got off, but he seemed to like me. Anyway, there was a smaller monkey there who jumped on my arm with the help of one of the guys. The thought crossed my mind…this thing better not pee on me. And within 10 seconds, it was peeing on me! I didn’t know what else to say, so I just said in English…he’s peeing on me! It reminded me of my first week as a missionary in Argentina, when I turned my head to motion to a girl that I couldn’t hear her, and she got up to try to kiss me, and my companion for the day pushed me out of the way and all I could think to say was, in English, I couldn’t hear her!

They yelled at the monkey, and then a lady dumped a bottle into a big barrel of water and just washed it on my hand. I don’t think that cleaned it off, and later in the day I wanted to go back to the jungle house and wash my hands, but I didn’t want to run into that couple and have them tag along with me the rest of the day. :) The food at the Peruvian restaurant was good, it was a traditional dish for the area with lots of fish and other stuff. I talked with the workers mostly about soccer and then took off with the old guy again back to Colombia.

Later that day I ate my dinner in Tabatinga, Brazil, and that means I can now say that in one day I ate breakfast in Colombia, lunch in Peru, and dinner in Brazil. I went back to the hostel place and wanted to take a shower. There was no water and I was really dirty because I hadn’t showered the night before in the dark. But there was this big reservoir of water there and I used that. It was cold, but it was hot outside and it felt nice afterwards. Then I hung out, getting ready for the boat trip in the morning.

Gustavo, the owner of the place, was an interesting guy. He studied philosophy in Belgium and speaks a lot of languages, real smart guy. But he kept forgetting my name and calling me Alex or something like that. I don’t know why people do that. It has happened before, in pretty funny situations. When I was in Belgium, I knew a guy at church from Peru. He is 45 or 50, real great guy. Lots of fun. He invited me over to his house and he said the prayer on the food. He was going to ask for a blessing on me of some sort, and then he paused, and then he said “Blinky” or something similar. I almost couldn’t hold in my laugh. Blinky? Unbelievable. I can understand how people get to know each other and don’t know the name or don’t know how to say it. For instance, once I went out on a date with a girl who I had known for 5 years or so. I never knew how to correctly pronounce it. So that was when I asked, do people ever mispronounce your name? And in her explanation, she told me. :)

Anyway, this guy once had my name wrong for years. His name is Peter Williams, and I bet some of you know him. It was when I worked at Independent Study, and I worked there on and off for three years or so. I had an interview with him for a job even, and he knew my name then, but a few months later he started calling me Logan. I had a coworker named Logan, and so maybe he got confused. But he knew who I was, and so there was little room for excuse. And beyond that, Logan is like 5 inches taller than me, blond, had longer hair, and braces. I don’t know how we could get mixed up that easily. Anyway, I never said anything because I was just like…I don’t care, call me what you want, he’s not my boss or anything.

Two years later, I am working in a different office, and by then he was the boss of that office. I figured he would forget my “name,” but the first day he saw me, he said—hey Logan! And I was like, oh dang, now this is a problem. Instead of just saying something, I just let it go. I figured that we never had to work together, so it wasn’t a problem. Well, I had to go to this meeting with my boss who was going on maternity leave. I was going to take her place at these meetings. I had told two other people at the meeting about how he kept calling me Logan, so their plan was to introduce me as Clint before he could say anything. Well, before the meeting started, he looked over and, as he was nodding his head and smiling, “so we’ve got Logan here!” And the two people said “Clint! It’s Clint!” And he corrected himself. And then he said—you have to correct me, because I know I’ve called you Logan before and you never corrected me.

I know it would have been easier to just have a small awkward moment and tell him a few years before that big awkward moment, but then I wouldn’t have stories to tell like that. The last time someone called me by the wrong name was this past semester and I did fix it before it got ugly. It was my TA for my writing class. She called me by the right name for months, and then started calling me Cliff. I don't know why! It's similar to my name, but do people even name their kids Cliff anymore? The only Cliff I know is Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, but that's a pretty good Cliff don't you think? And that's just the character's name! Anyway, I emailed her and told her so that she didn't call me that in an awkward situation and feel embarrassed. The next post will be about my two-day boat ride on the Amazon.