Guests of the River Folk BRAZIL | Nikki White
In May, I attended the global summit of the International Community of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB) in Brazil. Following the event, Emerson Cardoso, Brazilian church leader and Multiply’s Regional Team Leader for Latin America, took seven of us to visit the Ribeirinhos, the “River Folk” of the Amazon. For the past several years, Brazilian MBs have been involved in church planting initiatives among this indigenous people group as the Ribeirinhos respond to the Gospel. Our international group consisted of: Johann Matthies (Germany), Valdas Vaitkevičius (Lithuania), Walter Jakobeit (Germany), Jaeem (South Asia), Franz Wolf (Brazil), and Scott and Nikki White (Canada).
After flying overnight from Curitiba to Manaus, we drive long hours along a sketchy, desolate road to some obscure town on the banks of the Rio Negro, then travel even longer hours by boat. I gawk at monkeys, giant lily pads, pink dolphins, massive ant colonies and exotic birds, with only an occasional boat to hint at hidden civilization in the otherwise unbroken seascape of this massive branch of the Amazon River.
After hours on the river, I feel my smallness: an insignificant speck of humanity on a vast and untamed canvas. We wind through tributaries where the dense vegetation and trees are half-submerged by waters that can span up to forty kilometers. Rounding a bend, a village suddenly appears. Are there really people living here? Don’t they get lonely? “Of course, they are lonely!” Emerson replies. “Why else do we come? To show that we care, we see them, God sees them.”
8 | witness
