It was a milestone in the missionary endeavor among the rain forrest peoples when one member of the jungle team began hauling the supplies for all of the missionaries out in the villages. It was much more efficient for one man to be responsible for getting the supplies out to the upper reaches of the rivers. Of equal blessing was having a permanent supply buyer living out in town. Even at that, both the supply boat man and the supply buyer always wore multiple hats and were chronically overworked. I’ve touched on the work of the “supply boat man” in earlier posts and now want to speak of the “supply buyer”.
Nothing I will note here can express the degree to which the work seemed overwhelming most of the time. The year or so Diana and I worked in this capacity gave us a great appreciation for the buyers and their families. As the work among the tribes gained momentum and more tribal works were opened it literally became impossible for one family to cover all the bases. But for many years one family (not the same family all the time) handled the following.
One of the tasks of the supply buyer would obviously be that of purchasing and packing supplies for shipment to the up river villages. The missionaries along the rivers and later those who lived in villages way up in the headwaters accessible only by plane, would send their individual family orders out to the buyer in town. Before beginning to purchase any individual item the buyer would compile a master order. If for instance the sum total of rice all the missionaries ordered came to 500 lbs, that would go on the master order. The same for soap toothpaste and on and on and on! It usually took several days to compile the master order. Then it all was purchased and transported to a warehouse where the individual orders would be packed. This part of the process took days as well. It was a huge undertaking! There would be food items for several months for each family, any kind of hardware such as nails for use on your jungle home, medical supplies of all kinds, way way beyond what we think of needing here because remember the missionary was the doctor, nurse, and pharmacist. And then there were the trade good items , machetes, axes, cooking pots, bolts of red cloth for making loin cloths, rolls of fish line, fish hooks by the hundreds and that’s just getting started.
Now the individual family or single missionary orders would be filled. This sounds simple and straight forward. Not so much so! The missionary out in the village didn’t see an updated account of his finances very often. His funds would come to the mission office where the supply buyer took care of the necessary book work for all the missionaries. Because of the remoteness of the villages and the difficulties in communication it could be months before a missionary got an updated account of his finances. All that to say that it was not uncommon for someone out in the tribe to miscalculate the amount available for purchasing the order. So it fell to the supply buyer to pare the order back to fit the budget. This was not a happy part of the job. No supply man wanted to eliminate any part of a missionary’s order and would only do so as a last resort. Knowing the next supply run would be months down the road or rather down the river, the most non essential items would get scratched first. I should add that food items and urgent medical supplies were always sent no matter what.
Most medical problems were treated out in the jungle by the missionaries but at any given time there was a missionary or tribal person out in town being treated at the hospital. Usually, because he lived in town and knew what to do, the supply man would accompany the patient to the hospital. Coming to town for medical treatment usually meant urgency and and so the buyer would have left what he was doing to get the patient to the doctor asap. It seemed that these medical emergencies inevitably would show up just when the buyer was the busiest and working under some kind of deadline. So now, in order to get the supplies packed and ready for shipment up river, the buyer had to work half or all night to make up for the hours or days he’d spent at the hospital.
More often than not there would be a missionary family in town updating their national ID cards or some other paper work. And again, because the buyer knew what to do, he’d accompany the folks to the office. Just like the hospital visit could not be hurried, the staff at the ID office had their own rhythm and pace. It was not fast!
Keeping the financial books up to date for all the missionaries sometimes was done by the buyer’s wife and sometimes by the buyer himself. All the banking was done by the buyer and there was always another ream of paper work involved there too. The buyer would take the mission check (everybody’s funds would be sent in one check) to the bank (only bank in town) cash it and walk the entire amount back to the office in a brief case.
Another important work that fell on the buyer’s shoulders was dealing with the never ending stream of individuals and organizations that challenged the legality of the missionaries presence in the jungle areas. Many, many official commissions came out to inspect the missionary work in the villages and most of the time they’d stop by the mission office in town either coming or going to the jungle. We were there legally but it seemed the personnel in every official office of the capital city had to make sure for themselves. This work was emotionally draining for the buyer and required investing a lot of time. The positive social contacts with merchants and many of the townspeople were very good but still required much time.
I remember with chagrin one incident when Diana and I were doing the buying that year. Air service had already come to the jungle in the form of the dedicated pilot of a sister mission along with his little 185 Cessna airplane. There were a dozen and one things happening and when the flight to a remote village was dispatched that particular morning I had forgotten to include the mail bag. Flights were few and far between in those days and forgetting the mail bag was not something any buyer wanted to do. In fact unless it would have been some medical supply item the mail bag was the most important thing on the flight. Well the missionaries were very gracious and resigned themselves to getting their mail on the next flight which was to happen in several weeks time. Would you believe I forgot the mail bag for the next flight too! Talk about feeling like crawling into a hole.
The good thing is that in the end those missionaries did get their mail and over the years most of the supplies did get sent out to the missionaries, the paper work got done, most people did get help at the hospital, the books did get balanced and most of all the work of the Gospel among the jungle peoples went forward!
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