"Life is a Jungle!" (Book Two of the Rani Adventures) - Softcover

Snell, Ron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0929292855 ISBN 13: 9780929292854

Publisher: Hannibal Books, 2008

Synopsis

"Life is a Jungle" by Ron Snell is Book 2 of The Rani Adventures, also known as The Jungle Series. The second edition is 5 1/2 inches by 8 1/2 inches. The first edition was 4 1/4 inches by 7 inches. Type is bigger and easier to read in the second edition. Extremely popular with the Christian homeschool audience as well as people of all ages, The Rani Adventures depict what life was like for a young missionary kid growing up in the rain forests of Peru. "My high school years were like a television series," Snell writes. "Hiking into the middle of the Amazon jungle to build an airstrip and nearly starving to death. Greeting the president of Peru as he stepped out of his chopper to visit our school. Spoon feeding water to feverish Machiguengas and helping bury the ones who died. "I never thought it unusual to have a 16-foot anaconda slithering around in our science class. Or going barefoot to school, getting stuck in the middle of landslides or getting cheap thrills careening through the streets of Lima in taxis in the dead of night. "What was I doing in Peru? "Well, that's a long story. A funny, sad, sometimes unbelievable story. It's what this book is about--a really crazy family that loved adventure, loved God and loved the Machiguengas."

About this title

About the Author

Ron Snell spent most of sixteen years growing up in Peru. After getting degrees in anthropology and linguistics, he and his wife Esther worked with the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Mexico, South Texas, and Indonesia before settling in Duncanville, where he works as a real-estate agent, remodeler, and writer. He also organizes adventure trips to Peru, focusing especially on the Machiguenga area where he was reared.; TABLE OF CONTENTS: Chapter One--Furlough Chapter Two--Epi and the Mad Bull Chapter Three--The Airstrip Chapter Four--The Measles Chapter Five--Getting Around Chapter Six--The Shot Chapter Seven--Our Hut Chapter Eight--Pecky-peckies and the Go-Cart Chapter Nine--The Landslide Chapter Ten--The Ruins Chapter Eleven--Field Day Chapter Twelve--Graduation Chapter Thirteen--The Graduation Gift Chapter Fourteen--The Farewell;

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"(My friend) Itch and I were on a 14-day canoe trip from Camisea to Pucallpa and we knew it could be dangerous. 'Over my dead body,' our mothers had said when we asked for permission to do it. 'Sure, if you can get a good canoe,' our fathers had said. We got a good canoe."

"Collectivo (a kind of taxi) drivers were geniuses at negotiating crowded streets, dodging pedestrians, getting onto and off of sidewalks at full speed, running red lights, shifting and steering with their right hand while loudly banging their left hand on the outside of their door--it was illegal to use horns in the city--and passing each other the wrong way on one-way streets. An hour in a collectivo was always a good reminder that it's great to be alive, and at 5 cents per ride it was certainly cheaper than going bowling. But would I let my sons do it? Not unless they invited me to go along."

"All I had to do to get a good infection was to nick myself with the tip of my jackknife. If I was lucky, I could hide the oozing and swelling until that part of my body just fell off. Otherwise my temp would climb like a Machi kid going after papayas, telltale red streaks would run like paths to the closest lymph node, and I'd get another series of seven bun-busting penicillin shots. I can't figure out why a little nick would go all festery but the huge holes the needles made never did, and I think it's unfair that kids nowadays have so many options including oral antibiotics. If today's teens had to get penicillin shots, they'd behave better. All we'd have to say is, 'If you don't straighten up, I'm gonna give you a shot,' which is what the Machis told their kids."

"Mom's and my first big medical case of the summer was a teenage girl named Rosa who fell out of the rafters in her house and broke her collar bone. By the time she arrived at our house her eyes were wide with fear, thinking she would die soon. Having never fixed a broken collar bone before, we got on the radio and talked to Dr. Eichenberger about it. It turned out that the treatment was pretty simple: put a knee between her shoulder blades, pull her shoulders back to let the ends of the bones come together, take an ace wrap and make a tight figure eight around her shoulders to keep everything properly positioned for a few weeks.

"Although it now seems simple, and I could fix your fractured collarbone for a fraction of what your doctor would charge, at the time we were getting our instructions through all the static of the universe, and we got it a little wrong. We didn't get the knee between the shoulder blades part quite right and we put the figure eight on across her chest instead of her back and we're both glad Rosa didn't know anything about malpractice suits. It probably didn't help that I was fourteen and she was thirteen and I was trying to do it all without looking at her."

"We climbed out (of our plane) into a throng of wild-eyed Machis who wore ragged cushmas and bright red face paint and necklaces of seeds and teeth and bones and ancient Peruvian coins and caps from toothpaste tubes. Hmmm . . . those toothpaste tube caps must have been introduced by the Incas. Their robes smelled like campfire smoke, the smell of home to us, and their long black hair stuck out in every direction. "One man came forward with a big smile, a bulge of coca leaves in one cheek, a few stained teeth and a handful of black walnuts as a gift. We worked our way along the crowd and eventually ended up at Venturo's house for a supper of manioc, boiled fish and bananas. Full and at home, Terry and I sat down beside someone's fire to roast walnuts and talk to them long into the night. 7:30, to be exact. A full moon blasted through the clouds off and on, bathing the whole valley in bright light. The river sparkled silver as it roared past, and I thought to myself each time I woke up to change positions on the hard palm floor that there couldn't be a more beautifully picturesque village on earth."

Edition details

• Publisher: Hannibal Books
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0929292855
• ISBN 13: 9780929292854
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 192