Tuesday Voice: Missionary Kid

My first hunting trip

By Vic Midyett

The only meat we ate in Assam, where I was born, was what Dad shot in the jungle. The reason no meat was available for purchase is that the locals were all Hindu by faith. They didn't eat meat. Many animals were sacred in their faith.
    Dad had a twelve gauge shotgun and a .30-06, and he would go hunting in the jungle once or twice a week. The jungle was about a ten-minute walk away through some rice paddies. Because the average annual rain fall was about 350 inches, it was an extremely dense jungle. One would walk about 20 feet into it, in some areas, and be required to turn on a flash light to see. Dad had a watchman by the name of Beejooly (who slept all night, but that was another Missionary Kid story) whom he took with him for security. Beejooly would cut a path with a machete when needed.
    I bugged Dad constantly to take me with them, and finally, when I was four and a half, Dad conceded to let me tag along, but he gave Beejooly very strict instructions to stay several paces behind, with me.
    Because my butt was still so close to the ground, I couldn't see where Dad was. But all of a sudden Beejooly pulled me down behind a tree, instructing me to stay completely quiet and still. A shot rang out from Dad’s gun and after a few minutes Dad slowly reappeared. For some reason, he was hanging his head. He motioned Bejooly over to him and they conferred in hushed voices.
    Then Bejooly turned around to me and told me Dad had shot a bear. I of course wanted to see it. After persistent hollering, I got my way.
    It was huge, folks! It looked like it would have stood well over Dad's head.
    For some reason, Dad and Beejooly started looking for a place to hide the bear. Bejooly told me it was important that it not be found by any of the villagers. Why, I wondered? What's wrong with killing a bear?

It wasn't until years later that I learned there weren't any bears in that part of India. What Dad had killed was a type of monkey. It had charged him and he had killed it in self-defense, and perhaps to protect me. But monkeys were almost as sacred to the Hindus as cows. If the locals had found out what he had done, we may have been stoned to death. Literally.
    Another missionary family we knew had a barbed-wire fence around their compound to try to keep animals out of their vegetable garden. A local cow got hung up in the fence and died, and the locals burned the family's home to the ground and wrapped some of the members of the family in barbed wire and dragged them along the ground. I can't remember whether it was the mother or the father who died, but not all of the family escaped with their lives. The survivors left and never came back. I believe their domestic help were killed also.
    So, it was extremely important for Beejooly to keep his mouth shut too. It was a long time before dad took me hunting again.

Copyright © 2015 by Vic Midyett