My 10th Grade Interview With My Amazonian Mother

Here's a transcript I recently uncovered and typed up of an interview with my mother talking about growing up in the Amazon jungle. It's a wonderful memory for me to find a quarter of a century later, especially the parts about wild jungle animals :) (9/3/2014):

Mark Rozeboom
Mrs. Yeazel
Speech Class
10 October 1988

Mark: Okay. My first question is, “Where were you born and describe the type of environment you were brought up in geographically.”

Mom: I was born in the jungle, close to the Amazon River in Peru. There is a city, the name is Iquitos, a major city by the Amazon River. From Iquitos you have to go about ten miles down the river to the place where I was born. About three miles inland from the river, Papa Oscar had a sugar cane farm. The house was right in the center with a lake with hills around it and not too many trees. The rest of the property that was not used for the sugar cane was all jungle. Only the Indians lived in that area. Lots of tropical jungle.

Mark: For how long did you live in this area that you just described?

Mom: I lived there for six years.

Mark: And then you moved to where?

Mom: Then we moved to Iquitos and from Iquitos we moved to Colombia where they had a nice Catholic school, which is one of the reasons why we moved to Colombia. If you looked on the map, we lived right on the corner of Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, right on the Amazon.

Mark: Speaking about the Amazon, everyone knows about the piranhas and the alligators and things like that. So, what type of dangers did you face there in everyday life?

Mom: Mama Mary had to watch us close, if it wasn’t a tarantula, it was snakes, and we have all kinds of snakes over there: little ones, big ones like boa constrictors and pythons. They would steal our chickens. There were mosquitos and some huge bees.

Mark: How about in the river? Did you play in the river a lot?

Mom: No, we could not play in the river. One time Mama Mary killed a chicken and she went to the river to wash it and the blood attracted the piranhas, and they came and took a chunk out of her ankle.

Mark: So when you bathed, did you have to go to a lake?

Mom: No, we collected the rainwater in a barrel.

Mark: Oh, and then you heat that with fire?

Mom: No, because it’s hot over there. We also had a pond over there and the pond was useful.

Mark: Describe the type of schooling that you went through.

Mom: It has changed a lot now, but back then the girls used to go to school with only girls, and with boys the same way. It was quite an excitement to get together with the boys, like with parades and games, and plays, dramas, and church. Even up through high school.

Mark: Did you like that system?

Mom: Well, I didn’t know any other kind.....Now, when you got to college, it was different. They did have both boys and girls.

Mark: How different is the culture there from [our West Michigan culture]?

Mom: I would say that it’s less hurried. People go about doing their business at a slow pace. They’re more easygoing and more party-oriented and more emotionally involved with each other, with the family. Since the Catholic Church has a lot of say in our yearly celebrations, especially when [it's] Christmas and Easter, the whole community gets involved. I noticed, especially in my town in Colombia, everybody knew everybody in that town.

Mark: How big was the town in Colombia compared to Grand Rapids?

Mom: Oh, I would say about 10,000 people in the small town where I grew up. Now it’s huge. It’s a big town…One thing that I notice is that people care very much for their children and are very protective.

Mark: What are some positives and negatives you feel about raising a family where you were brought up?

Mom: If I’m going to picture myself back in the small town, that’s not a place to raise a family. I would say that up to the elementary school is fine, but, for high school, people with more ambition and more money would like to move to a bigger city where there are schools to choose from. Small towns are just not the place to raise a family if you want your kids to have a college education. I really wouldn’t want to raise my family there because of the gossip. I would rather stay here.

Mark: What special events are there when you were growing up as a teen?

Mom: The only big event when you’re growing up is being baptized and confirmation.....

Mark: What special memories do you have of your homeland?

Mom: Actually, to me it’s more of a natural beauty: sunsets and sunrises and different types of fruits that I haven’t been able to eat here unless Meijers has it on certain occasions, but not all of it. That’s what comes to my mind every time, all the different types of food. It seems like a garden of Eden almost. Also, I remember the simplicity of the Indians. They behave like children, very innocent-like.

Mark: Any little story you would like to tell?

Mom: Well, I remember when my dad would go on some business trips and my mom would stay with us. I was just a little girl, around six years old, when we were living in the jungle, and I remember my mom screaming sometimes because a snake would fall down from the rafters. And then another time my mom would just scream again and there was this huge boa in the backyard with a chicken or pig bulging in his mouth. I remember that for some reason those early years just made an impression on me.