Elka of the Wai Wai

"Certain celebrities are known by only one name. So it was with Elka, one of the most celebrated witchdoctors and chiefs of the Wai Wai people of British Guiana and far beyond in the Amazon jungle. A witchdoctor might seem like an unlikely candidate for conversion to Christianity. But Elka had been drawn to spiritual things from the time he was a child -- receiving dreams from the spirit of a pig telling him that Kworokyam, the god of the Wai Wai, wanted him to sing his songs and be his servant.
"While Elka dreamed of pigs controlled by evil spirits," wrote Homor Dowdy, "hundreds of miles away three brothers with another vision were planning a move that would bring them face to face with the Wai Wai." Neill Hawkins, the oldest brother at thirty-three, and his two younger brothers, Rader and Bob, had grown up in the "old-time religion" of a Christian home in Texas, and their mother was determined to one day send her three sons off as missionaries. They all joined the Unevangelized Fields Mission to serve in South America - in Brazil and British Guiana.
When Neill and Bob Hawkins began their work among the Wai Wai in 1949, they were the first white men that many of the people had ever seen, and they were initially thought to be enemies who had come to kill the people. But they slowly settled into the tribe, hired men to build a runway, and brought in their wives and children on what the native people referred to as the canoe from the sky. Elka, the chief and witchdoctor, quickly became fascinated with "God's paper," the Bible that had written words about God, and he eagerly agreed to serve as a language informant for Bible translation into his yet unwritten language. He had often felt insecure about the messages he was getting from the spirits and the Wai Wai god, but here the words were on paper, and he was learning to decipher that message himself.
"Elka did more than try to make the strange scratches on paper talk back to him. He was not content until he knew what the scratches said - not just what they said out loud, but what they spoke to his mind. In the Sunday lessons, in the reading classes, and in the long language-informant periods with Bahm (Bob Hawkins) he learned about God and His Son, Jesus Christ.
Most of his people were slow to learn. But Elka had a yearning to know that made him awake each morning eager for another session .... Bahm had once thought he was presenting God to Elka in a spiritual vacuum. He was wrong. Elka believed in the spirit world with more conviction than he did in the physical .... It was not hard for him to believe that God was a spirit."
(Homer Dowdy, Christ's Witchdoctor Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1973)
But Elka was not ready to forsake his role as witchdoctor for the Wai Wai people. He wanted to beieve what the missionaries were teaching without having to give up Kworokyam, the god of his people. Initially, the tension between the two belif systems stimulated his thinking and brought excitement into his life, but as time passed, the tension was "fought in the pit of his stomach," "Brought despondency," and "worried Elka constantly." When he was told that "God's paper said he could not serve both God and Kworokyam," he knew he would have to make a choice. Finally, after a long struggle, he recognized what God wanted him to do - how God wanted him to serve his people. He made his decision - to be "Christ's witchdoctor."
Being Christ's witchdoctor, however, meant that Elka would no longer use his charms to heal the sick and drive away evil spirits. This caused great distress among the tribal elders, who insisted that he could "walk with Jesus" and use his charms at the same time. In the midst of this tribal conflicts, most of the people continued coming to the Sunday services, and Bahm taught Bible classes to some of the men in small groups.
As Elka studied the BIble every day, he spent more time with the missionaries and visited their homes. And "seeing the tools of the white man's culture, he developed an appetite for the things they had." He wanted a high chair to keep his baby off the floor, even as they had for their baby. He wanted an outboard motor for his canoe ast hey had, and he watned a light in his house at night. "He wanted to exchange his loincloth for shorts." These were difficult issues that had no easy answers, and the missionaries "tried to explain that they did not want to make the Wai Wai dependent on the white man's world." There was often strain between the two sides. "But the mood did not dominate his life," writes Dowdy. "He lost no occasion .... to be a witness for Christ."
The patient and persistent work of the missianries, with the tribal leadership of Elka, resulted in a continual stream of conversations. Within a matter of years, the Sunday preaching was turned over to Wai Wai Christians, a practice that began when one of the Hawkins brothers lost his voice and Elka volunteered to fill in. His sermon on Daniel was a "revelation" of "Elka's ability to speak with ... a ring of conviction in his voice."
With the growing community of believers came a desire to reach out beyond their own clan. "Elka was concerned about the Wai Wai who still lived across the high mountains .... He wanted them to learn the way of Christ." So as chief, he commissioned his brother to go to them and invite them to come back and learn God's way. That was the beginning of mission outreach, and it continued as Elka commissioned others to go even farther with the message of God's paper.
"They made a start by inviting the Shedeu and the Mawayana, people very like themselves, to come and hear the Gospel. But there were strange tribes farther away, people they did not know or people they had always feared, who still lived without hope in fear and suspicion, hatred and killing ....
For the Wai Wai it was a hard choice. They would have to leave their familiar land, travel... through strange towns of the white man's civilization ... Who knew whether they would ever return?" (Christ's Witchdoctor)
Among those who went to the regions byond as a foreign missionary was Elka, who sent prayer letters back home telling of his experiances and encouraging the Wai Wai to remain faithful to God. While he and the other missionararies were away, others planted their fields and took care of their domestic needs. When he returned, Elka had colorful stories to tell about the natives' customs - other tribes that were so different from their own, including tribes of white people who took their bath in a "shower." He found the little community of believers among the Wai Wai to have grown, as outsiders came and joined the original group. The clan of 200 had grown to 350. But there were always the temptations of people going back to their old ways.
For Elka, there were new ways that he was obliged to adopt. His missionary work required contextualization: "The Waica men wanted us to cut off our pigtails and look like them," he told his people. "At first we didn't want to. It would take many rain seasons to grow long again. But then we felt it was no sacrifice at all, if by cutting off our hair we could make the Waica know that because of Jesus we loved them."
As the Wai Wai took over the leadership of their own church and reached out in mission, the two Hawkins families moved on in their ministry, Neill and his family to conduct mission work with the Trio Tribe in nearby Surinam, and Bob and his family to finish up the translation of the Wai Wai Scriptures. "By 1962 the Wai Wai had gone on as many missionary trips in as many directions as a man had fingers and toes." writes Homer Dowdy. "A few of the trips were with the white missionaries. Most of them were ont heir own and by themselves .... Some Wai Wai travelers ran out of food. Others got sick on the trail."
These were the trials and tribulations of missionaries fromt he time of JEsus, and the Wai Wai were part of that tradition."

~From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya~
Copyright 1983, 2004 by Ruth A. Tucker