The Clunk Heard 'Round the Cave

There is currently a team of college age kids (hurray, people my age!) at Bongolo. They are here on behalf of Envision (a missions group) to help clean out a bunch of buildings.

Today, however, we decided it would be fun to check out a place called the Leopard's Lair. This was supposedly where the leopards hung out, back when there were in fact leopards here. It's a tiny little cave, formed in the side of a very steep hill (you can't stand on it without holding onto something.)

We traversed down, swinging from tree to tree like observant Georges of the jungle, and finally arrived at a giant rock formation, which was about 35 feet high, and almost unnaturally square and flat sided, jutting out from the face of the hill. Joanna Thelander mentioned that this is most likely the place where locals performed human sacrifice many years ago.

We came to a large split in the rock, wide enough to walk through, but not comfortably. We followed that to a sort of porch like room- open to the sunlight on your left, and leading up into a cave on your right.

I went ahead with another guy into the cave, just to make sure nothing had decided to inhabit the little cave recently (that same guy had been there an hour or so before to clear a path and make sure we could find the cave) Luke and Sarah, who I believe are 9 and 8, also went with us, trailing a bit behind, and then a girl named Keisha came behind them.

When we were going in, Luke was initially in front of me, but I put him behind me. He asked me why, and I said, "If anything happens in there I want it to happen to me and not you."

Foreshadowing, much?

Bret, (the aformentioned "guy") climbed up onto the higher level, to give people a hand up so they could see. The room is maybe 15 feet tall, and 10 feet in diameter. I was still on the lower level. Sarah and Luke were nearish to me, and Keisha was maybe 3 feet to my left.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what happened. Bret stepped some way somewhere, and a big ol' rock fell down.

It was about two feet by one foot by 3 and a half inches.

I think I blinked- then I saw a little flash of white, then my head started hurting, and my neck felt squished, like someone was playing accordian with it. My only thought was "is this really happening?"

At this point, it gets a little blurry for me. The way Keisha and Bret tell the story, it went like this:

The rock broke over my head. Straight in half. My karate instructors would be proud.

The rock missed hitting Sarah by about 6 inches.

I bent over and took a step to my right, to try and avoid getting hit more.

Then apparently I straightened up, saw a flashlight, and started walking toward it. (cuz that was the brigtest source of light.)

Keisha saw that I was in a state of shock and headed me towards the exit.

I remember feeling a trickle of thick warmth coming down my face, and thinking "there's no way that I am ok right now"

It was at this point that I started saying (over and over and over again) "I have to go, I have to go..."

I made my way out of the cave, and gained the ability to think. We didn't have any bandages, and so thinking about the fact that headwounds can lose a lot of blood, I whipped my shirt off and pushed it onto my face.

Several things happened then that were really remarkably convienient.

First of all, Keisha is a nursing student. She knew the basics for head trauma. She checked me for concussion and all that jazz.

Second, Joanna's phone got reception, at the mouth of a cave, deep in the jungle, in a valley. She was able to call for someone to bring bandages.

Third, Bret is actually Superman. That whole Clark Kent thing was a falsified diversion, to hide his identity. He ran up the hill (the one you can't stand on)
to get the stuff from the person Joanna called, and then essentially fell down the hill to bring it to us. He had to do the falling with a bunch of stuff, so he only had one hand to catch himself on various trees as he tumbled.

And Fourth, the rock didn't hit little kids! Remember that foreshadowing I was talking about?

God really protected me. Dr. Thompson said the whole thing could have very well killed me, and here I am writing a blog post.