Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Mbalimbali (a variety)

We’ve had a rather stressful last couple of weeks. Our car was in the shop in Arusha for two weeks, and while Viggo was in Arusha his stuff was stolen out of a friend’s car. That included one of our laptops, but fortunately it was the old one.  Not having a car meant that we were limited in the amount of language work we could get done, especially since Viggo was in Arusha much of the time ‘babysitting’ the car. Now, having only one computer to work on is also limiting, because while we are at home most of our work is on the computer, and now we can only work one at a time. But, we have all been healthy, Daniel has been sleeping through the night, and we are really looking forward to my parent’s (and Sam’s) visit. They’re coming Oct. 6th, and they’ll be bringing our new laptop with them. We finally have a table and chairs now, which was the big excitement for the week. Daniel’s nanny, Mama Elia (who also helps with chores) is taking very good care of him, which makes it possible for me to do a bit of work. She comes to the house and watches him for a few hours in the morning and puts him down for his nap while I work.

 

We made a trip out to a village last week and recorded some Mbugwe stories, riddles, and songs, which we can now enter into the computer and use for language analysis. Between the sun and speaking Swahili all day, going out to the village is really exhausting. We always have mixed feelings after a village visit. We would love to live in the village in order to be closer to the Mbugwe people and fully experience their language and culture. However, we’re not sure how much of that experience we could really cope with on an every-day basis, and still get any work done. At least for now we are very glad to live in a comfortable home and have some privacy.

 

This Friday we have a “mini word-gathering workshop”, where we will meet with a group of Mbugwe  to gather a long list of Mbugwe words. Then we will have lots of work to putting them into the computer and analyzing the individual sounds. The mother of Mama Elia (Daniel’s nanny) has helped us to organize this meeting. She has some clout in the village because she was the wife of the last chief of the Mbugwe. However, she is apparently also well-known as a radical Christian. She said that when she went around the first time to ask people to come to the word-gathering workshop, many said no because they were afraid she was just trying to trick them into getting saved by some missionaries.

 

Next week we will be meeting with a Catholic priest to discuss how the Catholic church can help partner with us in the language project. We try to work together with all of the churches in the area, and there are many Mbugwe Catholics. If we neglect relationships with the churches, then they may not support our work, and the Mbugwe Bible produced could end up being very unpopular among Catholics, for example. If we cultivate relationships with church leaders, then they may be willing to help us in a variety of ways throughout the course of the project. Relationships are very important here, as is flexibility.

 

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Settled in Babati

So we are all settled (more or less) in our new home in Babati now. There’s been a lot going on, and I haven’t posted anything in forever. We now have a regular work schedule for ourselves, and have set regular days for blogging. So in theory, I should be posting every Wednesday. Viggo posts weekly too, but in Norwegian. You can always check the link to our Norwegian blog to see if he’s posted pictures though. God has blessed us with a very comfortable house in beautiful location here (see the pics in my Dad’s post below). It is not actually in the Mbugwe area, which is what we were hoping for, but we needed a livable place to stay right away, and the houses we could rent in the Mbugwe area were mostly unfinished. We think this will be best for us at least in this first year of transition. It is only a half hour from the Mbugwe area, so it is easy to make trips out to the villages.

We have gotten off to a good start on language research and building relationships with Mbugwe people, and this is what we will be continuing with. Trips out to Mbugwe villages right now usually involve visiting pastors and village elders to tell them about the Bible translation project, and recording stories and other Mbugwe texts which we then take home for language analysis. The language analysis part is a little technical to explain, but we spend a lot of time at home on our computers picking apart the texts we get. I also enter notes on our experiences into a computer program for anthropological analysis. Having anthropological information will be helpful for various translation issues later on. All our communication with Tanzanians here is in Swahili, which we are still learning, though we are finished with language school. To start learning another new language (Mbugwe) this soon is quite a challenge, even for us linguists, and we are taking it slowly for now.

We have hired an Mbugwe woman to help with a variety of things at our house four days a week. She helps with Daniel and chores, and will also help with some of the language work, including language learning. Her name is Mama Elia and we are very thankful to have her help, which allows us (me, especially) to get a lot more language work done. Mama Elia is the wife of an Mbugwe pastor who teaches at a Bible school here in Babati, and is also the daughter of the last chief of the Mbugwe (who is no longer living), so she is a great contact for us. We went out with her to visit her mother a couple of weeks ago and had lunch in the village and recorded a couple of stories from her mother. It was a great experience, and we will be going back soon to record some Christian songs her mother has composed in Mbugwe. In addition to translating the Bible we hope to publish other materials, hopefully including a book of Mbugwe songs to be used in church. Right now church services are conducted in Swahili only.

Daniel is doing well, and is as cute as ever, despite the fact that he has started throwing fits fairly often when he doesn’t get his way. Our neighbors like to play their music very loud, and Daniel really enjoys dancing to it. He’s a very good dancer. He get’s all into it with his hips swinging and his elbows out and head nodding. He also enjoys our two new puppies. They are supposed to be guard dogs in the long run, but right now they need to be guarded themselves all the time they are out of their kennel so they don’t get into trouble or out of our fence. They’re also giving us fleas already…

Monday, September 01, 2008

Daniel's Girlfriend

Daniel became quite enamored of a lovely little girl who was also with her parents at Swahili school. Alas, they went on their separate ways as their families moved on to their assignments.

But wait, there was a joyous reunion. Here they are at a resort in Kenya where SIL folk met in August:





House in Babati

This is a post by Julia's Dad, Kent.
Julia, Viggo and Daniel have gotten a lot done since they moved toTanzania in January.

Orientation in Dar......check

Swahili School ........... check

Conference in Kenya ....check

Find House in Babati ....check

Begin interacting with and learning from the Mbugwe ....Check