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…