Time to celebrate

Three weeks ago, we finished our third of three week-long orthography workshops. The last week of March, we looked at the vowel sounds of Mbugwe, in August, we looked at consonant sounds, and in September, we looked at tone. After three weeks of sorting through hundreds of cards over and over, reading and comparing the words on the each of the cards, checking if the
translations of these words were correct, and not the least learning a lot about the sound system of Mbugwe, it was time for celebration.

After sharing a meal together on the last day of the workshop, each participant got the opportunity to share how they had experienced the orthography workshops. All the participants were excited about what they had been a part of. Even though it'll still be a while before we can start translating, they expressed joy because together we had laid the foundation for the work of Bible translation. Week after week they had discovered how Mbugwe actually is different from Swahili and therefore needs a different writing system than Swahili. They had discovered that Mbugwe has two more vowel sounds than Swahili, that Mbugwe has short and long vowels (unlike Swahili), and that we need to use some special diacritics to mark tone in Mbugwe (also unlike Swahili). Julia and I both shared some words about how excited we were to have participated in the workshops together with the 13 participants and for all the things we had achieved during the three weeks of workshops. After everybody had gotten to say something about their experience, all the participants received a certificate as a proof of their participation in developing a writing system for Mbugwe and a copy of the alphabet chart that we had made together. The alphabet chart has a word and a picture to illustrate each of the vowels and consonants in the Mbugwe alphabet.

Even though we achieved a lot during our three weeks of workshops, there is still a lot more work to be done on the Mbugwe writing system. We'll have to do testing, further analysis, and do another three workshops on other aspects of orthography. Those workshops, however will have to wait till we return from furlough in Norway...

The Bishop and the Cobras

Viggo drove out to Mbulu to visit the Catholic bishop for the area today. It's a couple of hours of driving on roads that are rougher than most anything we've encountered so far. Part of the drive involves driving up 2,300 ft. cliff (the Rift Valley escarpment), partly on bare rock.

The majority of Mbugwe identify themselves as Catholic, although only a small minority of those are active church-goers. It's very important that we develop a good relationship with the Catholic church, if we want Catholics to actually use the Mbugwe Bible when it's finished. Viggo's not back yet, but I talked to him breifly on the phone, and it seems the meeting went well. We have already gotten to know most of the priests in the Mbugwe area, and they have been very positive so far, but meeting the Bishop is rather critical, as he is a very important figure in the church.

It's starting to get colder here, and the snakes are coming out of the forest above our house to sunbathe, or so I'm told. Our guard killed two cobras out in back of the house the other day. Snakes are one of the main reasons why we have the neigbors cows come and graze in our yard on a regualar basis. The cows keep the grass short so we can see the snakes. Snakes were also my main motivation for wanting a dog, because I was told they're really good about barking and letting you know if they see one, which apparently Simba did do with the cobras the other day. Sorry I don't have any pictures, but I'm glad I didn't have to see them.

And then yesterday our friends' dog was spit at by a spitting cobra. They are American missionaries who are gone on furlough, so when the guard at their house saw that the dog was going blind, he came up here to ask for help. Viggo went down and helped to rinse the dog's eyes with milk, which is supposed to help. I am reminded that we really need to keep a close eye on
Daniel when he's playing in the yard. It's not quite as bad as I make it sound though; we've only had 3 snakes in our yard that I know of since we moved here.

Our Spring...

Ok, so it's been a really long time since my last post. I do apologize to those of you who are still checking the blog. We have had a pretty busy and eventful couple of months. After Daniel's birthday, we had a week-long project planning meeting in Arusha together with our supervisors and colleagues from two other projects. After that, we headed back to Babati and started preparing for our 'Vowels Workshop' at the end of March. We found and invited participants, bought and planned food for the week, arranged for a 'conference room' in Magugu, and edited, sorted, etc. over 1,500 Mbugwe words, printing them onto index cards for use in the workshop meetings, among other things.

Our supervisor came out to help us with this first workshop. Good thing she did, because Viggo ended up getting a majorly infected, swollen arm on the first day of the workshop and was basically unable to participate for the rest of the week, having to make trips up to Arusha to get antibiotic injections in his arm and whatnot. So Susi (our supervisor) and I kind of ran the whole show. I did a lecture on some basic linguistic terms in Swahili the first day and was pretty proud of myself for being able to make myself understood. The workshop went amazingly well, all things considered, though I was completely exhausted by the end. We had very heavy rains the first night, and had to drive through a fast-flowing river, with water up to the hood of our big SUV, on the way to the workshop the next morning. But we made it. That's why we have a Land Cruiser. We made good progress with the Mbugwe vowel system. We discovered that there are 7 vowels in Mbugwe, meaning that we will need to use two special vowel symbols in addition to a,e,i,o,and u. The Mbugwe were excited to do the research together with us and had a chance to learn some new things in the process. We will hopefully have another workshop on consonants at the end of this month.

As soon as we were done with the vowels workshop, we had to start preparing for a 'discourse workshop' starting in mid-April. Meanwhile Daniel had a week of high fevers, and I had a mild bout of malaria. It's difficult to explain the point of the disourse workshop, but suffice to say we've now been in Nairobi for three weeks and Viggo has learned a lot about 'discourse analysis' and the 'discourse features' of the Mbugwe language. This will be very helpful for making a fluent translation in the long run. The day after we arrived in Nairobi, I got really sick, and I ended up in the hospital with pretty severe pneumonia. It was really hard to breathe. I was in the hospital for five days, and slept most of the day for a couple of days after that, but after lots of antibiotics and rest I'm all better now. We have stayed with German colleagues for these three weeks, and they were extremely helpful while I was sick. We're very thankful that if I had to get so sick, at least we were in Nairobi, where there is a very good hospital.

So tomorrow we drive back to Tanzania. We'll be glad to get home. There will be a pretty intense couple of weeks of preparation for the consonants workshop, and after that, we'll be getting ready to leave for the US for Pamela's wedding and a much needed vacation.

Bananas

When the banana tree starts to fall over from the weight of the banana bunch, you cut off the banana bunch and put it inside to ripen. We have several banana trees in our yard. A banana tree bears bananas after six months of life, then begets a baby banana tree which will bear bananas again in another six months. When we get bananas, we get so many we get to give
them away to everybody we know. And I make banana bread.

On another note, Daniel went bananas over his birthday presents. We had a party today (Friday) and he got more than enough. His grandparents managed to spoil him even from the distance of a whole continent away. His favorite present, a little plastic trike, was belatedly bought with grandparent Christmas-gift money, plus he got two packages from them in the mail. I think his least favorite present was the homemade bubbles he got from one of our friends. You're supposed to blow the bubbles using a straw. He liked the bubbles, but he wanted to do it himself, and of course ended up drinking the dish-soap solution instead.

We had no wrapping paper and I didn't know where to buy it in town, but now we have a whole collection of gift bags and tissue paper that I can re-use the next time we have to wrap a gift.

You can sometimes get Betty Crocker cake mixes here (well, in Arusha) now, so naturally that's what we had. White chocolate swirl. Daniel actually managed to blow his candles out himself (or some of them. I went a little overboard 'decorating' the cake with candles. But I think he blew out at least two himself).

On a more work-related note, we had a nice first meeting with an Mbugwe catholic priest last week. He spoke perfect English and has lived in Rome and Ireland for several years. His Mbugwe is not so good anymore, though, apparently. He was pretty eager to be helpful to us, which is great because we need more Catholic contacts. A high percentage of Mbugwe are members of the Roman Catholic church, so it is important to have a good relationship with the Catholics. In the long run, if they feel involved in the translation process, Mbugwe Catholics are more likely to actually use the translated Mbugwe Bible. Anyway, we have an appointment to go visit the priest's family members in one of the Mbugwe villages in a couple weeks. We should be able to gain some good contacts that way. We're finding that often the most efficient way of getting to know more Mbugwe people is to get ourselves introduced to the extended families of those we already know.