Farewells, again

Life in an NGO is full of arrivals and departures, particularly when based at a regional centre. Teams coming and going to the village stop here for a few days to pack and prepare or to rest and recover. Workshops with all their participants and staff make a bigger and longer arrival. I myself have gone on one village trip already and have two more planned in the coming month.

Arriving for dinner in style

Among all this coming and going, the people who hold the place together are the centre managers and staff. They welcome people, prepare rooms, look after the property, sign the cheques and generally keep the place running. Yesterday we farewelled the centre manager and his family. When you farewell the glue of a place like this, there is much sadness. They are returning to the USA and taking up a new role with The Seed Company.

Staff serving extra guests first

On Thursday evening we had a farewell dinner. They had asked for a simple farewell, but I’m not sure such a thing exists here. The VITAL participants made flower necklaces for the family and lead them in a procession of drumming and dancing to the dining hall. After dinner there were speeches, gifts and more musical items. The next morning people lined the driveway in a final farewell as they left for the airport. I admit to skipping the final farewell, as it reminded me too much of leaving Perth at 15, with most of the congregation plus my sister on the train platform waving goodbye. Many tears were shed then too.

How to deal well with all these comings and goings is a challenge that may take me some time to work out. I want to be able to be both welcoming to new people, even if they are passing through, and able to express grief with those leaving. I can see that a form of compassion fatigue could easily occur and neither welcomes nor farewells be given much notice. Yet another challenge of life here!

VITAL

This week has seen the start of Module 22 of VITAL (Vernacular Initiative for Translation and Literacy). This means that eleven language groups from around Milne Bay have sent a team to Alotau to live, study and work on translation and literacy for four weeks. We started a day late as Kwadima II only got in with the participants early on Monday. They were all looking rather tired after their journey in, so we delayed our start till Tuesday. Even when I'm working on land in linguistics, my life still manages to be shaped by maritime matters!

Each day at VITAL moves between community times and team times. In the community times we first gather to sing, pray and study the Bible. This is followed by a time of language discovery, or looking at how to map the grammar and discourse patterns in the language of the participants. After a break for breakfast groups head to their cubicles. These are small study rooms, although we managed to have six people in ours today. It was getting a bit cosy, but the fan kept us cool. In the cubicles the teams work on their grammar and then do an advisor check of work from a few days earlier. The work is given two days to settle before the advisor check so that the team can look at it with fresh eyes and ears. This work takes the teams through until lunch.

After lunch we once more gather as a community for an exegetical session. Together we read through the text of the day in several versions, noting problem areas and discussing how best to translate them. Sometimes this means discussing history and politics (How big was Jerusalem when David was king? How big was it when Solomon was king? What is a king?). Other times it means teasing out concepts such as being overwhelmed and how that might be said in language. One of my favourites is discussing euphemisms. These are the salt that add flavour to what some would consider boring historical accounts. What does it mean that 'David slept with his ancestors' and how do we say something politely in language? I was amused by the Anuki term 'road women' to mean 'prostitutes'. From the exegetical session the community breaks into small groups again as the teams work on their first draft of the text we have just discussed. 

It is good to see the centre so busy and to see the commitment the teams have to their work. Most of them continue drafting into the evening so that they can get the portion complete before the next day. This is no rush job, but a lot of time and effort is being put into the work being done. 

In case you're wondering why we're discussing prostitutes, check 1 Kings 3:16ff.