My Language

 Tompkin looking the part
as Paramount Chief

One time while we were waiting for the translation team to arrive, I was chatting with Tompkin about the Kope language. Although there are only seven Kope villages, there are differences of language use among them. Deciding which words we use can be difficult, as one village may not accept something that is not the way they say it.

While chatting Tompkin told me that Kope is his language and that he is the final authority on the language. This may seem like a big claim, but as he is Paramount Chief over four of the seven villages, it is a reasonable claim. He used to be Chief over all seven villages, but some conflict that I don’t understand caused the three lower Kope villages to break away and declare their own chief in the last decade.

Knowing that Tompkin speaks for all of upper Kope will hopefully smooth the way in translation, but I am concerned that the old conflicts may mean that lower Kope reacts against his choices of words. While we were finding out more about dialect differences in a lower Kope village, we were told that the Jesus Film had errors. In trying to find out what these were, it seemed that the biggest problem was that the voice of Jesus and the voice of the Narrator were both from Ubuo village (upper Kope). It was not the words used as much as the place the people were from that was the problem.

Being aware of this division means I can work towards overcoming it before it becomes a big issue. Although we do drafting in Ubuo, we have done checking in Bavi (lower Kope). While there I also gave out paper to a number of people and asked them to write their stories for me to put into story books. I want to give the other villages a voice in the literacy materials we produce and show them that their village variation is valued.

 Tompkin and Pastor Elah hard at work translating Luke.

Meanwhile, although Kope is Tompkin’s language, he often reaches for the draft Kope dictionary to check the meaning of a word. All the translators like to refer to it. I am somewhat surprised that these people want to see how outsiders have defined words in their language. Even though we have written it with their help, it has still largely been an outsider task. As we edit this dictionary, I have to remind the team that it is okay for Wouobo people to speak like they are from Wouobo (NW end of tribe) and for Gibi people to sound like they are from Gibi (SE end of tribe). We just need to mark in the dictionary where each word comes from. I am thankful that the English dictionary I have in the village marks British and US spelling of words (colour/color, metre/meter, organise/organize) as well as word preferences (queue vs. line up). This gives me a good precedent to list all the words from all the villages, but to mark them for where they are from.

Kope is Tompkin’s language, but this is not as clear cut as it sounds. Each language has its custodians as well as its differences. It is finding the balance of these that is the challenge.

Dedications, again.

I have written about dedications of fuel pumps, phonetowers, houses and films. I have written about my struggles with ownership in a communal setting. These two themes came together for me when my tables and chairs arrived in the village, and helped me to better understand both the constant dedications and some of the local mindset of ownership.

During a recent village trip, I had ordered tables and chairs through another mission and was waiting for them to arrive. My translation team was pleased to be moving up in the world, and asked a few times when ‘our’ tables would arrive. I was thinking in terms of ‘mine’ and they were thinking in terms of ‘ours’. This did not bother me as much as other incidents, as the tables were for the translation work, so could easily be understood as ‘ours’.

 Testing the new table and chairs that had just arrived.

The tables were delivered and installed, along with a real mattress. (Oh, the luxury of a good night’s sleep in the village!) I was not around when the tables were first used, but when I got back, I was told that they had held a small dedication ceremony for the tables and chairs. They had prayed for them before they used them. I was a little surprised by this, which after all the dedications I’ve been to, I really shouldn’t have been.

On reflection, I realised that dedicating the tables and chairs to the translation work sets them apart from ordinary use, and hopefully protects them from going walkabout to other worthy causes. It is now known that these are the chairs set aside for the translation work, they are not for everyday things. We’ll see how that theory holds up in practice…

 Flopped on my new mattress and in danger
of falling asleep, it is so good!

Language Learning; Assumptions and Imagination.

While learning Kope, I am organising my own daily language classes. In these approximately hour long sessions, I use a variety of approaches, but one of my main tools is pictures. I have a collection of old calendars from PNG, as well as series of pictures that make up a story, and sketches of life in PNG. Using these pictures we describe things, ask questions and tell stories. Along the way, I have discovered that my imagination and assumptions work differently to women I am sitting with and learning from.

One picture I intended to use to learn the phrase for ‘The boy is reading’. I got many phrases, but not that one. The boy was lying on the mat, the boy was looking at the camera, the boy was holding the book, the boy was looking at the pictures (of which there were none) and the boy wanted to read, but at no point was the boy reading. I was both frustrated and fascinated by our different assumptions. My teacher thought the boy was too young to read, so would not describe him as reading. He was also clearly looking at the camera, not at the book, so couldn’t be reading.

Reading? From SIL PNG 2014 calendar, June.
Photo by Catherine McGuckin.

Another time, I had been learning the many ways to say ‘go’, depending on who was going and when. I then wanted to switch to saying come, but hit a road block, because whenever I wanted to elicit the phrase for ‘we will come from X’, I was told that we had not gone there. After that I got extra practice with the phrases for going, as first we had to go before we could come. I was being abstract in my approach to language, but they were being much more concrete.

 A tiny picture of a frog chasing a snake
chasing a gecko that was the basis of a
fun story we made up.

I have been using a number of picture books to learn how to tell stories. The first time I gave the book to someone and asked them to tell a story, but they quickly got stuck. The next time I stumbled my way through the book, being corrected every second word, then asked them to tell the story. Most people would tell the story very much how I told it. Only one or two people would add their own colour to the tale. I wonder if this reflects a culture which values being able to remember and retell traditional tales more than it does being able to create new ones.

Pictures are a wonderful tool for language learning, but they still require common assumptions for the learning process to work.

Language Learning; Assumptions and Imagination.

While learning Kope, I am organising my own daily language classes. In these approximately hour long sessions, I use a variety of approaches, but one of my main tools is pictures. I have a collection of old calendars from PNG, as well as series of pictures that make up a story, and sketches of life in PNG. Using these pictures we describe things, ask questions and tell stories. Along the way, I have discovered that my imagination and assumptions work differently to women I am sitting with and learning from.

One picture I intended to use to learn the phrase for ‘The boy is reading’. I got many phrases, but not that one. The boy was lying on the mat, the boy was looking at the camera, the boy was holding the book, the boy was looking at the pictures (of which there were none) and the boy wanted to read, but at no point was the boy reading. I was both frustrated and fascinated by our different assumptions. My teacher thought the boy was too young to read, so would not describe him as reading. He was also clearly looking at the camera, not at the book, so couldn’t be reading.

Reading? From SIL PNG 2014 calendar, June.
Photo by Catherine McGuckin.

Another time, I had been learning the many ways to say ‘go’, depending on who was going and when. I then wanted to switch to saying come, but hit a road block, because whenever I wanted to elicit the phrase for ‘we will come from X’, I was told that we had not gone there. After that I got extra practice with the phrases for going, as first we had to go before we could come. I was being abstract in my approach to language, but they were being much more concrete.

 A tiny picture of a frog chasing a snake
chasing a gecko that was the basis of a
fun story we made up.

I have been using a number of picture books to learn how to tell stories. The first time I gave the book to someone and asked them to tell a story, but they quickly got stuck. The next time I stumbled my way through the book, being corrected every second word, then asked them to tell the story. Most people would tell the story very much how I told it. Only one or two people would add their own colour to the tale. I wonder if this reflects a culture which values being able to remember and retell traditional tales more than it does being able to create new ones.

Pictures are a wonderful tool for language learning, but they still require common assumptions for the learning process to work.

Dreams and Encouragement

I am from a mainline protestant background. Dreams and visions as answers to prayer were not really part of my liturgical upbringing. Sure, in theory we acknowledged that God could work in this way, but in practice we were cautious of the Pentecostals who claimed that God regularly did such things. Working in PNG, where there is no line between the spiritual and the physical world, and working in a non-denominational organisation of many and varied backgrounds, I have learnt to accept and appreciate the encouragement that God can give through dreams.

On my first night in Ubuo, the first night of the rest of my life with the Kope, I had a strange and vivid dream. As I rarely remember my dreams, it took me awhile to realise it had been a dream, not an actual occurrence in the night. I will not outline the whole dream here, but summarise it as a confirmation that although Satan could push and scare me he could not bite me, that although I may not be aware of God’s presence I am always in it, and that God had put good people into my life to help me on this new journey. This was a hugely encouraging dream to have on the first night of something so new and so big.

My mosquito net fortress.

I have only told the details of the dream to a few people, but one of these reminded me of it after a series of okay-in-the-end-but-nearly-dreadful mishaps. She reminded me that although I can feel pushed about and scared, I am not defeated, but protected. The mishaps has been that in one evening I had nearly fallen and severely cut myself in the shower, nearly dropped a sharp knife on my bare feet, nearly spilled boiling water down my leg and very nearly choked on my dinner. Nearly, but not quite. The next evening a hive of bees moved into the wall of my bathroom, which is a rather distressing discovery when one is in the middle of showering. A day later, with some persuasion from citronella smoke and pyrethrum poison, they swarmed off to a new home. I hid in my mosquito net while the migration took place, scared of what that many bees could do if angry, which they had reason to be, considering my campaign against them. Once again, it was a case of nearly, but not quite. Although I had thanked God for saving me from what could have been, it was my friend who pointed out to me how this tied back to my dream of being pushed but not harmed. It was a strange dream, but it continues to encourage me in strange and scary times.

 Me with some of the Goiravi women. Usually I walk home,
 but that week there was a king tide and the path between
villages was underwater, so we took the dinghy instead.

Another dream is one that was told to me by a friend when I walked to Goiravi to do my weekly Bible study there. She said that the previous night she had dreamed that she had seen me making three sago rolls to give away. Seeing as I don’t make sago, we all thought this a bit funny. That day though, there were only three women at the Bible study, when often there is a crowd. As I thought on the dream, I realised that although I had not been making sago, I had been preparing the Bible study, and I am part of the long slow project to translate God’s word in to Kope. This is me preparing the bread of life for the Kope people. Bread was a staple food in Jesus’ time; sago is the staple food in Kope life. With three women at the Bible study that day, I had effectively made three rolls of sago for them. I could easily have been discouraged that only three women came when there is usually a crowd, but this dream reminded me that the work I was doing was important, and that three had been God’s plan for that day.

There are many dreams that are just our brains processing life, but in some instances, they are a moment of insight and encouragement to hold onto. These two dreams have been the latter to me.