Alone, but not alone.

For the last year, I have been the only whiteskin working in my village. I have been alone, but not alone.

I have been alone, as being the only person from my social and linguistic background can be very isolating at time. At the same time, I have not been alone, as the community has been incredibly welcoming and I am surrounded by friends and family. It’s just that I’m still getting to know them. I am thankful that in being alone, I have been forced outside my comfort zone to build good friendships with the people around me.

With swamp-friends from Kapuna Hospital (A.Evers)

I may be alone in the village, but I have good friends in the region. With friends from both my own organisation as well as through the mission hospitals at Kapuna and Kikori, I have good friends in the region. We may not see that much of each other, but we are all in the swamp together, and understand the context, the challenges and the joys in a way that others cannot share. I am so thankful for my swamp friends, even if they’re three hours away by boat.

Although on my own in the village, I have a good support network in the country and beyond. Sometimes an Ukarumpa friend comes up on the radio for a chat, breaking my isolation and reminding me I am part of something much bigger than little ol’ me in my remote village. I am reminded that there are many people in many places who are thinking of me and praying for me, and that makes a big difference.

I am never alone, because God is with me. My favourite name for God has long been ‘Immanuel’, the reminder that God is with us. This name becomes true in deeper ways when one is feeling isolated. The only easy English conversation I can have in the village is with God, which is great for my prayer life and for living life by faith. Well, mostly. Mostly, because when alone and separated from the chatter and busyness that life usually has, I am forced to face up to myself, including to aspects of myself I might not like. It is good to discover these things and work on them, but it can still be very confronting at the time.

Alone, but with no one to compare my language learning to, I have also been isolated from competition, and that’s a very good thing. I find it very easy to be self-critical and to compare myself to others. When I am only comparing my progress to yesterday, not to someone else, I am much kinder to myself. Learning language is hard enough, without me being hard on myself.

Over the last year I was alone, but not alone, when working in the village. For the next 18 months I will be working in the village with an intern, Hollie, so I will no longer be alone. Yet, even though not alone, I hope I can still hold on to the lessons learnt while alone.

Chalmers

One person I am always hearing about in my area is James Chalmers. I’d never heard of him before I went to Gulf, but he is a local hero; the missionary who was killed and eaten while spreading the good news to the local populations, well over a century ago.

He is a hero and a martyr, but along with his co-worker Oliver Tompkin, he is also a scar. They died on April 8 1901, but their death seems to weigh heavily on some people, as they seek a formal reconciliation with the descendents of Chalmers and Tompkin*. Different reconciliation ceremonies have been planned, but each one so far has been cancelled for various reasons. Meanwhile, there are many men named James or Tompkin in my village, in memory of these martyrs.

One of the men I work with in the village wrote down the story that his grandmother told him about when Chalmers came to visit. She was seven years old, and this was the first white person she had seen. I have the story in writing, but am still building the language skills to really understand it. A century is not very long, in a strong oral culture.

Others tell of the dream that a leader had before Chalmers visited. They dreamed of a visit from a  guru mere , a thunder-child, and that when this thunder-child visited, that they should not touch him, or the thunder would come. When the man the colour of lightning visited, they did not touch him, but traded with him to receive salt and sugar and sent him on his way. In the coming months, at Goaribari Island, Chalmers and Tompkin went ashore to preach to a hostile group of locals. They were killed and eaten within the day. Some PNG missionaries working with Chalmers were also killed that day, but they rarely feature in the local stories.

The thunder did come, in the form of Australian troops sent in the wake of a Royal Commission into the death of the missionaries. Local stories paint a story of fear and massacre and tell of bullet holes being visible in trees many years later and cartridges being found buried in the earth after generations. Many had already fled the area, in fear of such retribution, but many had also stayed. From the little I know, it seems that even at the time people thought the retribution was out of proportion to the original crime.

More than a century later, these men are largely forgotten in the west, although in the years following Chalmer’s death he was placed on the same pedestal as David Livingstone** and there was a Royal Commision into their deaths. In Gulf Province though they are not forgotten but remembered and given credit for bringing the Gospel to the area, even though it cost them their lives.

  “The Reverend Jame Chalmers in 1895, six years before he was murdered and eaten by cannibals on Goaribari Island in Papua. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of him that he was ‘the most attractive, simple, brave and interesting man in the whole Pacific.’”

Photo and quote from John Ryan (1969) The Hot Land:Focus on New Guinea, Melbourne:Macmillan.

Someone had the remains of a copy in the village, which is where I took this photo, but they did not have the verso page any more.

*My limited internet searching indicates Chalmers had no descendents and Tompkins may not have had any either, but reconciliation with the descendents of their extended family or of their counrty of origin, remains something people desire.

** Cuthbert Lennox (1902) ‘James Chalmers of New Guinea’ London: Andrew Melrose, p v.

Computing

With all the work I have been describing over the last few weeks, the end of the day usually finds me entering something into my computer to help me in my work. This week I thought I would give you an overview of some of the programs that I rely on.

With language learning, SayMore and Flex are the two I use. SayMore is designed to help with transcription of recordings as well as with keeping my metadata (information about the who, where and what of the recording) in order. When I return from the village, I have dozens of recordings that I need to work through. I put each of them into SayMore, add the metadata and start transcribing. The program allows me to break the recording into small segments, which it then plays on repeat while I listen and type. Once I have worked through the recording, I am able to export it to the next program, where I work on analysing and describing the content.

 SayMore screenshot

Flex, or Fieldworks Language Explorer, is the next program I use. Its purpose is to help with the analysis and description of a language, while also being good for helping to build and edit a lexicon of the language. I use Flex to type up all my language learning notes, stories I’ve collected and to analyse the recordings I typed in SayMore and then imported. It is a powerful program, which is computer talk for the fact most of us use the basic things but we’re pretty sure there’s lots more we have no idea about. I can use it to break the very long Kope words down into the smaller units of meaning (morphemes) to help me see what is actually going on inside this complex language. Also, as the computer has a better memory than me, I can build up my wordlist and then go back and search it when I’ve forgotten the meaning of a word, or the word that goes with a meaning.

Fieldworks Language Explorer screenshot

For translation, the two programs I use are Paratext and Logos. Paratext is the software in which I am building up the Kope New Testament. It is where I can enter the Kope draft and back translation, create an interlinear version, and consult the Greek text and notes from other translators about things I need to consider as we work. It also has a handy send/receive function that allows us to share the work between users and leave comments for each other. This means that once we are more established in our work, we can collaborate even when we are not in the same place.

Logos is an electronic library in which I have the Translators Workplace collection of books. There are many many more books available in Logos, but my budget has not yet stretched to include them. Still, the collection of Biblical commentaries, Greek helps and journals on translation that I can access with a click are a huge blessing. Seeing as I pay per kilogram for everything I fly to the village, this program gives me access to resources without my computer weighing a single gram more than it did before.

As I’m now also supporting the Anigibi tribe in the adaptation of the Kope drafts into their language, I have also been learning to use the program Adapt It. This is designed for exactly my situation, where a second project is started based on the work in another. Using the Kope as a source text, it makes it easy to adapt into Anigibi, as the computer remembers previous changes we have made and suggests them as appropriate. The more we use this program, the easier it will get, as it will have a database of changes to work from.

AdaptIt screenshot

With all of these programs there are problems, but usually the problems are PICNIC: Problem In Chair, Not In Computer. Sometimes though I am not at fault, but the computer has got too clever and made a wrong guess. I was confused by one of these when the suggested gloss for ‘piraromoido’ was:

pi-	r-	aromoi	-do
Past-	1P.SBJ-	heaven	-GOAL
‘I went towards heaven’ (kinda, not really)

All of these are legitimate units of meaning, but they do not belong together like this and did not match the context. Instead, the word should have been:

p-	iraromoi	-do
Past-	think	-DU.SBJ
‘they both thought’

A bit of a difference, but I am thankful to have the programs to help me sort this out.

Anigibi Adaptation

 Working in Ebegau (H.Schulz)

My third trip to work alongside the Kope people in translation was momentous enough, considering we started drafting Luke. We managed to complete the drafting and checking of two chapters, which is a fine effort for a translation team just beginning its work. This was apparently not enough for one trip though, as on the last day, another momentous thing happened when we visited the Anigibi.

The Kope translation team had been saying that the Anigibi should also have their own Bible, and that they should receive it at the same time as the Kope. The Kope and the Anigibi are closely related, both linguistically and socially, but have distinct social identities. They can understand each other when they talk, but their dialects have numerous differences. It is wonderful that the Kope care enough about the Bible, and about their neighbouring upstream tribe, to want to help them this way. It is also slightly scary when I can’t even speak Kope properly yet.

So, on the last day of my third village trip, we went to visit the Anigibi. We took with some of our drafts from Kope. I say some, as I did not have a printer in the village at that stage, and there was only so much of the good copy written out by hand that we could take with. Drafts in hand, we went visiting to see what people thought and how hard it would be to adapt the Anigibi into Kope.

 Working in Titihui (H.Schulz)

First we went to Ebegau village, the furthest upstream. We sat in the shade with members of the community, reading through the Kope and using a red pen to change it to Anigibi as needed. About every second word needed changing, but the changes were consistent. Once the changes were done, we re-read the whole thing in Anigibi, to many smiles from the gathering crowd as they heard the text so clearly.

Next we visited the village of Titihui. This is right bedside the airstrip I was flying out of later that day, and not far from Teredau mill where many Kope and Anigibi people work. Once again, we sat in the shade with our drafts and Tompkin, a Kope translator, worked through the adaptation process with some Anigibi people.

As we heard the plane circling to land, an hour earlier than expected, we grabbed my luggage, rushed through the last changes, looked at the threatening clouds and headed for the airstrip. Unfortunately the pilot had not received my message to stop at the river end of the airstrip, so we had to walk the length of the strip in the pouring rain for me to board.

Flying back to the Highlands, I was feeling thankful and overwhelmed. Thankful that the Kope were so keen to help their neighbours. Thankful that the Anigibi were keen to have God’s word in their language. Thankful that the adaptation seemed to be a straightforward affair. Yet overwhelmed, as I can barely speak Kope and had just been handed the responsibility of supporting another tribe to have the Bible. Overwhelmed because I have no idea how to go about that well, for although the adaptation process may speed up the drafting, there is still much work to be done in checking etc. Overwhelmed because two full on months in the village had just ended with a wonderful development, and a tropical drenching. Yet overall I was thankful, because God is more than able to make things happen, even when I am not.

Ebegau from the air…it’s a very small village! (H.Schulz)