Day 6  Koorete Word Collection  Nov. 17 and Sunday outing details

Enthusiasm was high as we began week two of word collection in Koorete after a weekend of rest for the participants. Progress was steady, and now it seems quite likely that we will be able to finish all of semantic domains 1-7 (out of 9), even though we don’t have the recommended contingent of six word-collection groups. (At the outset, I had expected that it might not be feasible to make it all the way through the first 7 domains.) So I am pleased with the progress being made.

There was some concern on the part of those who are able to judge the quality of the work being done about what was coming in toward the end of the week. So this morning, both Lydia and Hussein reminded everyone of the principles that they had been taught at the beginning of the workshop—what to include and what not to, the importance of respecting the limits of each semantic domain, etc. Their assessment at the end of the day was that the reminders had paid dividends; the data that had come in during this sixth day of the workshop was of better quality than what had been turned in the latter part of last week.

Power cuts are still a significant impediment to the task of entering all of the data into the computer. Two of the four computers being used have a battery life of about 5 minutes when the power goes out, so our ability to enter data is halved each time we lose power. The generator that we were supposed to have available for this scenario has still not appeared, so we continue to do what we can with the resources we have available to us. We will probably surpass the 10,000-word milestone by the end of the day tomorrow.

Kevin Warfel

Sunday Outing to Konso


Today Lydia offered to drive the four of us who are visiting here (Hussein, Anne-Christie, Johnny, and me) to Konso, a provincial capital about 100 miles south-southwest of Amaaro, where villages can still be seen with stone walls built around them to protect the inhabitants from their enemies in years gone by. Anne-Christie had lived in or near Konso for a few months at one point in her time here in Ethiopia, so she told us a bit about the history and culture of the area.

The climate in the Konso area is very different from here in Amaaro. We transitioned from hilly semi-jungle with fertile fields of tef (the fine grain used to make injera, which is the Ethiopian “bread” and staple food) and corn, along with lots of banana trees, to hills of sandy soil with scrubby growth and much reduced fertility. The area around Konso seemed more adapted to “ranching” than “farming,” with herds of animals (cattle, goats, and sheep) seemingly outnumbering the human inhabitants. It seemed much hotter and drier there than here in Amaaro.

Johnny and I took advantage of the outing to keep our eyes peeled for birds, and we came up with quite a long list (below). We also saw a monkey scamper across the road at one point, and saw a squirrel-like animal along the side the road from time to time.

All in all, it was a restful day, and I enjoyed the opportunity to see more of the variety in God’s creation as we traveled. For those interested, here is the list of the birds we saw:

1. Little Bee-eater
2. Northern Carmine Bee-eater
3. black-winged Red Bishop
4. Northern Red Bishop
5. Augur Buzzard
6. Red-cheeked Cordon Bleu
7. Blue-headed Coucal
8. Pied Crow
9. Red-eyed Dove
10. Emerald-spotted Wood Dove
11. Fork-tailed Drongo
12. Crested Eagle (Johnny)
13. Common Fiscal
14. Gray-backed Fiscal
15. Crested? Francolin
16. White-bellied Go-away Bird
17. African Goshawk
18. Dark Chanting Goshawk
19. Eastern Chanting Goshawk
20. Eurasian Hoopoe
21. Gray Hornbill
22. Northern Red-billed Hornbill
23. Hadada  Ibis
24. Village Indigobird
25. Pied Kingfisher
26. A smaller type of Kingfisher (maybe Striped Kingfisher)
27. Black Kite
28. Speckled Mousebird
29. Speckled Pigeon
30. Fan-tailed Raven
31. Abyssinian Roller
32. Northern White-crowned Shrike
33. White-browed Sparrow-weaver
34. Blue-eared Glossy Starling
35. Rüppel’s Starling
36. Superb Starling
37. Tacazze Sunbird
38. Swallows (not sure exactly which species)
39. Hooded Vulture
40. Vitelline’s Masked Weaver
41. White-headed Buffalo Weaver

by Kevin Warfel