This will likely be my final post to this blog for at least the next couple of weeks.

I did return safely to my home and family on Tuesday, but about 6 hours later than I expected. On my ticket, there were 2 hours and 45 minutes between the arrival of my flight from Ethiopia in Toronto and the departure of my flight to Charlotte. That seemed like sufficient time to make the connection. But the departure time of that second flight was changed somewhere along the line from 10:00am to 8:25am, and I wasn't informed of the change. If my flight from Addis Ababa had been on time or even a bit ahead of schedule, I'm not sure I would have had enough time to catch the plane to Charlotte. When I learned that our expected arrival time in Toronto was more than an hour later than what was printed on my itinerary, I began to accept the likelihood of missing a connecting flight for what was--as far as I can remember--the first time in my life.

Sure enough, when we disembarked, I saw on the airport flight monitors that the gate for my second flight was already closed, as the plane prepared for departure. There were about 20 of us who missed flights due to the late arrival of the Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa, and it took the agents quite a while to get us rescheduled on other planes. But by 11:30, I had a boarding pass for a 4:00 flight to Charlotte, as well as a food voucher for $15 to help me buy some lunch while I whiled away the intervening hours.

The 4:00 flight was on time, so I arrived in Charlotte just before 6:00 and was back home with my family by 7:30. It's great to be back home! Anita and the girls are here, and Evan is due to arrive later today. I have the remainder of December as vacation, so I'm counting on spending a lot of my time with the family.

As a closing paragraph on my trip to Ethiopia, I would say that in several ways it was the most difficult assignment that God has ever given me, with lots of physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges. But He was faithful to His promises and always provided what I needed to accomplish what He had sent me there to do. Often it was no more than that, as there were numerous occasions where I did not have as much as I wanted of certain things, but I had what I needed. It was important for me to remind myself that the granting of my desires is optional, while the provision for my needs is assured, according to His promises.

Tuesday - planned arrival in Charlotte  1pm  missed scheduled flight in Toronto

Monday - Addis Ababa SIL office and flight home 10:40 pm via Toronto

Sunday - Addis Ababa church and meals with colleagues

Today consisted of attending church and other gatherings with colleagues, along with packing for my flights home.  After church I took the Bryant family, with whom I am staying, and David out for lunch,. The meal for the six of us cost less than $40.

Then, I helped the Bryants prepare for the evening meal to which they were inviting 20-some people! A while later we went to the Neudorfs’ home for a brief afternoon visit which included cake and conversation.

Back at the Bryants, I worked on packing.  Soon after, the guests began to arrive for the big meal and entertainment via board games for those interested.

I will be glad to be home with my family by Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 16, after my flights from Addis Ababa to Toronto (starting at 10:40 pm Monday evening), and Toronto to Charlotte.

Kevin Warfel

Saturday  *photo* Getting to the airport in Asosa, then met fellow passenger during flight to Addis Ababa

A funny thing happened on the way to airport today. But I’m getting ahead of my story, so let me back up.

Since Saturday is market day, I went to the Asosa market and took close to 50 pictures. I’m not going to do the hard work of sending them now, though, since I’ll be back home in just a few days if all goes according to plan (as I hope it does!). I am rather sunburned now after spending a good bit of time each day in Asosa walking places, so it’s good that I’ve left there and am now in Addis Ababa, where I don’t spend so much time in the sun because people drive me around.

David and I spent the morning packing our things and securing the house where we were staying, so that it won’t be easy to break into while the owners are away. Then we went to our favorite restaurant in Asosa for lunch—the Intercontinental, where we both had vegetable soup, a big bowl for $2.25. (See picture.) Then we walked back home to wait for the bajaj that would take us to the airport.

The bajaj turned up at the house where we were staying at just a few minutes after 1:45. Anne-Christie had walked over from where she was living, so we loaded our large bags into the rear luggage compartment, then got in and held our smaller bags on our laps. The driver put the bajaj into gear, but the vehicle refused to go. As he investigated the nature of the problem, he discovered that the clutch cable had broken, and his vehicle was immobilized. Time to panic—we were to be at the airport in another 20 minutes or so, and our means of transportation had just broken down!

But God had already provided a Plan B. Last evening, we invited a young SIL couple who are in Asosa for two weeks to join us for supper. They drove to Asosa from Addis Ababa, so they had a vehicle and were living near us. As they left last evening, the husband casually mentioned that, in the event our ride with the bajaj didn’t work out, he would be happy to take us to the airport. We had not expected to take him up on his offer, but in light of the broken cable in the bajaj, we were quickly on the phone to ask Josh if he could come and rescue us. Some 15 minutes later, he had safely deposited us at the airport. Thanks to God for providing that Plan B and to Josh for his willingness to come to our aid!

On the plane, I ended up sitting by a man from France. We talked the entire flight, so it was the fastest one-hour flight I’ve ever taken. (I think that’s the first time I’ve ever carried on a conversation with anyone for an entire plane flight! Granted, the second half of the flight wasn’t true conversation, but rather had us tag-teaming to solve a Sudoku puzzle in the airline’s magazine. But we were talking in French while doing it and having a great time together.)

I am now back in Ethiopia’s capital city, with about 48 hours before my flight leaves for Canada. My flight is scheduled to depart Addis Ababa at 10:40pm local time on Monday. That’s 2:40pm Monday for those of you in the Eastern time zone; I’ll let the rest of you do the math to figure out the time in your time zone. I have a direct flight to Toronto, then change planes to continue on to Charlotte after a two-and-a-half-hour layover.

 

Day 9 Final Day of Word Collection and Closing Ceremony

Today was a flurry of activity, as we brought the word collection to a close, then glossed and typed each entry into the computer, before cleaning up all of the “debris” from the workshop and heading for “home.” I was responsible for supper tonight, and we had invited another couple in addition to Anne-Christie, so a busy, but fun-filled evening was stacked on top of a whirlwind of a day.

My day began at about 4:30, when I got up to cut up onions for the stir fry I would make for supper. I had to get an early start on that because I was not guaranteed to have enough time in the afternoon. As it turned out, it was good I did them in the morning. Then at 5:30, I was able to chat with Anita and Evan via Skype. (I must say that it has been a nice surprise to be able to communicate that way. When I left home almost six weeks ago, I expected that I would not be able to communicate in any way other than via email, and even that was not guaranteed on a regular or predictable basis. As it has turned out, I’ve been able to chat with each of my children at least twice and with Anita many times over the course of my stay here in Ethiopia. That has been an unanticipated blessing!)

The workshop convened at 8:30 am, as usual, but today we stopped the word collection at tea break (10:30) in order to give the glossers time to finish their job before letting everyone go, and it worked out that we were able to exactly complete the seventh family of semantic domains, leaving only the eighth and ninth groups unfinished. Since the ninth one is very linguistic in nature, there are no plans to do anything with that one; but the eighth family will be the focus of a follow-up workshop, perhaps in January, where some of these same participants will be invited back to finish the work for which they had made good progress.

The team of glossers worked feverishly to complete their work on the final folders that came in from the word-collection groups. They even recruited a couple more individuals from the word-collection teams to help with the task. They worked on, even as Anne-Christie and Fek’adu and I gave our closing speeches and then passed out certificates and group photos to the participants. It was just past noon when they were finally given permission to leave. All were eager to get back to their families and something more familiar and less taxing than thinking about their language. Their exit was in the form of a controlled stampede.

Anne-Christie invited Fek’adu (logistics manager), Alemts’ehai (typist), and the two men from the Culture Bureau whom we had trained to do the follow-up workshop (in January?) for lunch, and David and I were included in the invitation. We went to the Bamboo Paradise Hotel restaurant, where two pizzas, two injeras with bean paste, a spaghetti with vegetables, and a rice with vegetable dish were ordered and eaten. It was a nice meal and a nice time together, but I didn’t understand much of the conversation since it was mostly in Amharic.

When we returned to the work of wrapping things up, it was nearly 3:00. I was responsible for the record-keeping and for setting up two other computers to be used in the follow-up workshop. I had hoped to be done by 4:00 so I could get back to the house and take care of preparing the rest of the items for my stir fry, but that didn’t happen. Instead, it was about 4:30 when the last of the data entry was completed and I was finally able to finish configuring the computers. By the time we finished getting the database onto the newly prepared computers, it was after 5:00.

Back at the house, I set to work cutting up the other vegetables for the meal, and thanks to David’s help, everything was ready with about 15 minutes to spare before I needed to begin cooking, so I had time for a bit of horizontal time with my eyes closed. The meal was pronounced a success by our guests, though to me it didn’t taste like what I do with that same recipe back home—maybe the soy sauce I got here is different? After supper, we played cribbage as two teams of two before saying ‘good night,’ after which I pretty much fell into bed.

(You may have figured out by now that I waited until Saturday morning to write this. But it’s still Friday back home, so I’m not really late. ;-) )

Day 8  Gwama Word Collection  *photo* and story of a Gwama writer

Bekama (bay-KAH-muh) is one of the scribes in this Gwama workshop—the person who writes down the words that his group comes up with as they move from topic to topic. Moreover, his group has produced more words than either of the other two, so his writing speed is apparently not hindering the group’s progress. This is rather surprising, considering that he only began learning to write his language earlier this year, through a pair of two-week workshops.

Bekama is the son of Jiregna, so his “full name” in Ethiopian style is Bekama Jiregna. If further detail is necessary to distinguish him from another individual, he could add the name of his paternal grandfather, then his father, and so on. He was born 29 years ago into a family that currently includes four other children—Bekama’s brother and three sisters. Two of the sisters are married; the brother and the other sister are not yet.

Bekama has two wives and a one-year-old son, Sultan (whose “full name” is therefore Sultan Bekama). He lives in Keser Kabale, a village in the Tongo woreda (compare to a “county” in a US state or some similar administrative slice of territory) nearly two hours from Asosa by private vehicle and longer by public transportation. He has land there where he farms corn and sorghum as his primary crops, supplemented by two local grains called t’ef and daguza in Amharic, plus peanuts.

In addition to farming, Bekama has a position in a community-development project at work in his home area. He is the coordinator for the support of orphans in four villages, seeing that they have school supplies, uniforms, and so on so that they can attend school and get an education.

Bekama speaks at least four languages to a reasonable degree, as well as a little bit of English. He grew up speaking both Gwama (his father’s language) and Komo (his mother’s tongue), and because both of those are minority languages, he also learned Oromo in order to communicate with people of other ethnic groups in the area. So he is fluent in those three languages. Because Amharic is the official language of the country, he has also learned to speak that well enough to communicate with people wherever he might travel.

When asked what motivated him to be part of this rapid word collection workshop, Bekama explained that his language has value for him, so he wants to see it developed in every way possible—being written, having a bilingual dictionary (Gwama–Amharic), etc.—and he wants to help other Gwama speakers to value their language as he does. He claims that the opportunity to play a part in the development of his language excites him more than words can express, but he expressed surprise at the fact that we have collected more than 5000 words during this workshop. At the start of our two weeks together, he would never have imagined that Gwama had that many words.

Bekama, serving as a scribe for the Word Collection to benefit his language

written by Kevin Warfel

Day 7  Gwama Word Collection - milestone achieved 

Today we topped 5000 words for this workshop and passed the halfway point in terms of the number of semantic domains covered. Considering that we are working at half strength (3 word-collection groups, instead of 6), it is very good progress.

Everyone is working well after enjoying the break over the long weekend. There’s not much else to report, as things are moving along steadily.  Tomorrow I hope to introduce you to one of the participants.

Day 6  Gwama Word Collection  Tuesday Dec 9

The streets of Asosa have returned to normal. Gone are the soldiers with guns on every street corner and the uniformed guards at every hostel and hotel. The bajajes are running again, and are once again the most common vehicle seen in the streets, SUVs having once again become a relative rarity. Flags will continue to fly and the painted walls and fences will bear testimony for some time to come that a special event took place in this city, but life as we knew it ten days ago has more or less been restored.

Our 17 workshop participants all returned this morning, refreshed and ready to take on the challenge of thinking about their language once again. As a result, Anne-Christie and I felt that they made good progress. She started them off with a group exercise on a topic related to the holiday that had just been celebrated—musical instruments. Apparently the Gwama have quite a few, with 30 words being collected by the group for that semantic domain. Following the whole-group exercise, each of the small groups continued as they had been doing last week, each working on a separate folder. The atmosphere seemed positive and reasonably energetic.

I’ve included with this blog entry a photo of those who’ve been involved in this workshop. With a minimal effort, I think you can identify Anne-Christie (Dutch) and David (American), as well as the two Ethiopians who are not Gwama: Fek’adu (Logistics Coordinator and SIL employee) and Alemts’ehai (Typist).

Below is a photo of Nasirala, one of the glossers.

Monday  no word collection - Cultural Diversity Celebration

Nearby wall freshly painted:

I had an interesting experience this morning when I went to buy bread for our breakfast. As I left the house, I heard the Berta (ethnic group from this area) band playing nearby. As I rounded the corner onto the street where the shop is located where I buy bread, I saw them standing in front of the Police Commission, directly opposite the shop where I buy bread. Many (maybe all) of them had what looked like a wooden horn; the instruments were of varying lengths, producing sounds of various pitches. Some of them were longer than the ones playing them were tall, reminding me of the Australian didjeridoo.
An egg plate for breakfast on a previous day:

As I continued to approach, the musicians suddenly quit playing, walked across the street, occupied all the chairs in the very shop where I buy bread, and ordered cups of tea. When I got to the shop a minute or two later, I had to pick my way through musical instruments and instrumentalists’ legs to get to the counter to order my bread. Those who run the shop looked rather harried as they tried to handle the mass of orders that the band had unleashed on them. The teenager who normally waits on me was pouring tea into cups through a sieve designed to catch the loose leaves, then while she helped her co-worker with a bread order, the sieve drifted over the sugar container, dripping tea into the sugar. The top of the counter was a bit of a mess, but I got my bread without any difficulty, then negotiated my way through the tangle of legs and horns back out of the shop and onto the sidewalk, and from there safely back home.

I did not get to any of the special festival activities at the stadium. For one thing, I would have had to walk in the sun without any sunscreen or protective headgear for a rather long way, which would not have been wise. For another, once there I would likely not have been able to get into the stadium anyway, due to the limited seating and the large number of VIPs (which I am not). Anne-Christie went with a friend and mingled with the performers outside the stadium before they were called in to perform, but she and her friend never gained access to the stadium itself.

I did walk around town a bit and take a few more pictures, and David and I went downtown for lunch, ordering curried beef over rice for $5 a plate. That’s pretty expensive for here, but it was good, and it was our way of “celebrating.” Two cokes added another dollar to the bill, so we forked out a whole $11, plus a 50-cent tip, for our lunch.
Government office wall newly painted:

Saturday and Sunday

Sunday

 

Today was a relaxing day, a real day of rest. The five SIL members who are currently here in Asosa met for praise, reflection, and prayer in the morning, then my housemate, David, and I played some board games and watched a movie. I also walked around town a bit and took some pictures of all the freshly painted walls and all the flags and other decorations that are visible around town. The “bajajes” were again not running, presumably so as not to block the path of all of the SUVs, which are ten times more numerous this weekend than they were at the beginning of the week. Small groups of important people are being transported from place to place in SUVs; larger groups are moved via full-size buses that look pretty new. I’m not seeing the buses any more that I thought were providing public transportation in place of the bajajes.

I found a bajaj parked yesterday, so I took a picture of it to give you a better idea what they look like. (See photo below.) Sorry it wasn’t open so you could see the inside, but there is a bench seat in the back that seats three people comfortably (at least by local standards), and there is a seat beside the driver, so normal capacity is four passengers.



You can also see in the photos I’m including with this post the split-bamboo fencing that is common here in Asosa. Many homes and businesses covered up their fencing of this type with tin—some say they were forced to do so—so I’ve included a picture of a place where this happened. In the picture showing the teal and yellow sheets of tin, there is a bamboo fence behind the tin. In the picture of the road that runs near the house where I’m staying, the lines were painted just last week. They already look like they’ve been there for quite some time.

Split bamboo fencing:

 

Below is the tin façade:

 

Newly painted lines on the street:

Saturday  Half Day of Word Collection

The “bajajes” are running again after only one day of ‘suspension.’ Rumor has it that Friday was the day all of the VIPs were scheduled to arrive, so the motorized tricycle taxis were banned from the roads for the day. Today they were back in service, a number of them flying the national flag and/or one of the nine regional flags. A few days ago, I saw one that was flying so many different flags, I thought it would create enough drag to impact the vehicle’s fuel economy. I’d like to take a lot of pictures, but there are so many people in uniform around to provide security during this event that I’m scared of inadvertently taking a picture of something that someone thinks I shouldn’t and having my camera confiscated.

Because we won’t be able to meet to collect words on Monday, we had everyone come for half a day today. The participants were very good about it, but we could tell that everyone is feeling tired. Progress these past few days has been quite slow, as it is very hard work for these individuals to spend a whole day (or even half of one) thinking about their language. Language is something that they use without reflecting on what they’re saying, how they’re saying it, why they choose to say it that way, and so on. Asking them to focus on abstract topic after abstract topic is something that they’re not at all used to, so it wears them out much more quickly than it would those of us who are used to tasks that require a lot of mental energy.

At the end of the morning, just before we dismissed them for the long weekend, I tried to give them a bit of a pep talk. I explained to them that doing something that one is not used to is tiring. For them, thinking about their language is draining; but if I went to work in the fields with them, they would see that I would be tired long before they would be. I told them that, after five weeks away from home, I was tired and ready to go back home and be with my family again. But because I agreed to come here and lead this workshop for another week, I will honor my commitment and give of my best for yet another week. Similarly, as they have promised to work for two weeks to collect words from their language for a dictionary, I encouraged them to honor their commitment and give of their best for the week that remains. In the meantime, I told them to go and have fun for the next two and a half days, enjoy the festivities, and come back on Tuesday refreshed and recharged, ready to finish what we came here to do.

In the afternoon, David and I went to town to try to find flour, so that I could cook what I had planned for the evening meal. An SIL couple with a toddler have arrived in town, so we invited them to join us for macaroni and tuna, which requires flour as a thickener in the sauce. I had been looking in various shops for packaged flour, but without success. This time I decided I would just go from shop to shop, specifically asking for what I was looking for. This is the second time (out of two attempts) that that strategy has worked well for me, as the first place I inquired had it (in a sack on the floor under the counter where I couldn’t see it from the outside). The places where I’ve found first the macaroni, and now the flour, have surprised me because they didn’t look like places that were likely to have what I was looking for. ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ applies here, I guess. (These ‘shops’ are ones where you don’t go inside, but simply conduct your business through a front window which allows you to see in—but apparently not to see everything that is inside.)  We were five adults who gathered around 6:30, entertained by Fletcher, the lone child in our midst. We enjoyed the meal and fellowship together, and now plan to organize our own worship service together tomorrow morning.

Kevin Warfel

Day 5  Gwama Rapid Word Collection


There are a couple of new developments today regarding the preparations for the festival to be held on Monday. Both of these came as surprises to me, and apparently to Anne-Christie and David, as well. First of all, we were allowed back in the large meeting room (first photo on Day 4) that we were told to move out of yesterday. They had said that we would be allowed back in there after the festival, but no one was using it today, so we were able to move back. That allowed the Curriculum Development staff to reoccupy their large room that they so graciously allowed us to use yesterday. The second surprise was that there are no “bajajes” (motorized tricycle taxis) on the roads today. They have apparently been banned for the time being in favor of buses which have begun running routes to provide public transportation. Last-minute painting continues at various locations. Today the Education Bureau main gate got a fresh coat of blue paint. The hardware store owners must have made a lot of money these past few weeks, selling all this paint and tin!

On the word-collection front, it feels like we’re losing momentum rapidly. The topics are becoming more abstract, which means that the explanations in Amharic are less and less familiar to the group leaders, resulting in increased uncertainty about the nature of the topic for which the participants are to come up with words. Plus, in many languages in this part of the world, there are relatively few words used to talk about these sorts of themes, so there aren’t many words to be gleaned, and those that do exist don’t necessarily come easily to mind.

Kevin Warfel

Day 4  *photos* Gwama Rapid Word Collection workshop


Another wave of the “storm” that struck Wednesday afternoon hit first thing Thursday morning. It was both more severe and less severe than Wednesday’s storm in certain ways. It was more severe in that we lost not just the tables we were working at, but the entire room we were working in, with the only prospect for a replacement being the small room we had moved to last Friday. It was less severe in that those who came to give us the news that we needed to move did so in a way that was more personal and understanding. Anne-Christie was allowed to escort their leader to Fek’adu’s office in order to find a solution to our need for a space to work.  This is the large meeting room we started in:

 

 

As I hope you can see from the next photo, it would have been impossible for three word-collection groups, a group of glossers, two typists, a coordinator, and a consultant to find a way to work in the small room we had squeezed everyone into for a group session on Monday morning.   Pictured here is our typist David in the smaller room:

 

Thanks to Fek’adu’s efforts and the goodwill of an office director at the Education Bureau complex where SIL has its office and where our workshop is taking place, we were granted the use of a room containing 10 desks and a table in the middle, where we were able to meet today. The Director moved his staff out of that room and into smaller rooms elsewhere in the Education Bureau so that we could move all of our people and paraphernalia into his staff’s normal working space. Seems like a tremendous sacrifice on his part and a tribute to the relationship that SIL must have with him for him to be willing to do that.                                                                                               

 

 





There is an important social, and even spiritual lesson in the comparison of these two “storms.” The first, while more trivial in that it involved only furniture that was relatively easy to replace, left me feeling distressed. The second, even though it was more drastic and threatened to leave our workshop homeless, left feelings of gratitude and grace. The difference was in the way that those in positions of authority wielded their power.

Regarding the process flow during workshop, it seems that the trademark of this particular RWC workshop—the thing it will be remembered for by us who have been involved in many of them—is the degree of equilibrium that has been established between the word-collection groups, the glossers, and the typists. There is no bottleneck anywhere in the work flow, nor has any one person or group had to wait long periods of time with an empty “inbox.” The first three (of nine altogether) families of semantic domains worked on—numbers 2, 5, and 6—have been completed (words, glosses, and data entry). Participants are now collecting words from families 1, 3, and 7.

Kevin Warfel

Dec 3  *photo* Day 3 of Gwama Word Collection

Today was a day that did not go exactly as planned. It started off routinely enough, with no indication that anything unexpected was coming. All morning long, things went pretty much according to the script that I predicted in yesterday’s post—word-collection groups producing words at a pace fast enough to keep the glossers busy, and glossers working quickly enough to keep the typists supplied, with no significant backlogs anywhere. Everything moved along very predictably, lulling us all into thinking that the entire day would be like that. But it was the calm before the “storm.”

It wasn’t a huge storm, but it still came as a bit of a shock to me, and my impression was that the others who were there were similarly affected. At about 2:45, four people not part of our group walked into the meeting room where we’ve been working  (see first photo on Day 4). One of them was obviously the leader, and it was he who walked up to each of the word-collection groups in turn and told them to pick their things up off the table they were working at because the table was needed elsewhere most urgently.

Ten minutes later, the glossers had lost their table, as had each of the word-collection groups. No excuses were made, nor were any replacement tables offered. For the next few minutes after the last table had disappeared out the door, everyone sat in stunned silence, wondering what to do next and how to continue the workshop.

Our workshop’s logistics manager came to the rescue, appearing just as the typists’ table was being replaced with another, longer one, and after a few minutes he announced that some of the participants should go and fetch some tables from another room and bring them to our meeting room. In the end, the disruption lasted only about 15 minutes, after which everyone was happily back at work around tables different than the one they had been at before the storm had struck. And just that quickly, the storm moved on to bring unexpected change to someone else’s otherwise tranquil day.

Today was market day, so at 8:00 Wendemu was scheduled to put in an appearance at our house to get our order and do our shopping for us, then when he was back, wash my dirty clothes. We usually leave at 8:15 to walk to the Education Bureau, where our workshop is taking place, so when no one had arrived by 8:05, I began to wonder if the arrangements that Andreas had made for us before he left to return to Addis Ababa would really pan out. But, quite a bit early by “African time,” Wendemu arrived at 8:10 and I was able to pass on our order to him, with Anne-Christie had graciously hand-written in Amharic so he could read it.

When I stopped by the house during our coffee/tea break, Wendemu had returned and was in the process of washing my clothes. Then began my attempt—probably hilarious to an Ethiopian observer, since Wendemu speaks no English and I’ve learned only a few words of Amharic—to communicate with him about what he had and had not found in the market and how much he had paid for each of things he had found. Unfortunately, some of the things on our shopping list “were not there.” Our estimation of the amount of money Wendemu would need was low, so he ran out of funds. Whether the other items on our list really were not there or if they “were not there” because he ran out of money, we’ll probably never know. But we did end up with a few important items from the market and my clothes are now clean.

Kevin Warfel

Ethiopia woman carrying wood up a slight slope.  Ethiopia is mountainous.  The people work hard and are friendly.

 

(Several photos have been added to the November blogs for the Koorete workshop.)

Day 2  *photo*  Gwama Rapid Word Collection workshop arrangement of roles

The number of participants in this workshop seems to have settled at 17, not counting the six of us who are non-Gwama (Anne-Christie—who is the Coordinator and helps answer everyone’s questions and is primarily responsible for quality control; two typists—David, and the wife of an SIL employee; two government employees—who will be responsible for continuing the Gwama word-collection after these two weeks; and me—functioning as record-keeper and as consultant when questions arise). So there are 23 of us working in the very large meeting room I described previously. I am so thankful that we have such a large space to work in.

We are seated around six tables arranged around the room. 4-5 participants are seated around each of three tables oriented parallel to each other near the platform at the one end of the room; they form the word-collection groups. Three other participants are seated at a table toward the back of the room (near the entrance); they are adding Amharic glosses (short definitions) to the Gwama words collected by those toward the front. Two other tables are situated between the word-collection groups and the platform, but perpendicular to them; I sit at one of these, doing the record-keeping; one of the typists sits at the other, doing data entry. David does his share of the data entry in a separate room because it’s less draining for him if he can work in solitude, rather than in the presence of other people.

You may have observed that we added a typist today who was not present the first day. Since David was able to keep up by himself on Monday with the output from the two glossers, adding yet another typist meant we needed to increase the number of glossers, as well. Thus, Anne-Christie asked one of the members of the word-collection teams to change roles and help with the glossing. For the better part of the day, the glossers were not quite able to keep the typists steadily supplied with work, so there were periods of time where the typists were waiting for the next folder to be completed by the glossers and had time on their hands. By the end of the day, however, that seemed to be changing, and I’m expecting that tomorrow we’ll see that there will normally be at least one folder waiting for a typist to claim it.

Yesterday, we began to see folders accumulating in the glossers’ “inbox,” as two people glossing for three word-collection groups was an insufficient number. Today, with three people working on glossing, the glossers’ output seemed to pretty well match the rate at which new material was given to them. Thus, I have the impression that we struck a good balance today, with three word-collection groups, three glossers, and two typists (one of whom is a fluent touch-typist).

As Anne-Christie warned me ahead of time would be the case, the ‘weak link’ in this workshop is the level of fluency in Amharic of the Gwama participants. In this part of the country, Oromo is used much more as a trade language than is Amharic, so while those taking part in this workshop do speak Amharic, they do not have the depth of vocabulary and understanding in that language that they do in either Gwama or Oromo. In practical terms, this means that they are often struggling to understand what the questionnaire (written in Amharic) says, so they have difficulty understanding the topic (semantic domain) for which they are being asked to collect words. Therefore we have added another step in our assembly-line process: Anne-Christie looks over the words collected before the folders are given to the glossers, screening the content to be sure that the words are correctly categorized, and crossing out any that are not. This saves the glossers valuable time that they would otherwise spend translating words that don’t need to be translated. (These words will inevitably be collected when the correct semantic domain is treated, and they’ll be glossed there, so they will not be “lost.”) The most salient example of this was when the names of various carnivores were written on the response sheet for the semantic domain intended to collect names used for various kinds of meat that people eat (e.g., beef, mutton, veal). The intent of the semantic domain was simply misunderstood by the group that dealt with that topic. They understood that it had to do with eating meat, but they misunderstood who was doing the eating.

In news peripheral to the workshop itself, I think we have found a ‘favorite restaurant’ here in Asosa. I had a very nice omelet there the other day, and today Anne-Christie had vegetable soup (with vegetables in it that we haven’t seen in the local market, so we’re wondering where they got them), David had rice and sauce (the first time we have been able to order that in any of the restaurants where we’ve tried, and we have tried several times), and I had ‘tɨps’ (roasted beef in broth) with bread. (See photo.) David spoke for all of us when he said, “We’ll definitely come back here again!”

Photo of Johnny Walker, from previous workshop in Amaaro, eating roasted beef in broth with bread.

written by Kevin Warfel

Day 1  *photo* Gwama Rapid Word Collection -

The nine participants who were here for the training phase last week all came back; I’d like to think that that says something positive about their experience. In addition, five newcomers joined the ranks by 8:30, and three more arrived in the course of the day. We had hoped for ten last week and an additional ten this week; that would have allowed us to have four word-collection groups. But this number worked out well today. We had three groups of five people collecting words, two individuals glossing, and David Ford, who flew in from Addis Ababa yesterday, did the typing. Of the 17 Gwama speakers participating, 14 are young men and three are young women; judging by appearances alone, I would say that there are no participants over the age of 35. That is unusual for a workshop of this type. It will be interesting to see how things unfold.

With these numbers, the word collection is going at a decent pace, the glossers are not quite able to keep up (so a bit of a backlog there), and David is able to enter the Gwama and Amharic words into the computer at almost exactly the same rate that the glossers are able to keep him supplied with data to type.

The meeting of government personnel that was supposed to take place in the large room we had used for most of the training phase either never happened or it took place in a different location, because we were able to move all of our things back to the large meeting room again when it was time to begin collecting words.

When we convened at 8:30, we did so in the room where we had finished the day on Friday, a room that I estimate to be approximately 15 x 20 feet in size. With the new arrivals, there were 14 Gwama sitting in chairs or on tables (due to an insufficient number of chairs) and all three of us expatriates standing at the front. Imagine 17 people in a room about the size of a small supplemental classroom and you’ll begin to appreciate the degree to which our workspace would have been limited there.

After a few opening remarks, we were informed that the large meeting room was available after all, so we moved over there and arranged tables and chairs to be conducive to word collection. By shortly after 9:00, we had three groups happily navigating semantic domains and collecting words. I estimated the size of this room at approximately 50 x 100 feet, so there is more space there than we need, even with half of it being unusable because it is stacked full of chairs.

At lunch break, I got my first ride in a “bajaj,” the enclosed motorized tricycles that function as taxis here in Asosa. Anne-Christie had an errand to run, so we took this faster way to get into town from the Education Bureau, where our workshop is being held. She held out her hand to hail a passing bajaj, but he didn’t have space for three passengers. At that moment, however, one coming the other direction dropped off his only passenger and was persuaded to do a u-turn and pick us all up and take us into town. Five minutes or so later, after a detour around a segment of the street that was closed due to line painting and then not being able to turn onto yet another street we wanted because of the roadwork that happening on it, we were in the end deposited a short distance from our intended destination and charged a total of about 25 cents for the three of us.

Four passengers plus the driver can fit in this bajaj.

Kevin Warfel