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