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.