March 5: Training Day #2

My impression of the participants of this workshop changed slightly today, as a yellow flag began to wave itself vigorously during the opening session. I still love the energy that this group has, and I still think they have the potential to soar to great heights in terms of the outcome of the workshop. But...

Pastor Alphonse told me this morning at breakfast that the Bissa are a people who don’t beat around the bush; they speak their mind and they give it to you straight. That’s unusual for African people, in my experience. Alphonse’s statement was borne out early on during the day today, as I saw that they have a great propensity to discuss topics at great length in order to come to a consensus. (If someone says something that someone else is not in complete agreement with, the latter will immediately speak up to voice his opinion. A lengthy discussion often ensues, with many voices contributing to the cacophony, the hubbub only dissipating after prolonged high-decibel participation by numerous individuals.) With no effort to keep that tendency in check, they will use up great amounts of time making a decision about a single word—whether it’s really a word in Bissa, whether it should be spelled this way or that way, whether this or that pronunciation is the correct one, and so on. So I felt compelled to remind them a couple of times today that the primary objective of this workshop is to collect words—the details can be hashed out later; if they aren’t careful, they will spend a great deal of time collecting just a few words and the purpose of the workshop will not have been achieved. They saw the logic of that, but old habits are hard to break, so it’s almost certain that we leaders will have to intervene to remind them of the overall objective from time to time.

At the same time, I love the questions this group asks. I just absolutely love the fact that they ask so many questions. And the questions they ask are really good ones. I can tell from the questions they ask that they have been paying attention and that they are really trying to understand how this whole process works. If I can help them gain a clear understanding of everything by Monday morning, the results could be really great. Here is a picture of one of the happiest of those present:

The main thing we did today was provide detailed training for those who will be group leaders, glossers, and scribes. Because of all the questions and because of the fact that everything is being translated into Bissa, this training took longer than I expected it to. However, I feel very good about the participants’ understanding of what they are being asked to do. The picture below shows me explaining to the Group Leaders what their role entails.

Ernest surprised me at breakfast this morning when he said that he had been reading through the lesson plans and was especially intrigued by what the scribes are being asked to do, so he was interested in leading the training session for the scribes. I was delighted to learn that there was something in particular that he desired to teach, in order to gain experience as a workshop leader and consultant. I worked with him just a little bit to clarify a few questions he had, then turned him loose when the time came. He did an excellent job! This too was an encouragement for me—to see that someone else could take the notes that I had prepared and, with very little help from me, do an excellent job of teaching that topic.

Pam was last up with the controversial topic of which form of the verb to use in the dictionary (and therefore to write during the word-collection phase of the workshop). As was the case for Puguli, the Bissa have come to view a derived—and therefore non-basic—form of the verb as being the fundamental form, and that is the one that they instinctively want to write each time. Pam did an excellent job of presenting the linguistic evidence for using a different—and obviously more basic from an objective standpoint—form, apparently convincing her audience in about 30 minutes. Kudos to Pam for a job well done—though I was less surprised by her ability since I know her better than I do Ernest and know that her linguistic abilities are well above average. Here are pictures of Pam's presentation, with Thomas interpreting into Bissa.

After the participants had gone home, I showed the other members of the “administration” team for this workshop how to create a database in the program we’re using to collect words, then share it around to the other computers that the typists will be using. After we finished setting things up on our computers, we went our separate ways to rest or work on whatever we needed to do in preparation for tomorrow.

We have one day of training left, and there is still a lot to accomplish before the workshop starts on Monday. We’ll do what we can with the time we have left, but working 8:00 to 3:30 with an hour for lunch and a half-hour coffee break in the morning leaves us only six hours of work time in the day, and that seems to be barely sufficient for these days of training. We won’t be able to do all the practice exercises that I would prefer to do, but what we are doing, we are doing thoroughly, so the level of understanding seems to be quite high for this group.

Meanwhile, at the hotel where Pam and I each have a room, electricity had become somewhat of a problem. We were each having problems with light bulbs blowing out because of a short somewhere, and we had noticed that turning on the fan and the light at the same time caused the light to flicker and the fan to struggle. When we plugged in our computer in addition to those other power draws, the light or the fan would quit working, and sometimes it seemed that a breaker got thrown and all power would go off. This morning, after unplugging—yes unplugging, not plugging in—my computer caused the bulb in the bathroom to go “pop,” the hotel manager decided that it was time to call in an electrician. We left our room keys with him so that they would have access to the rooms in order to diagnose the problem, and when we returned in the evening, we were given new rooms. The electrician didn’t have time to check things out today, but promised to come by tomorrow. Meanwhile, we are now  in rooms where the electricity seems to be working okay.

My new room, however, has windows which do not open, so ventilation is limited to opening the door (which would let in mosquitoes) or a floor fan blowing the hot air around with everything closed up. Someone apparently did leave the door open, though, because there were mosquitoes in my bathroom. I thought I saw four of them when I first went in, but I’ve now killed five of them, so I’m not sure how many are lurking in there where I haven’t seen them yet. I’ll keep the bathroom door closed so there won’t be any sucking my blood out of me while I sleep.

Temperatures are now up to 100 degrees or maybe a bit more during the peak of the afternoon, but nights cool down to the low 70’s. I am enjoying this weather so much more than what I left behind! Before too much longer, the heat will become uncomfortable here, but for the moment, it’s only mildly uncomfortable in the hottest part of the afternoon.