Tuesday’s highlights:
I made arrangements to go to the market to buy cloth on Saturday. I washed my clothes. I met with Leoma and Christine to give them an overview of what the training would involve. Leoma and I met with several Shilluks who have been responsible for choosing the participants and communicating necessary details to them (e.g., the fact that we are expecting many of them tomorrow morning at 8:30). I woke up this morning with a sore back—slept wrong on it probably; it got worse in the afternoon and subsided a bit toward evening. Paul (SIL Language Programs Manager) and I set up some tables and chairs in preparation for the training phase, which will begin tomorrow morning. This evening, I went out to eat with a friend and enjoyed some local food. Read on for more details.
I met Otto, Peter, and Twong today. They are Shilluks responsible for sorting through the (reportedly) numerous Shilluks in Juba who expressed interest in taking part in this workshop and for selecting the ones they feel are best qualified to fill the various roles. They indicated today that we should expect a full contingent in every role except perhaps that of typist, where we might have only four instead of the desired six. However, the fact that it was only this afternoon that we were able to meet with them leaves me feeling like some of the preparations may be lagging a bit behind what would be ideal. I’m hoping that 24 Shilluks show up at 8:30 for breakfast tomorrow morning, but I’m kind of expecting that some won’t be able to make it, either because they forgot or didn’t realize they were expected to be there tomorrow, or because the letter from SIL asking their employer to excuse them for this valid reason only got delivered today instead of yesterday or even last week, or because they didn’t realize their schedule at work would be so full this week, or for one of numerous other possible reasons. But I recognize that I’m one of these people who like all of the details to be in place well ahead of time, and that’s not a very realistic expectation in this part of the world (or even in the part that I call home), so I tend to be pessimistic about how well something will go until it actually gets underway and I have concrete evidence of our preparedness or lack of it. So look for an update on this topic tomorrow, and we’ll then know if I was justifiably pessimistic or unnecessarily so.
I took about an hour and a half to explain to Leoma and Christine the broad strokes of what will be presented during the training phase. (Leoma and Christine are my two trainees here—those who will be capable of leading future RWC workshops in this part of Africa. At the end of that presentation, I “warned” them that I expect each of them to teach at least one segment of material during this training phase as part of their learning program. They have this evening to look through the topics and choose what they would like to teach.
One unusual aspect of this workshop, as compared to others I’ve led in the past, is that the Shilluk people are predominantly herders. They are apparently really “turned on” by any conversation that revolves around cattle. And according to Leoma, they have words to describe colors of cattle that range into just about every part of the visible spectrum. It would seem, then, that purple or green cows are not the product of some Westerner’s imagination, but a reality at least to the Shilluks. We’re all very interested in seeing just how many different color words are collected during this workshop, when we get to that semantic domain.
For the first time since I arrived here, I had trouble sleeping last night—kind of tossed and turned for a couple of hours before finally being able to fall asleep. Maybe that had an adverse effect on my back, or maybe the position I finally ended up in was a bad one; in any case, I’ve had a sore back today—not in the lower back like I usually do when I get back pain, but about the height of the bottom of my rib cage. I went to see the nurse here in case she would think of any tropical illness that this symptom would indicate, but she advised that I simply monitor it and let her know if gets any worse. Carrying tables down two flights of stairs to set up the room for tomorrow morning really set it to complaining, but the pain has subsided somewhat now (8pm).
I also had my first go at washing clothes here this afternoon. That was an interesting experience. There is a washing machine here that I got to use, but there was not enough laundry soap left to wash my load, and the guesthouse manager, who has the key to the supply closet, was out for a while just at the time I was free to wash my clothes. I ended up waiting for an hour or so until she came back, then the drain on the washing machine malfunctioned, and I couldn’t fill it back up to run the rinse cycle. The GH Manager came back and finally got it to work again, so I finished the rinse cycle a few minutes before the generator was shut down at 5:00. Then I was told that the spin cycle on the machine didn’t work any more, so I had to wring the clothes out by hand as best I could, before draping them over the washline (because there are no clothes pins). But it all got done in the end, and the clothes will be out there all night and part of the day tomorrow until they dry, which may take a while, seeing how humid it is at this time of year.
My final adventure for the day was to go out for supper with Tim Stirtz, who is here from Nairobi for two weeks to do one of his Rapid Grammar workshops with one of the South Sudan translation teams. I wanted him to describe for me what he does, so I invited him out for supper, where he’d have the time to fill me in. He led me to a local restaurant he has eaten at many times, and I had bread and a bean dish. The beans were served with small pieces of raw tomatoes mixed in and some sort of very salty cheese on top. It was really good. My only regret is that I forgot to take a camera so I could share it via an image in this blog. It was definitely worthy of inclusion in this entry. I’ll try to remember to get a picture the next time I go there to eat.
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