There was great excitement this morning in advance of the taking of our group picture. Knowing that we would be taking a picture of the whole group, men came in suit and tie, while women wore brightly colored dresses or sashes over their dresses. I had put on my favorite shirt made of African cloth, but the Shilluks surprised me by presenting me with an outfit to wear over my own. (See picture below. I’d have to write many more than 1000 words to describe it adequately.) They then insisted that I wear it for the remainder of the day. Total words collected for the day fell short of the goal of 1500, but only by a small number, so this has been a very positive week on that front. Read on for more details.
The total number of words collected during this first week comes to just over 8,000. This is lower than I expected, but is due to two factors, primarily: 1) The intensive mental exercise involved in the Rapid Word Collection approach takes its toll after a few days, so that productivity almost always drops off toward the end of the week—hence the total of fewer than 1500 words today. 2) As English glosses are added to the words, it becomes apparent to us workshop leaders that certain words do not belong in the semantic domain in which they were collected. In numerous cases in this workshop, the same word was written in multiple closely related domains, which we have instructed the participants not to do. So we cross the duplicates off. This reduces the total that we had posted for the day on which those words were collected. For example, this caused the totals recorded for Tuesday and Wednesday by more than 100 words for each day.
Most of the excitement today happened between 9:00 and 9:30, though the effects lingered throughout the day. We had announced to everyone yesterday (Thursday) that we would do a group photo today, so everyone came dressed in their finest. Men were dressed in suits and ties; women wore pretty dresses, and many of them had another piece of colorful cloth draped across their shoulder as a sash. I wore my most colorful African shirt, but before the photo, I was presented with a set of Shilluk accessories to wear over my shirt and pants. There was a white piece of cloth that they tied over my shoulder, kind of like a toga; a green belt to hold it in place; an intricate necklace made of beads (called “dancing beads” because they are designed to make noise when one jumps up and down as part of a Shilluk dance; and a ceremonial cane. I was told that these accoutrements indicate that the wearer is a “big man”—a high-ranking official or a village chief. One man told me that I was now “king number 2”; the Shilluk king wears a pink cloth, instead of a white one.
I wore all of this throughout the day, taking it off only after all of the Shilluks had gone home. Frequently, when I entered a room where the word-collection groups were working, one or two of the women would let out a shrill ululating cry that equates in many African cultures to “Here is someone of significance!” The Puguli women in Burkina Faso would do the same thing. I remember one instance in particular when it happened to me there; it was when I brought our wedding gift for a young woman who had worked for us during our first year in Bonzan. One of the older women present there let loose with one of these cries, making me feel very self-conscious at the time.
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| "Big man" for a day |
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| Shilluk RWC workshop participants |
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