Wednesday, July 20  Return to the capital city; Day 6 of word collection

Word collection continued in my absence, as I left the remainder of the workshop in the capable hands of those I had come to train. A text message at the end of the day informed me that the total count is now up to 9688 after 6 days.

While 40-some of my new coworkers were having fun collecting words back in the village, I was condemned to the confines of a bus which left at 6:00am, with the capital city as its destination. The bus was not full, so there were many stops along the way to pick up other passengers. There also seemed to be more places where we were required to stop by officials of one sort or another than there had been on the way out, but that was probably just my perception and not reality. At two of those checkpoints, all of us men had to get out of the bus, where we were patted down. Then when we boarded the bus again, we had to show our ID (e.g., passport), which was inspected before we were allowed to get back on. That was a new experience for me; I don’t ever remember that happening where we served in Africa.

The trip took nearly 8 hours, but we arrived safely, and the bus was air-conditioned, so we were not uncomfortable during the ride. At the bus station, I found a taxi to take me to the SIL center, where a room was ready and waiting for me. I took care of a few administrative tasks, unpacked my bags, caught up on email, and had a little nap before meeting with the young man who has agreed to be my indigenous tour guide for the next couple of days here in the capital city.

I am thankful for good health, a safe trip, and a nice place to stay until I am scheduled to leave on Sunday.

Report of Tuesday, July 19, 2016  Day 5 of  Rapid Word Collection and Catastrophic Flooding

Attendance was down today, as was production. The excitement of the previous afternoon from having reached a total of 7000 words was greatly dampened by the news of what happened overnight in the village where our workshop was taking place. The rain that began Monday afternoon intensified during the evening hours. There must have been heavy rain upstream as well, as the small river that flows by the village overflowed its banks in a big way during the night. A significant portion of the village was flooded—by some reports as much as 4 feet deep in houses where people would normally sleep. Not only could they not sleep, but the swirling flood waters eroded the mud that held the baked bricks together, and about 100 houses collapsed as a result. People lost homes, granaries full of food, animals, and possessions. It was a catastrophic night for many in that village, and since many of our workshop participants have relatives who live there, they were directly or indirectly impacted.

Those who were able to take part in this, the fifth day of word collection, worked valiantly, but their enthusiasm was not quite what it would have been without the tragic events overnight. Still, they collected another 1500 words, bringing the 5-day total to 8500 and giving us ideas about possibly getting close to 15,000 altogether in the nine days of word collection that are scheduled.

Since Wednesday is the day I am scheduled to return to the capital city, there was a farewell ceremony of sorts at the start of the afternoon session. The regional coordinator for SIL, the director of the organization that coordinates language work in this region, and the director of the local language association all gave short speeches. I received two cards—one in French and one in the local language—signed by everyone involved in the workshop, as well as some cultural gifts from the local language association. It was a very meaningful close to my very positive experience here with this language community.

During the course of the morning, we also had a visit from the Director of the government branch that is responsible for non-formal education and development of national languages, along with his Assistant. They had been on a trip to one of the other regional capitals, and their return path brought them right through the village where we were collecting words. Since the SIL Director had taken me and a couple of others to see this particular government official during the few days that I had in the capital city right after I arrived in-country, this government official was aware of what we were doing and where, so he decided to take time to visit and see how it was going. He and his Assistant are very interested in seeing this type of workshop replicated in other languages in the future.

I am very glad I was able to come and help these dedicated people to get off on the right foot when it comes to word collection. There are about 25 languages spoken in this Region, and there is a great deal of interest in making a dictionary for most if not all of them.

Kevin Warfel