Tuesday, July 18 - Word Collection Day 7

Today was a very positive day in many ways. I was glad to have a number of genuine positive things to say to the group in our meeting to start the day off. So I had the group applauding their progress on multiple occasions. Since they were within feasible striking distance of the “magical” number of 10,000, I challenged them to work hard today to try to attain that number by the end of the day. (They don’t know it yet, but they fell just short of that goal, ending the day with 9,931 words collected. That’s still a very good result for the day, so I’ll be able to encourage them with the news in the morning.)

There are still a couple of groups that are struggling in their ability to understand the French of the questionnaire or to apply the principles that were taught during the training phase, so Matthieu and Justin felt that two of the typists would be of more help overall if they sat in on the groups that need some help rather than doing data entry. Matthieu and Justin are going over all of the data prior to it being entered into the database, in order to weed out incorrect information and add obvious items that the word-collection groups overlooked. This is great for quality control, but unfortunately, it means that the backlog of data to be entered is increasing. We might be able to finish entering the words that were collected yesterday by the end of the workday tomorrow.

Matthieu checking words before they get entered into the database

Justin checking words

Today there was a special treat for everyone: boiled corn. Apparently the ears are thrown into a pot of boiling water, husks and all. Then each person husks his own and enjoys eating it. It’s quite similar to sweet corn back home but not as sweet, and there is no butter and salt to put on it. I enjoyed my ear very much.

enjoying boiled corn

I am still in very good health, something I do not at all take for granted. I am well-fed, actually eating more than I need (yet not nearly as much as my African companions at the table). I began cutting back on my portion size because I’m not very hungry for most meals, but I think my hosts are interpreting that as lack of interest in the food being provided for me. This is a constant dilemma in the African context, given how little food my body really needs.

I had an interesting experience when I returned to my room after lunch today. I had only a few minutes to spend there before it was time to wait at the gate for my ride to the church, but as I entered, there was a small bird (a female Firefinch) flying around my room! Long story short, I finally trapped it in the 3-inch space between the glass and the screen of my bathroom window. Then I found one of my Catholic hosts and asked him what to do about it. He came, and while he was trying to catch it, the bird went out through a hole in the bottom of the screen of that window that neither of us had noticed up to that point. Problem solved!