We seem to have found the optimal way of working as a group this week.
Two members of the Djimini Scripture translation team, rather than serving as
typists as was planned, are spending most of their time sitting in on a pair of
the groups who were struggling on their own. This has greatly improved the
quality of these groups’ output, thus reducing the amount of editing needing to
be done by the typing team when their data was submitted. The downside is that
we have two fewer typists than planned, so we’re not able to keep up with the
data entry. Partial compensation for this happens at night, when the typists
take folders of data home with them to edit, and in some cases type. As a
result of this allocation of personnel resources, we’re making good progress
through the remaining semantic domains and the quality of the material being
collected by the groups is greatly improved, leaving those primarily
responsible for organizing this workshop feeling much more positive about what’s
happening this week compared to earlier on.
We are now working on the most difficult semantic domains. These are
topics that are abstract, often expressed in the language through the use of
affixes, particles or expressions rather than simple words. It is typically
difficult for most workshop participants to home in on the kernel of a sentence
that actually communicates the idea in question, so we get more complete
sentences as data rather than mere words. Those few speakers with more
linguistic awareness then have to wade through this data, trimming away the
excess verbiage to isolate the specific parts that will be included in the
dictionary. Because the data is harder to identify, this part of the workshop
is always very draining for everyone, so one of my roles now is to keep
everyone’s morale up. I walk around from group to group and talk to people as
they come to get coffee, doing my best to encourage them. But most of all, I
give them a good pep talk at the start of the day. I’m glad to be able to report
each morning this week that progress is good and things are going well
This morning the group was encouraged to learn that they had very
nearly met my challenge of reaching 10,000 words by the end of the day on
Tuesday. Tomorrow I’ll be able to encourage them with another good progress
report, as their 8-day total is now 11,360, making it look quite probable that
they will reach their goal of 13,000 by the end of the week. (They are actually
very likely to be close to that by the end of the day tomorrow already.)
We did have a bit of a scare this morning when one of the typists’
attempt to save his data to the flash drive we use to synchronize everyone’s
data failed. I wasn’t sure where the problem lay at first. I was afraid that
there was a data-corruption problem on someone’s computer and that that
individual’s hard work since his last sync to the flash drive would be lost. It
took me some time to identify the problem, but in the end the situation was as
uncatastrophic as it could be. Apparently the flash drive itself had a bad
sector or something and was reporting a problem when the program was trying to
write to it.
I reformatted the flash drive, then each of the typists sent his data
to it again. Once it had made the rounds of everyone’s computer, we once again
had a synchronized database on the flash drive, and there were no further issues
the rest of the day. Fortunately, the way our program does the synchronization
is a very solidly developed approach, keeping a copy of each person’s data on
each of the other computers being used for editing the database, so when one
copy develops a problem like this, the only data that is lost is whatever was
typed on the computer with the problem since the most recent synchronization.
Because the problematic “computer” in this case was the flash drive, where no
typing was being done but which was only used to aggregate everyone’s data, no
data was lost at all. Until I figured out where the problem lay, though, I was
worried that someone would have to redo what he had done overnight.
Water cuts throughout the daytime hours have now become a regular
thing. Actually, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re not suffering from
water cuts so much as from low pressure. When the pressure is low, those
closest to the source have water, while those farther away do not, except at
night, when those closer are not using any water, so that the pressure that is
there is able to push the water out to where we are. In any case, while there
has been no water during the day where I’m staying for nearly a week now, I
have been able to get water at night on at least two occasions. This has
allowed me to refill my two buckets, which I then use for shaving, bathing, and
flushing the toilet. I’ve also been able to shower (from the showerhead rather
than via a bucket and cup) on these occasions. No more hot showers, but even a
cold shower is beginning to feel good compared to a cold bucket bath. That’s actually
a significant development in my tolerance for “inconveniences,” as I used to
feel that warm water for bathing was a requirement, even if it was via bucket
and cup. I still find that desirable, but I no longer view it as a necessity.
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