Sunday, November 30, 2014

Nov 30 Sunday -  officials and residents preparing for Dec. 8 Ethnic Diversity celebration in Asosa

There is much activity in the city of Asosa these days. On Monday, December 8, the celebration of the ethnic diversity of the country is slated to take place here. This annual event rotates between regional capitals, and it just so happens that this year’s celebration coincides in both time and place with my visit here. That means that there will be no word-collection activity that day, but it also means that there will be lots of other activities going on that we can participate in or spectate at.

In preparation for this special day, the whole city of Asosa is getting a facelift. Cement block walls are being painted; streets are getting tarred and cindered; previously unadorned streets are being painted with lines to divide lanes of traffic, and official crosswalks are being painted on the pavement. Property-owners with unattractive fences are being compelled to put up sheets of tin (so I’ve been told, anyway); business owners are refreshing the paint on their storefronts. I’m seeing this happening all over town. It must be a heyday for the hardware store owners who sell the paint and sheets of tin!

This evening, as we headed into town to try the pizza we had heard was available at a particular restaurant, I noticed that a vacant lot had just been scraped flat by a huge earthmoving machine; now it looks something like a parking lot with a few big trees in it.

Traffic police are stationed at many intersections, primarily observing the foot traffic and directing pedestrians to the crosswalks about 25 feet from the intersection, instead of allowing them to cross at the intersection itself as they’ve presumably been in the habit of doing for a long time. I’m interpreting this all as advance training, helping people to understand what will be expected of them on December 8. On December 9, things may very well revert to the way they were before all of these preparations began. (It will actually be interesting to see what happens in the days that follow the holiday!)

Many have questioned whether a large project, such as the construction of a large building, can be accomplished in a short period of time in a culture like those typically found in Africa, but I am seeing evidence that it is possible, given the necessary motivation and funds. Next door to the house where I am living, construction of a large guesthouse is nearing completion. From what I’ve heard, this guesthouse is intended for visiting dignitaries from other parts of Ethiopia. The order to build it was apparently given in September, and now a week before it is to be occupied by guests, it seems to be nearing completion.

Kevin Warfel

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Nov 29   Saturday going to the market

Andreas and Susanne Neudorf, the German SIL couple in whose house I am staying while here in Asosa, left this morning to return to the capital city. That means that I will be responsible for my own meals for the next two weeks, so I made a visit to the market this morning.

The Neudorfs arranged for a friend of theirs, a young man named Wendemu who has a shoeshine stand near their house here, to accompany me to the market and help me buy what I need. The plan was for him to come by the house at 9:00 and take me first to an eatery near the market where I could get some good “ful,” a bean dish that I had been wanting to try, but hadn’t yet tasted. Then we would get the things on my shopping list and head back to the house. Today was one of those rare occasions where things actually went as planned!

The beans were served with bread and a fresh salad consisting of lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. I ate all of the beans, half of the bread, and none of the salad. (The salad looked very colorful and appetizing, but I try to avoid eating fresh fruits and vegetables in Africa unless I know that they have been purged of all the microscopic critters that can be hiding on them, and which would wreak havoc in my gastrointestinal tract. I was already full from the beans anyway, so I left the salad.)

As Wendemu led me into the market, the first thing I saw was lots of straw—two-wheeled carts piled full of bags of it, donkeys carrying two bags each, and people carrying one bag each. When I traveled south from Addis Ababa to Amaaro four weeks ago, I saw lots of “t’ef” being harvested. (T’ef is the local grain whose flour is used to bake the staple Ethiopian food—“injera,” which is similar to a large crêpe.) As we traveled back north some three weeks later, much of the t’ef had been threshed and there were piles of straw for sale along the road. I’m not sure what the straw is used for, but there seems to be an active market for it. The first 100 yards or so of the road leading into the Asosa market were lined with people offering straw for sale.

I don’t know what you think of when you hear the word “market,” but I suspect that it is something rather different from what I experienced here in Asosa. First of all, think “open air.” There is no building that defines the boundaries of the market. There are some semi-permanent structures consisting of four upright poles and a few crosspieces fastened together, with some sort of “roof” to provide shelter from sun and rain—I will refer to these as “stands.” But much of the market area consists of bare ground, upon which sellers spread a cloth, a tarp, or some such thing on which to sit and display their merchandise.

The stands, since they are semi-permanent, provide some structure for the layout of the market, giving some indication as to the placement of the alleys that the shoppers should use to navigate their way through the “mall.” But where there were no stands, the indication of pedestrian passageways dwindled to the point where I was unable to distinguish them.

Once past the straw, our journey took us on a zigzag path along the market alleys, past piles of plastic bowls, basins, and buckets, tomatoes in various stages of ripeness (from green to past their prime), cabbages ranging in size from 4 to 10 inches in diameter, garlic arranged in piles that in spite of their small size nevertheless consisted of five times the amount I would use in two weeks, pumpkins of various sizes and colors—the larger ones cut into pieces of salable size, whole regimes of bananas from which one could buy the quantity desired, piles (or baskets or boxes) of chicken eggs, potatoes sold by the kilogram, and much, much more.

When we got to the less-structured part of the market, I did my best to follow in Wendemu’s footsteps, seemingly stepping almost on both people and merchandise as we made our way to where the egg-sellers had taken up temporary residence. They had come from their homes, transporting eggs in large baskets or boxes, simply packed between bits of straw, from what I could tell. I was amazed that half the eggs hadn’t cracked during the journey! When Wendemu ordered my 10 eggs, the woman he had chosen to buy them from inspected each one in the sunlight to make sure that there was not a developing chick inside it. Those that didn’t pass the test were rejected, until she found 10 that she was satisfied with. (Andreas tried to teach me how to conduct this “light test,” but I was unable to see any light through the egg when I tried it. I’ll just have to trust Wendemu to get me the kind of eggs I’m expecting, I guess.)

There were a few things on my shopping list that Wendemu could not find in the market, so we stopped at a “souk” on the way back to the house, where I was able to buy those last items. A “souk” (pronounced like “soup” except for the final consonant) in the Ethiopian context is a small shop.

When we arrived back at the house, I thanked Wendemu and paid him for his time, then soaked in a potassium permanganate solution all of my things that would be eaten raw, in order to kill any of those microscopic organisms that have the potential to wreak great havoc in the gut of a person like me who has no acquired resistance to their effects.

After that I rested, feeling tired from the effort of walking 2-3 miles and carrying 10 pounds of produce in my backpack for the last mile, but also because I had not been feeling so well for the previous couple of days. My digestive system seems not to be working at 100%, so that I often feel full, even when I am hungry. I am planning to get a lot of rest this weekend, hoping that everything will get sorted out by Monday morning.

Friday, November 28, 2014

Nov 28   Gwama  Day 3 of training for RWC workshop starting Monday


Today was the last day of the training phase for the Gwama workshop. The focus today was on practical exercises to reinforce all that had been taught. We added something to the training portion of this workshop that we’ve never done before, but which I think was very helpful, so we’re likely to do it again in the future. Instead of simply focusing on exercises that had them collecting words from a single semantic domain, we had them do a couple of complete folders. I realized that, in the past, we have never in the training phase had the participants do exactly what they would be doing during the word-collection phase of the workshop. We had never given them the experience of doing an entire folder prior to the actual word collection. But today we did, and I think it was very helpful. Some issues became apparent that were not evident until we had them work on a whole folder, and we were able to discuss those today instead of in the context of the entire group that will be here on Monday.

In the afternoon, we had to move from the large room where we’d been doing the training to a much smaller room. The move was motivated by a meeting of government officials who needed the larger room; that meeting is scheduled to continue through Tuesday. There was barely enough room to squeeze all of us in the smaller room for the last three hours of the day, so I think we’ll have to find another solution for next week (when more Gwama participants will join us) until the larger room becomes available again.

Small meeting room:


Kevin Warfel

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Nov 27  Gwama - Day 2 of Training for upcoming Rapid Word Collection workshop in Asosa, Ethiopia

Training of the participants who will play key roles in the Gwama workshop these next two weeks continued today. Nine of the ten individuals who were invited to take part this week have now arrived.

I allowed Anne-Christie, the Coordinator for this workshop, to choose which portions of the instruction she wanted to be responsible for, and I took the others. She elected to let me open the morning with the first practice exercise, and then she took the baton and ran with it the rest of the day. Since she is able to teach in Amharic, she did not need a translator, so we moved through the lesson plans at a pretty good pace, and by the end of the day, all that remained to be done during this training phase was a few practice exercises. It looks like we will either finish early tomorrow or we’ll need to add more exercises to fill the time.

In the evening, I went with the Neudorfs—the German couple in whose house I am staying in Asosa—to visit the village where they lived and studied the Bertha language in the past. We visited the man who “adopted” them as his children, looking out for their well-being while they lived near his compound. The Neudorfs will be traveling back to Addis Ababa on Saturday morning and David, the young man with whom I stay in Addis when I first arrived will be flying in on Sunday afternoon. The two of us will be doing our best to fend for ourselves in a city that I am only barely familiar with and which David has never been to before.

Kevin Warfel

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Nov 26  Gwama - Day 1 of Training for upcoming Rapid Word Collection Workshop in Asosa, Ethiopia

It’ll be Thanksgiving Day by the time this gets posted to my blog, so I’d like to mention a few things that I’m thankful for.

First of all, I am in good health. This is in stark contrast to the beginning of the first workshop I led here in Ethiopia three weeks ago. I am very thankful for good health!

The six Gwama speakers who were present yesterday morning were very enthusiastic about the analogy that I have been using to illustrate what semantic domains are. I begin by introducing everyone to a part of my family tree, then I use that as a springboard for illustrating how words and ideas can also be grouped into a network of relationships, some close and some more distant. This group seemed to really appreciate that illustration.

In the afternoon, a seventh participant arrived, and my understanding is that there is at least one more who is due to arrive on Thursday.

Since Anne-Christie Hellenthal has already been through a complete workshop (for Koorete in Amaaro), I am allowing her to lead the training for as much of the material as she would like to do. She is able to communicate directly with the participants in Amharic, whereas I teach in English and someone else has to translate into Amharic for me. So all Wednesday afternoon I sat in the audience, giving Anne-Christie help when she needed it, but allowing her to simply teach the material herself for the most part. She has a good understanding of how this type of workshop is conducted and has the ability to communicate the concepts to the participants.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends in the USA. I have become more appreciative of things like ready availability of a wide variety of ingredients for meal preparation, a reliable source of electricity, and good health, not wanting to take any of these things for granted.

Kevin Warfel

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Nov. 25 Travel to Asosa in western Ethiopia for Gwama Rapid Word Collection

I am now in another part of Ethiopia, a land of quite varied terrain and ecosystems. It’s warmer and drier here during the day, but also cooler at night, than either Addis Ababa or Amaaro. The town where I’m staying is Asosa (sometimes spelled Assosa), which is the administrative center of this western region. The border of Sudan and South Sudan is not very far to the west, so I’m about as far in this direction as one can go in Ethiopia. I’m glad that I was able to fly here, instead of sitting in a vehicle for the 13 hours that it would have taken to drive here from the Addis Ababa.

For the next two and a half weeks, I will be living in the home of Andreas and Susanne Neudorf, a couple working with SIL and involved in the development of some of the languages in this region, but currently based in Addis Ababa while their children finish high school at an English-speaking school called Bingham.

The training phase of the Gwama Rapid Word Collection workshop will begin in a few hours, as I sit here typing this on Wednesday morning (Nov. 26). This is a predominantly Muslim group whose language is in the early stages of development, so there are a limited number of speakers of the language who know how to read and write it. At the Koorete workshop, we had only four word-collection groups because funds were limited. Here in the Gwama workshop, we are hoping to have as many as four word-collection groups; more is impossible because there are too few people with the required reading and writing skills.

Each situation is different from all the others, so I have to adapt my expectations and even the way I teach to fit the audience in each instance. It keeps me on my toes, but I am grateful for people like Andreas Neudorf, who arrived in advance and helped ensure that things were ready for us when we arrived, and Anne-Christie Hellenthal, the Dutch linguist who attended the Koorete workshop as a trainee and will now serve as the Coordinator for the Gwama workshop. Since the Ethiopian administration expects her to function as Consultant for other RWC workshops in Ethiopia in the future, I will be letting her do some of the instruction during this training phase. She will have a lot of responsibility as Coordinator, though, so we’ll play it by ear as to how much of the actual instruction she does in addition to that.

Kevin Warfel

Monday, November 24, 2014

Nov. 24 In Addis Ababa preparing for travel tomorrow to Asosa

It is Monday afternoon here and I'm at the SIL office, where I have a fast enough internet connection to post to my blog directly. (My wife Anita has been posting most of my blogs for me since my internet connections have only been allowing send/receive of email.)

The trip up from Amaaro to Addis Ababa was long and bumpy, but we arrived without incident, which I usually consider the most important element of a trip. We did have to overnight along the way, which wasn't ideal, but it seemed the best option as darkness fell and we still had two hours to go to reach the capital city.

I had an interesting adventure at the motel where we spent the night. The locks on the doors didn't work as well as one would wish for, so when I locked mine at bedtime, I actually locked myself in the room, though I didn't realize it at the time. In the morning, I tried for about 30 minutes to unlock it from the inside, but without success. Finally, when my traveling companions came to the door to see if I was ready to go, I passed the key to them under the door, and after about 5 minutes of fiddling with it, one of them managed to get it to open.

I am enjoying the luxuries of hot showers and a more diverse restaurant menu here in Addis. I am grateful for the experience that I had in Amaaro, even though it was very difficult at times, and I'm looking forward to my next "adventure." Tomorrow at around 3:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, I will board a plane to fly to Asosa, in the west of the country, where I'll be until December 13, if everything goes according to plan.

Kevin Warfel

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Nov. 23 - Sunday in Addis Ababa

The group arrived safely in Addis Ababa.  Kevin is staying with a family and is rested.  He is getting used to eating injera which he had again along the trip Saturday.  A gathering in the evening enabled him to meet colleagues who work in Ethiopia.

On Monday he has several errands to do, both at the SIL offices and in town.  Since it is a big city, others will accompany him to stores.

Anita Warfel

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Nov. 22 Saturday Journey from Amaaro to Butajira in Ethiopia

They left Amaaro in the morning and had a safe 10-hour trip in a Toyota Land Cruiser, and stayed overnight in Butajira.  Then, in the morning the driver will take them to Addis Ababa about two hours north.  Hussein plans to leave the group and go to visit his family in his hometown, not too far from Butajira.

Anita Warfel

Friday, November 21, 2014

Day 10 Last day of Koorete Word Collection Nov. 21 - details

By shortly after coffee break, the word-collection teams completed the task of glossing (adding a one- or two-word translation in Amharic) all of the words that had been collected. Lydia then led everyone in a few word games: “Stump the Experts” and solving a new crossword puzzle. 

Then I asked everyone to reflect on their experience during this workshop and write down some of what they considered to be the highlights of the two weeks. Numerous individuals commented that they had learned new Koorete words that they had not known before. Another frequent comment was that Koorete had many more words than the participants had realized. This workshop gave them a greater esteem for their language; they now viewed it as having a status equal to any other, whereas in the past they felt that it was somehow inferior to other, more developed languages.

The electricity had gone off again by the time we concluded these activities and dismissed those working in the word-collection groups. That meant that the typists also could not work, so everyone left for an early lunch break. The power came back on sometime around 1:00 pm, so the typists reconvened and worked for much of the afternoon. A closing ceremony was planned for 4:30, so as that time approached, all the computers were packed away. In spite of all the power cuts over the course of the two weeks that words were being collected, the typists were able to complete the data entry from 60% of the folders. If we had had a constant supply of electricity, all of the data would have been entered by the end of the workshop. The hope is now that they can finish entering everything by the end of next week, but that will depend on whether there is electricity or not.

The closing ceremony consisted of speeches by administrative leaders from the Culture and Tourism office; a time for the participants to comment on the value of the workshop, how it had gone, and any problems that had manifested themselves; the presentation of certificates to each of the participants; distribution of gifts of appreciation to each one who had served as a consultant or consultant-in-training; and so on. I was asked to say a few words at one point, so I expressed my appreciation for the welcome I had received, as well as my joy at having had the opportunity to help the Koorete people launch their effort to publish a dictionary. At the end, the Director of Culture and Tourism for this area told me I should plan to come back when it came time to publish the final product. We were then all invited to a local restaurant for a meal. The festivities came to an end around 7:30, and we returned to our hotel, where the electricity was once again off for about an hour.

Tomorrow (Saturday), I will be traveling back to Addis Ababa. Our driver got a late start coming down here today, so he is staying overnight about two hours from where we are. We are planning to leave around 8:30 am. We may or may not be able to go all the way to the capital city tomorrow. In any case, it is very unlikely that I will be able to post an entry to my blog tomorrow.

In yesterday’s post, I promised some idiomatic expressions in Koorete, so here they are:

kayxi dakke (literally, “cut throw”) = tell a really big lie (i.e., tell a whopper)

washe esse (lit. “ear erect”) = pay close attention, listen well

washe olle (lit. “ear throw”) = listen closely

aafiya cade (lit. “eye-in stab”) = describes a blinding reflection from something shiny 
(It stabs me in the eye.)

gada utte (lit. “same-age-group sit”) = be circumcised

muulli ushe (lit. “dissolve drink”) = two meanings: 1) defeat; 2) love very much

pitti ooxe (lit. “sweep wipe-away”) = destroy completely

gixe birche (lit. “war-belt untie”) = give up; turn oneself in

aafe shohe (lit. “eye wash”) = two meanings: 1) pay a bribe; 2) pay a reward for finding a lost item

kafo keeme (lit. “bird have”) = have access to a source of secret information

kuche keeme (lit. “hand have”) = have sufficient resources

maata efe (lit. “grass take”) = receive a traditional title of honor


Kevin Warfel



Day 9  Koorete Rapid Word Collection  Nov. 20

Today is a day for “firsts.” This is the first day that the hotel where I am staying has had electricity since arriving in Amaaro 16 days ago. According to what I’ve heard, a transformer that serves the section of town where Shalom Pension, this hotel, is located burned out just prior to our arrival and has not yet been replaced. Since the situation was taking so long to be resolved, the owner of Shalom Pension hired some men to string a wire across the street in order to tap into the electric lines in that part of town where there is electricity (when anyone at all has any). So now there are some wires stretched across the road some 15 feet above the ground, and we have electricity tonight. The implication for you is that I am able to use an electric light to see to type on my non-backlit keyboard, so I can type this tonight instead of waiting until tomorrow morning.

Today was also the first time I’ve ever led a Rapid Word workshop where only four word-collection groups managed to get through all of the semantic domains that need to be treated. We didn’t do the last of the nine sections because that deals with grammatical terms and really needs to be done by a linguist who speaks the language. But in only 8½ days, four groups of Koorete speakers plowed through all of the questionnaire that I had expected that they might get through, and then kept on going. By noon today, they had completed the 8th section, which I did not expect them to get to at all. Unfortunately, because of all the power outages we’ve experienced these two weeks, we are way behind on the data entry and glossing. So now all of the word-collection groups are busy writing glosses onto the sheets containing Koorete data, and the typists are working as hard as they can to type everything into the database. If they can find a generator to provide power for the times when the electricity goes off next week, they might be able to finish entering all of the words and their meanings in Amharic by the end of the week.

Today was also the first time that I was able to connect with my wife Anita by Skype since I left the U.S. nearly three weeks ago. We enjoyed connecting by some means other than email for a change; it was an encouragement to each of us.

So that’s at least three “firsts” for today.

In other news about the Koorete workshop, we ended up with just over 12,000 words. Considering that we had only four groups working on the word collection, I think that is a very satisfying result. In the next blog entry, I plan to share with you some of the more interesting idioms that came out during the word collection. These are some of the expressions that add character and flavor to a language because they don’t mean literally what they say and so invoke the imagination of both speaker and hearer. Some English examples are “to let the cat out of the bag” and “to pull the wool over someone’s eyes.”

One of the interesting innovations that Lydia came up with for this workshop was the inclusion of word games. The first one she introduced required each word-collection group to present two words that they had thought of that day and which they found interesting in some way. They did this each day from Day 2 through Day 8. By Day 4, it had evolved into a “Stump the Experts” venture, with groups picking words that they thought most of the others would not know. They would present their words and then see if anyone could give the meaning. They seemed to have a lot of fun with this “game,” though I couldn’t understand any of what was said.

Next, Lydia introduced the idea of puzzles. She put together a very basic crossword puzzle with clues and answers in Koorete, as well as a word search puzzle containing a dozen or so Koorete words. The crossword puzzle was a big hit with a few of the participants. The word search puzzle seemed to be something new to all of them, so they were a bit slower to interact with that one. (No one has yet found the words that go from bottom to top, from right to left, or diagonally.) These are ideas that I think I will take to other RWC workshops I lead in the future.

Kevin Warfel

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Day 8 Koorete Word Collection Nov. 19 - details

The fact that four word-collection groups are being as productive in this workshop as six have been in some of the other workshops I have been involved in is surprising to me. Since we have only four groups collecting words, I expected that we would not get more than seven of the nine sections of the questionnaire completed. Now it looks pretty likely that we will finish the eighth one tomorrow. We have already decided that we won’t attempt the ninth section, as it has to do primarily with grammar, and it really needs to be done by people with some linguistic background.

When we have finished the eight section, we will ask the word-collection groups to help with the task of glossing, which we are way behind on. We had decided to have the same individuals who are typing the data into the computer also do the glossing into Amharic, but that slows down the data-entry process. So for the last day and a half of the workshop, we hope to have lots of people working on adding the Amharic meanings to the Koorete words on paper, so that those typing can then simply enter the data without having to think about what the equivalents might be in Amharic.

I demonstrated to my group of trainees how one exports dictionary data from FLEx in order to print it. That process is not as simple as clicking a “print” option on a menu and requires special instruction. So today was the day that I refreshed my own memory as to how to do it, and then I showed the others the steps that one has to follow.

Lydia Hoeft also asked me to write a letter to the local administration with an explanation of what all needs to be done as a follow-up to this workshop in order to be able to publish a dictionary. So I began drafting that today and will need to complete it by Friday. I need to somehow impress upon them the magnitude of the task still remaining even after the “raw materials” for a dictionary have been gathered.

We had electricity for most of the day today; we were very thankful for that. Yesterday it was off almost all day, so I had insufficient battery power in my computer to write a blog entry. Now all of our devices (laptops, cell phones, etc.) are charged up, so we can use them for at least a couple of hours of time. The electricity is off again as I write this at 7:30 in the evening. There’s no knowing when it will come back. We just rejoice when we have it and put up with the lack when we do not.

Healthwise, I am doing well. I am getting some variety in my diet, though not as much as I am used to normally. Still I am getting what I need and am glad that I can find options that are palatable, even though I have difficulty using that adjective for everything that is available here.

Kevin Warfel

Tuesday, November 18, 2014


Day 7  Koorete Word Collection  Nov. 18 *photos*
True to Kevin’s prediction, the four word-collection groups reached the goal of recording 10,000 words on paper today, having completed 6 out of 9 domains.  The power was out most of the day so data entry is not keeping up due to low battery life on some of the computers.
See the website http://semdom.org for the domains and subcategories.

During the training, Kevin discovered that their language had a general term and related words for a native tree that resembled a banana tree but produced a vegetable that the people cooked for food.  So it was necessary to add a subcategory for this particular tree.


Above is a banana tree, and below is a false banana plant.
Below is the false banana plant food cooked with lima beans.

 
Anita Warfel
Day 6  Koorete Word Collection  Nov. 17 and Sunday outing details

Enthusiasm was high as we began week two of word collection in Koorete after a weekend of rest for the participants. Progress was steady, and now it seems quite likely that we will be able to finish all of semantic domains 1-7 (out of 9), even though we don’t have the recommended contingent of six word-collection groups. (At the outset, I had expected that it might not be feasible to make it all the way through the first 7 domains.) So I am pleased with the progress being made.

There was some concern on the part of those who are able to judge the quality of the work being done about what was coming in toward the end of the week. So this morning, both Lydia and Hussein reminded everyone of the principles that they had been taught at the beginning of the workshop—what to include and what not to, the importance of respecting the limits of each semantic domain, etc. Their assessment at the end of the day was that the reminders had paid dividends; the data that had come in during this sixth day of the workshop was of better quality than what had been turned in the latter part of last week.

Power cuts are still a significant impediment to the task of entering all of the data into the computer. Two of the four computers being used have a battery life of about 5 minutes when the power goes out, so our ability to enter data is halved each time we lose power. The generator that we were supposed to have available for this scenario has still not appeared, so we continue to do what we can with the resources we have available to us. We will probably surpass the 10,000-word milestone by the end of the day tomorrow.

Kevin Warfel

Sunday Outing to Konso


Today Lydia offered to drive the four of us who are visiting here (Hussein, Anne-Christie, Johnny, and me) to Konso, a provincial capital about 100 miles south-southwest of Amaaro, where villages can still be seen with stone walls built around them to protect the inhabitants from their enemies in years gone by. Anne-Christie had lived in or near Konso for a few months at one point in her time here in Ethiopia, so she told us a bit about the history and culture of the area.

The climate in the Konso area is very different from here in Amaaro. We transitioned from hilly semi-jungle with fertile fields of tef (the fine grain used to make injera, which is the Ethiopian “bread” and staple food) and corn, along with lots of banana trees, to hills of sandy soil with scrubby growth and much reduced fertility. The area around Konso seemed more adapted to “ranching” than “farming,” with herds of animals (cattle, goats, and sheep) seemingly outnumbering the human inhabitants. It seemed much hotter and drier there than here in Amaaro.

Johnny and I took advantage of the outing to keep our eyes peeled for birds, and we came up with quite a long list (below). We also saw a monkey scamper across the road at one point, and saw a squirrel-like animal along the side the road from time to time.

All in all, it was a restful day, and I enjoyed the opportunity to see more of the variety in God’s creation as we traveled. For those interested, here is the list of the birds we saw:

1. Little Bee-eater
2. Northern Carmine Bee-eater
3. black-winged Red Bishop
4. Northern Red Bishop
5. Augur Buzzard
6. Red-cheeked Cordon Bleu
7. Blue-headed Coucal
8. Pied Crow
9. Red-eyed Dove
10. Emerald-spotted Wood Dove
11. Fork-tailed Drongo
12. Crested Eagle (Johnny)
13. Common Fiscal
14. Gray-backed Fiscal
15. Crested? Francolin
16. White-bellied Go-away Bird
17. African Goshawk
18. Dark Chanting Goshawk
19. Eastern Chanting Goshawk
20. Eurasian Hoopoe
21. Gray Hornbill
22. Northern Red-billed Hornbill
23. Hadada  Ibis
24. Village Indigobird
25. Pied Kingfisher
26. A smaller type of Kingfisher (maybe Striped Kingfisher)
27. Black Kite
28. Speckled Mousebird
29. Speckled Pigeon
30. Fan-tailed Raven
31. Abyssinian Roller
32. Northern White-crowned Shrike
33. White-browed Sparrow-weaver
34. Blue-eared Glossy Starling
35. Rüppel’s Starling
36. Superb Starling
37. Tacazze Sunbird
38. Swallows (not sure exactly which species)
39. Hooded Vulture
40. Vitelline’s Masked Weaver
41. White-headed Buffalo Weaver

by Kevin Warfel

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Bird watching Outing  *photo* Nov. 15 - details

Today a group of us went bird watching two different places:  down into the valley in the morning, then up the mountain in the afternoon. Johnny Walker identified nearly 40 bird species that we sighted on these two trips; I’ve reduced the list to the ones that I’m sure that I saw myself:

1. Black Kite (Yellow-billed)
2. Hooded Vulture
3. Dark Chanting Goshawk
4. African Harrier-Hawk
5. Augur Buzzard
6. Emerald-spotted Wood-Dove
7. Red-eyed Dove
8. Speckled Mousebird
9. Striped Kingfisher
10. Little Bee-eater
11. Lilac-breasted Roller
12. Silvery-cheeked Hornbill
13. Double-toothed Barbet
14. Banded Barbet
a type of Barbet
15. Black Saw-wing
16. Common Bulbul
17. Rattling Cisticola
18. Northern Black Flycatcher
19. African Paradise Flycatcher
20. White-rumped Babbler
21. Common (Northern) Fiscal
22. Gray-backed Fiscal
23. Northern White-crowned Shrike (White-rumped Shrike)
24. Fork-tailed Drongo
25. Greater Blue-eared Starling
26. Rüppel’s Starling
27. Superb Starling
28. Swainson’s Sparrow
29. White-browed Sparrow-Weaver
30. Vitelline Masked Weaver
31. Black-winged Red Bishop
32. Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu

photo of Vitelline Masked Weaver at its nest.

On our way back down the mountain, we saw a family/troop of colobus monkeys (big, furry, black and white) in a large tree. We were never able to get a very good look at them or photograph them, but we saw them well enough to be sure of what they were. I had not realized that these animals existed in this part of the world, so sighting them was amazing.

Kevin Warfel
Day 5  *photo*  Koorete Word Collection Nov. 14 - details

Today I was able to obtain a list of the names of those participating in this workshop. The group leaders are doubling as scribes and the typists are also doing the glossing, so there are fewer roles in this workshop than is typical. The names are given according to the Amharic tradition, with the individual’s given name first, then his father’s name. No women were selected to participate in this workshop, though two SIL women are taking part: Lydia as the Coordinator and Anne-Christie who is in training to become a consultant capable of leading these workshops.

Group Leaders/Scribes:
Ayele Chewa
Girma Seyoume
Simoone Siyoume
Tiglo Zabidose

Language Experts:
Amaare Aklilu
Haamiro Balata
Darasa Darxho
Isayas Dhuhe
Gazaanye Galato
Kafyaalo Kaaloose
Simone Kassa
Alemayehu Leul
Memhiru Naja
Saameele Shango
Taka Shifara
Wotana Wolde

Glosser:
Jhambaro Katama

Glossers/Typists:
Sarabe Ashagre
Taagaashe Sexenye
Senedu Thomase

Logistics Manager:
Wodajo Worgneh

Coordinator:
Lydia Hoeft

Consultants-in-training:
Anne-Christie Hellenthal
Hussein Mohammed
Johnny Walker

Consultant:
Kevin Warfel

 
from left to right:  me, Johnny, Lydia, Anne-Christie, Hussein

Friday, November 14, 2014


Day 4  Koorete Word Collection  Nov. 13 - details

Wednesday, Johnny did the record-keeping all day; today was Hussein’s turn. It’s a tedious task, and not all that interesting, but if these individuals I’m training are to be able to lead RWC workshops themselves in the future, they need to understand how the record-keeping job is done.

The process of collecting words has definitely settled into a rhythm now. Lydia spends her time circulating among the word-collection groups, helping them to know how to respond to some of the questions that are asked as prompts in each topic. Anne-Christie is able to serve as a typist for material that gets glossed by hand when the power goes out and the typists whose computers have a very short battery life spend their time writing out glosses. The rest of us have little to do other than the record-keeping.

The groups are showing signs of fatigue after four days of doing the same thing over and over again. It’s a phenomenon that is typical of this type of workshop. Output is not quite as high as it had been the first day or two, but we’ve still collected more than 7000 words in these first four days, so I am not at all displeased.
Kevin Warfel

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Day 3  Koorete Word Collection Nov 12 - details

The word-collection groups at the workshop are continuing to make good progress, although there is some question about the quality of the work being done, so there might be a short meeting with the group leaders tomorrow morning to remind them of the importance of some of the principles we discussed during the training session that some have apparently either forgotten or did not completely understand. At the end of today’s workday, the word count was around 5500, with some words that were collected still uncounted due to the “accounting” method that we use. Some words collected today are in folders that the groups have not completed, so their work for today won’t be tallied until tomorrow.

On the typing end of things, we’re continuing to experience some challenges. To start things off this morning, one of the computers we had been using Monday and Tuesday refused to start up, so we won’t be able to use it any more. Fortunately, Lydia had asked me to begin preparing a spare computer in case we would need it. It was almost operational when we realized that it would be needed to replace the one that had quit. So we soon had all of the typists equipped with a working machine.

Then in the afternoon, one of the computers developed a problem where its data could not be synchronized with everyone else’s and data that had taken an hour or more to type suddenly disappeared and was unrecoverable. I had never experienced that problem before, but when the same thing happened again on the same computer a short while later, inspired by a divine flash of insight, I was able to quickly provide a solution so that the problem would be unlikely to present itself again. I shared the nature of the problem and the solution I had found with the four trainees so that, should they ever encounter the same problem, they would already know how to handle it.

Everyone is busily working, whether collecting words, providing Amharic glosses, or typing data into the computer. At the same time, everyone is getting tired. This is a rather grueling exercise and everyone is ready for a weekend, but there are still two days of work that stand between us and that time of rejuvenation.  Below is a photo of group #4:



Electricity was on most of the day today, but is off again in the evening, so I have to type up my blog entry by candlelight in my hotel room. (Actually, if you saw my room, you might hesitate to call it a ‘hotel room,’ since that term conjures up so much more in the American context than the reality delivers here!)

I’m doing well, though, having worked through much of the culture shock that I experienced when I first arrived in Amaaro. I’m also done with the flu that I had, with just a bit of “housecleaning” remaining that causes me to cough from time to time.

Kevin Warfel
Day 2 Koorete Word Collection Nov. 11- details

The final tally for Day 1 was about 2100 words collected, once all of the folders were turned in that had been started on Monday. We recorded another 1600 for Tuesday, but we don’t know how many more were collected but are still with the word-collection groups until they finish the entire folders. I expect that the total for Tuesday will reach 2000 or more once we have all the data in.

Anne-Christie continued to apply her ‘magical touch’ to the computers that the typists are using. One of the computers that the typists were using yesterday refused to start up this morning. The problem was about not being able to find some sort of media and then not being able to boot. She picked up the computer, turned it upside-down and side to side a few times, and then it started. And it continued to work fine the rest of the day.

The virus-infected computer was pronounced “clean,” so we got FLEx up and running on it first thing. When we copied the language data onto it, there were a few things that I was able to adjust, but then it was time to get the Amharic keyboard to work on it and that’s the part of the operation that I have not yet figured out how to do. I gave Anne-Christie a file that was given to me by the linguistic coordinator in the capital city before I left to come here, having been told that I might need it, but having no idea how to use it. She took it, figured out how to use it, and got the Amharic working on the new computer for the typing pool, while I was dealing with other issues that had come up.

We encountered yet another problem with the second “indigenous” computer. The huge Service Pack that Anne-Christie had downloaded Monday afternoon turned out to be for a 64-bit machine, while the computer in question is 32-bit. So we still can’t configure that computer to run FLEx. She tried during the day today to download the correct one, but there were too many other people using the available bandwidth, so at the end of the day, she asked the computer’s owner to try to obtain the file somewhere in town. We’ll continue our efforts with that computer on Wednesday.

My health is now good, with just a bit of residual cough from the flu. I am eating better now, too, finding a number of things that are acceptably palatable. My morale is much improved from a week ago, when it hit a very low point. The frequent nosebleeds I had experienced upon arrival in Addis Ababa are now very infrequent. That is most likely due to the lower elevation here (5000 ft) and higher humidity, relative to the capital city.

Kevin Warfel

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Day 1  Word Collection workshop for Koorete - details
Monday was a very chaotic day for me, since it was the first day of the word-collection phase of the workshop and the computers had not yet been completely configured for the typists. The plan at the beginning of the day was for me to arrive at the workshop site at 8:30 and begin working on preparing the first computer for one of the typists to use, knowing full well that we would not start at the announced time of 8:30. Then, after the opening preliminaries were finished and the word-collection groups had begun their work, I would have another hour or two before the first results from the collection groups would be handed over to be typed. In that time, I optimistically expected to have at least two computers up and ready to go, and ideally, there would be three. 
That plan might have worked, except for one thing: There was no electricity that morning. In fact, there had been no electricity all weekend, and each of the computers we wanted to use had been used for various other preparations over the weekend, so none of them had much battery life left. Our backup plan was to have a generator available to provide electricity for us in the event of a power outage, but a government meeting outranked us, so they got the generator and not us. So I could do little to prep the computers for data entry until the power came on, and that didn’t happen until about 11:30, by which time there was a stack of folders with data waiting to be entered, but no computer ready to be used.

We brought two computers with us from the SIL office in Addis Ababa, and those two had been prepped to a certain extent, with the software (called FLEx) installed, but no database active yet. They were the two I had planned to prepare for use first. We were counting on a third computer, this one from the government, since this workshop is being organized by them and SIL is providing the technical assistance. After the workshop, they are the ones who will continue to work on the database in order to publish the dictionary in whatever format(s) they choose. So we want to make sure that our work these two weeks will be on at least one computer that will stay here after we leave. As it turned out, two of the typists each provided a computer to be configured for use. We would have to start by installing FLEx, and one of them had a bit of battery life left, so it appeared that it would run long enough for me to do the installation, so I began with that while we waited for the magical moment when the power would return.

I had the FLEx installation file on my personal USB flash drive, and I was able to copy the file to the computer’s hard drive and begin the installation. While that progressed, I turned to the laptop provided by the other typist, in order to at least copy the installation file to his hard drive before his battery was entirely depleted. To my great surprise and frustration, his computer told me that my USB drive was devoid of files! Well, I knew that was not the case, so I took the flash drive out of his computer and put it in mine, only to receive the same verdict! Too late I realized that I had lived too long in the comfortable United States of America and had forgotten the lesson I had learned the hard way when we worked in Burkina Faso—expect a computer to be virus-infected if it is used regularly in a context where access to the internet is difficult, Windows licenses are too expensive for many people to afford so pirated copies are in existence, and protection from viruses is not viewed as a high priority.

By the time we were able to clean my USB drive of the virus, most of the files were restored. One directory full of personal information was unrecoverable, but that contained information from my personal computer, which is back at home, so no great loss unless something happens to that computer before I return home. I was grateful that the files that were needed for this workshop and the one coming up next were able to be restored. But there ended our efforts to get those computers up and running, until we could check the two computers for viruses and make sure they were clean.

However, to check the computers for viruses, we needed to download an antivirus program that came complete with the virus definitions, because downloading large files here is an arduous and time-consuming task when it is even possible. Anne-Christie, who works as a linguist in another part of Ethiopia, invested in a battery that has an extended operating time when she bought her laptop, and we were the beneficiaries of that decision yesterday. Her computer was the only one that had any battery life left, so she set about downloading an antivirus program. We were all pleasantly surprised to see the data transmission speed she was experiencing. Apparently, with so many computers in the area unable to function because of the extended power outage through the weekend, virtually no one else was competing with her for the bandwidth provided by the cell phone company. Ironically, it may have been the long power outage that even made it possible for her to succeed in her attempt to download this software. Unfortunately, the first thing she downloaded did not include the virus definitions, so she had to download a second program, and that one did.

When the power finally came on, I focused on the two computers that were nearly ready to use. One of them had a project on it which I had created last week for the typists to enter the words in. All I needed to do was incorporate a file with Amharic data into it. I knew the file contained a lot of data, but I wasn’t truly prepared for the fact that it would take more than an hour to import that data. That meant that I needed to leave the computer running while we went to lunch—and we weren’t able to start entering data until the afternoon session began. BUT…when we returned from lunch, the computer had hibernated, and when I tried to turn it back on, it wouldn’t respond! Turns out that the power cord had a tenuous connection to the computer at the back and we needed to wiggle and jiggle it just so in order for the computer to have power, so that it could be turned back on. The next hour or so consisted of constantly monitoring that computer to make sure that the incoming current kept getting through to it. It seemed that even typing on my computer a few feet away could cause that computer to lose its connection to the current and it would be ready to shut itself down again. And we were still waiting to be able to have a computer available for the typists to use!

Meanwhile, with the power back on, we were able to work on the two computers supplied by the typists. We learned that, while the one computer needed to have a complete virus scan run to clean it up, the other one needed some additional software not provided by the FLEx installation file. The necessary file would have to be downloaded from the internet and it was more than 700Mb in size. Now that’s a large file to download, no matter where you are, but it’s considered feasible back in the US. Here, it’s not normally something you can even hope to do. But Anne-Christie attempted it anyway, and just before the end of the workday, she joyfully announced that it had been successful. Prepping of that computer will continue Tuesday morning, now that we have the necessary file.

The removal of viruses from the infected computer will also continue in the morning. A number of viruses have been detected and will be dealt with by the antivirus program Anne-Christie downloaded and installed on that computer. But the process is not yet complete.

Meanwhile, FLEx did finally complete the import of the Amharic data into the existing database and the result was just what we were hoping for, just a bit later than we would have liked. With that task completed, I could then begin the process of sharing the project between the two computers that we had brought from SIL in Addis Ababa, and that would allow two typists to begin their work. It’s not a complicated process to do that, so the project was soon on the second computer. Unfortunately, when the typists sat down to do their thing, the second computer exhibited a problem—attempting to type Amharic produced the wrong sort of characters! My frustration level was mounting!! However, after a couple of minutes of poking around, I determined what the problem was and was able to fix it. So I gave the seat at the computer back to the typist. No sooner had he begun, however, when I was called over again. This time, when typing Koorete, instead of getting letters, only rectangular boxes appeared on the screen. So I took his place at the computer once again, in order to try to identify the cause of this new anomaly. But after trying lots of different things, with no success whatsoever, I was completely stymied, so Anne-Christie called to the capital city to talk to the person there who normally handles these sorts of script-related software issues. I explained to him what I was experiencing and what all I had tried. He then suggested that I reboot the computer if I hadn’t already tried that. Boy, have I forgotten all of my basic training! Rule number 1—A computer you don’t know and trust is always suspect; check it for viruses before doing anything else. Rule number 2—If all reasonable solutions have been attempted and the problem persists, reboot the computer; this will resolve the problem in 50% of cases. So sure enough, after rebooting the computer, the typist was able to type in both Koorete and in Amharic, as he needed to be able to do. For the next hour or so, two typists were finally able to do what their “job description” asked of them.

In the evening I worked to prepare a computer that Lydia had available at her house, so that the third typist can use it tomorrow while the two “indigenous” computers are still in preparation. Unfortunately, we were unable to get it configured to allow us to type Amharic on it, so that will remain a work in progress for tomorrow morning.

All in all, I worked from 8:30 AM to 9:00 PM, with the exception of an hour for lunch and an hour for supper, in my attempt to provide the typists with a way to do their jobs, and I was only partially successful. Without Anne-Christie’s help with the antivirus side of things, I would have foundered. As it was, I often felt I was in over my head. It was an exhausting day!

But there were some strong positives to come out of this day, even while we struggled on the technical side of things. The word-collection groups, of which there are four, seem to be functioning well for the most part. More than 1500 words were collected yesterday in less than five hours of time. My tracking spreadsheet tells me that that is on pace to collect 20,000 words by the end of the workshop. That would be a very positive result in the context of a normal workshop, but here we have only four groups collecting words, instead of the ideal six! The Koore participants, working with only 2/3 the preferred number of participants, is on pace to produce numbers that are higher than any I’ve experienced in this continent with the full contingent of personnel. We’ll see if they maintain today’s pace, but we’re off to a great start on the personal productivity side of things, at any rate.

Kevin Warfel

Monday, November 10, 2014

Day 1  Word Collection
Today, the workshop was to begin with opening remarks by a government official, then the consultants-in-training were to give brief training lessons to the whole group of participants. 
While the workshop was underway, there were some problems with electricity and getting the software FLEX working correctly on the typists' computers.
Kevin's health has improved so that he can give his time to serving as a facilitator.

written and posted by Anita Warfel

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Training for Koorete Word Collection and trip details *photo* Nov. 4-7

My apologies for the lack of blog entries these past few days. I’ve been in a horizontal position for the past two and a half days, and prior to that, I was too busy with the initial days of the training phase of this workshop to find time or energy to write anything. In addition, electricity has been off more than it’s been on since we arrived in Amaaro, so I’m never sure when I’m going to be able to charge my computer battery. I’ve had to give priority to the work I’m here to do, and that has often left my battery drained when I might have otherwise been able to write something to post. So let me do my best to catch you up.

It was a long and bumpy ride on Tuesday from the capital city down to Amaaro. Think of paved roads that have deteriorated to the point where there are lots of holes in them. That’s what we were driving on most of the time, so I think we averaged about 30 mph for the whole trip. There were five of us in the SIL vehicle—our driver, who drove back to Addis Ababa over the next two days; Anne-Christie Hellenthal, a Dutch woman who works as a linguistics consultant here in Ethiopia, primarily in the West near the Sudanese border; Hussein, an Ethiopian who has worked for SIL for a number of years doing language survey and translation of documents from English into Amharic; Johnny Walker, a linguistics consultant in Tanzania who is interested in doing RWC workshops in the 8 or so languages in the area where I went in 2010; and me. I am training Anne-Christie, Hussein, Johnny, and Lydia (who works here in Amaaro) to facilitate RWC workshops in the future.

As we drove south, the terrain changed from semi-arid to tropical. That was fascinating to see. Here in Amaaro, there are small mountains on either side of a broad valley. I’m not sure if this is part of the Rift Valley or not. It might be. Everything is very green here since the rains continue sporadically in this area until sometime in December.
View of Amaaro, a green valley

Soon after we arrived in Amaaro Tuesday evening, I began to sense the beginnings of a cold coming on: my throat was scratchy. Sure enough, I did a lot of coughing the next two days, but I was able to do my part in facilitating the training on Wednesday and Thursday. Lydia, Johnny, and Hussein also took turns teaching some of the modules those two days, and all went well. The Koore (KOH-ray) participants were excited about what would happen next week, as they looked forward to collecting words from their language (Koorete).

On Thursday evening, however, my health took a dramatic turn for the worse. I experienced chills so severe that I had to cover myself with a very thick blanket to get my teeth to stop chattering. For the next three nights and the two days in between, I did almost nothing other than lie in bed, too tired to be able to do much work. I tried to eat, but nothing appealed to me, so it was hard to force food to go down. Now it is Sunday morning here, and I believe that I am finally pretty much on the other end of this whole battle. Apparently it was a flu bug that I picked up while in Addis Ababa, and its manifestation coincided with my arrival in Amaaro.

Because I was more or less incapacitated on Friday, the final day of training for next week’s key players, my four RWC consultants-in-training had to lead the exercises that remained. I believe that they did it well, and they reported that the Koore who were being prepared for next week’s word collection were so motivated that they wanted to take portions of the questionnaire along with them to work on over the weekend. Their request was politely refused, but it’s very encouraging to see their level of enthusiasm.

Kevin Warfel

Friday, November 7, 2014

Koorete language details Friday Nov. 7, 2014

At this workshop for the Koore people, Kevin is training an Ethiopian colleague and an expat linguist who can continue to hold RWC workshops in Ethiopia in addition to a colleague from Tanzania.
The Koore number about 150,000 people.  The government of Ethiopia introduced the language Koorete as a subject in the schools.  They also delegated to the teachers the task of creating a dictionary and their efforts have resulted in 3000 words so far.

The Gospel was introduced to the Koore people and a New Testament has been completed. The dictionary will enable the church to create study materials and serve as a resource for the Old Testament.

Other purposes for the workshop include using the dictionary as a resource for the teachers to facilitate learning to read and write in Koorete.  The community could use the resource to document local knowledge and to raise the image of the language among mother tongue speakers, showing that it is a ‘real’ language.   Government officials in the Education and Culture Offices as well as teachers and community members are very eager to see a published dictionary in Koorete.  The government officials provided the personnel to serve as participants in this workshop. 

Anita Warfel

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Yesterday, Kevin reported that the team arrived safely on Tuesday in the village of Amaaro.  (The name might be altered to Amaro on internet maps.)  It looks like the village is near Nechisar National Park, and Abaya and Chamo lakes.  Kevin described the 12-hour trip as "bumpy".

The training for the Rapid Word Collection has begun.  They are also compiling the documents necessary to collect words in the Koorete language next week.

Internet access is available.  You may correspond with Kevin via his email: kevin_warfel@sil.org
Please send only text messages, with no photos or attachments, since the internet may be slow.  He will appreciate hearing from you.

Anita Warfel

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Yesterday, November 4, Kevin was scheduled to travel to Amaaro, a village in the southern part of Ethiopia.  If you go to googlemaps.com and enter "Amaaro, Ethiopia" you will get a map.  At the bottom righthand corner of the map, you can click on - to zoom out or + to zoom in.  This will give you an idea where the workshop will be held.

I am waiting to hear whether or not they arrived on schedule last evening after a 12-hour trip and if they have begun the three days of training today.  Kevin is with Ethiopian colleagues as well as two SIL colleagues, one of whom works in Ethiopia and the other in Tanzania who will be trained to facilitate a Rapid Word Collection workshop there in the future.  Anita Warfel

Monday, November 3, 2014

Got only three hours of sleep last night—had trouble falling asleep after having slept so much and so deeply the night before. So I was afraid that I might have trouble staying awake during the day today. However, that was not a problem, as I was kept so busy that I had no time to think about being tired.


The biggest project of the day was printing out the questionnaire that we will be using in the upcoming workshops. For many of the participants of these workshops, English is their third or fourth language, so not the one they are most fluent in. Thus, having the principal document available in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia, will make it much easier for them to excel in the roles they will be playing in the workshop. Hussein, an SIL employee with an excellent grasp of both English and Amharic, has been working very hard to complete the translation of the questionnaire into Amharic. But his has been a mammoth task—500+ pages of material, and we knew that he would not be able to complete it before the first workshop was scheduled to begin. However, he worked on this project right up to the last moment, and today was the day that the document was printed out (in whatever state he was able to achieve)—preserving both English and Amharic, so that each individual can use whichever language he feels most comfortable with, though in some cases, there is no Amharic yet, so English will be the only resort.


Once the questionnaire was printed out, it needed to be divided into the appropriate sub-units (each of which will be placed in a separate folder for use during the workshops), and the contents of each folder needed to be stapled together. Three of us worked on this task throughout the day—one printing and two dividing, sorting, and stapling. I spent about half of my day assisting with this project.


The remainder of my day was spent on practical details: signing for a float in local currency so that I can pay for my meals and lodging while on-site for the first workshop, getting a local SIM card working in my cell phone, activating a USB device that will give me limited internet access via the cell phone network, making sure that we have all of the equipment that needs to be transported with us for the workshop, and so on. I also spent an hour or so explaining to the person who will be doing data entry for the second workshop exactly what he will be doing and how it fits into the overall workflow of the word collection.


On the way to the SIL office this morning, I did not see women carrying things on their heads like in Burkina. That is just one of the cultural differences here.


It is 11pm here as I’m writing this. I tried to go to sleep at 8:00, and I believe I did sleep for about an hour. But now my body is insisting that this is “awake” time, and I feel fully alert. Not exactly what I was hoping for, as I need to be waking at 4:00 AM to prepare for the 12-hour drive that awaits us. A driver from SIL will be taking four of us to Amaaro, in the south of Ethiopia. He will spend the night there, then drive back by himself. I don’t envy him at all! From what I heard, this will be far from a 12-hour drive on a superhighway!

Sunday, November 2, 2014

I slept well my first night here--possibly too well if it translates into not being able to sleep the second night. That part remains to be seen.

Today (Sunday) was a quiet day. I went to church in the morning, out to a restaurant for lunch, and to the home of some SIL colleagues for supper and game night. Otherwise, I was in the apartment, resting or reading.

One interesting thing I realized today: I haven't noticed women carrying things on their heads very much here. I'm going to pay more attention to that tomorrow when I'm out, to see if it's really as true as my recollection tells me it is. That would be a very big difference from "Africa" as I think of it based on my experience in Burkina Faso.

Saturday, November 1, 2014



I arrived safely at the Addis Ababa airport around 6:30am local time on November 1st (11:30pm EDT October 31st). I transited through Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC. The direct flight from Dulles to Addis Ababa was 12hr 20 min in length. Unfortunately, I was unable to get much sleep, so arrived feeling very tired.

The only “wrinkle” I experienced during the entire trip was when I was checking my bag at the Charlotte airport. The person ahead of me at the kiosk apparently only partially completed her check-in process, then abandoned it to queue up at a different check-in counter. Before leaving the kiosk, however, she had apparently generated a tag for her bag. When an agent came to help me with my checked bag, she simply grabbed the printed tag and put it on my piece of luggage. Since I used a large box to pack my things for this trip, the agent asked me to carry it to the conveyor belt, rather than doing it herself. As I took those few steps, I looked at the tag to verify that it was checked all the way through to Ethiopia. To my great surprise, it was destined for Newark—an airport not even on my route. I notified the agent, and the problem was eventually rectified. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve given thanks, though, for the fact that I looked at the tag before putting that box on the conveyor belt!!

The SIL office in Addis Ababa had arranged for a taxi driver to pick me up, and I was able to locate him without any difficulty. The trip to the apartment where I’ll be staying until Tuesday morning was uneventful, involving less traffic but a bit more horn-tooting than I was used to in Burkina Faso.

Once I’d unpacked my stuff, however, I was out of energy, so I slept for about two hours. After a shave and a bucket bath to wash my hair, I felt like a new man! David, my host, took me to one of his favorite restaurants for lunch. That trip involved a ride in a taxi-van sandwiched between quite a bit of walking each way. I was a little out of breath by the time we got back to his apartment, and David mentioned that the altitude might have something to do with that. We’re at 7500 feet in the part of the city where he lives.