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