March 23: Final results from Bissa Barka workshop

I received word from Pam today that the Bissa Barka workshop resulted in an initial tally of 13,915 words being collected. That is about a thousand more than estimates from the first week led us to expect. At the same time, the word-collection groups were able to complete all of the most important of the semantic domains, and there were only about 110 domains that they didn't get to. That is MUCH better than we were expecting based on the pace of the first week. I'm very pleased with the results of this workshop. The Bissa were a great group of people to work with, and Pam and Pastor Alphonse did a great job preparing for it. Congratulations to all who participated in one way or another!

March 17: Back home in Waxhaw, NC

I began my journey home yesterday evening, as I was dropped off at the Ouagadougou airport around 8:30pm to catch my 10:40pm flight to Belgium. Check-in, etc. went smoothly, except that my empty water bottle got confiscated at security! I've taken to putting my fingernail clippers inside my carry-on bag when going through security there, instead of putting it in the little dish full of pockets items where it is highly visible. I guess I'll have to do the same with my water bottle the next time. Rules for exactly what is allowed in one's carry-on bag vary from place to place and person to person, but I've learned that putting something inside the carry-on bag makes it much more likely to pass through without drawing a red flag than if it's visible somewhere outside the bag.

The plane we were to take to Belgium arrived in Ouagadougou about 15 minutes after we were scheduled to fly out, so an on-time departure was impossible. We ended up leaving about an hour later than my itinerary said we would; that resulted in missed connections in Belgium for some people, but I had a 5-hour scheduled layover there, so our late arrival only shortened the time I had to wait for the next flight. I made it to the gate with plenty of time to spare.

Each of my next two flights left on time and, flying with a tailwind, arrived early at our destination. There was little or no turbulence, so it was a pleasant trip back home. I arrived back at 6105 Davis Road around 8:30pm, tired but otherwise none the worse for wear.

March 15: Preparing to return to the US

I had a nice time today reconnecting with friends we made while we lived and worked in Burkina Faso. I saw several people at church this morning whom I hadn't yet seen since I arrived in the country. Then I treated a family of Belgian friends to lunch at a new restaurant they introduced me to: The Cappuccino. We had a great time catching up on events that have transpired in each of our lives over the past several years.

For the evening meal, I was invited to Jacques Malo's home, where I got to see the rest of his family for the first time in a few years, as well.

Claudine and Jacques, with their boys, Blessing (4) and Farel (18 months)

March 14: Return to Ouagadougou

Pam drove me and Pastor Thomas Yembone (record-keeper) to Ouagadougou this morning, arriving at noon. The trip was uneventful, but the air was filled with dust. Here are a few pictures I took along the way.


Brown and muted green are the feature colors in the Burkina landscape this time of year.

How's this for a way to brighten the day of the person behind you?

close-up of mudflap

I spent the afternoon unpacking, getting clothes washed, shopping for my family, and picking up the shirts I had ordered before leaving for Garango two weeks ago.


three new shirts

In the evening, I met a friend at a restaurant. He is a geographer who recently developed an interest in collecting paper money from Africa, where he travels to do field work about four times each year. Since African paper money is one of my passionate interests, we had lots to talk about. Before I knew it, two hours had flown by--pretty amazing for a non-talkative introvert like me.

March 13: Word Collection Day #5

Good progress was made today, especially considering that it was Friday and people were tired from so many hours of intellectual work all week long. The total after five days of word collecting is 6,240 "raw words" (meaning that duplicates are included). Most likely there are at least 4,000 unique words in all of that.



Group photo: Bissa Barka RWC workshop participants

I leave for Ouagadougou (the capital city) tomorrow morning. Pam and Ernest will continue to coach the group along to what I'm sure will be a fine finish, as the group picked up the pace today so that it now looks possible that they will complete all but the Grammar section of the questionnaire, and several groups have opted to collect information on that section in the context of a much smaller group composed of one or more linguists and a handful of native speakers.

March 12: Word-collection Day #4

This morning, in an effort to pick up the pace with which the group is working through the semantic domains that are to be treated, I sat down with each group and told them how they were doing. I began by highlighting what they were doing well and concluded with some concrete suggestions for how they could do better. I came away with the feeling that I had done a good job of communicating with them and that we would see a significant improvement in speed as a result. But at the end of the day when we crunched the numbers, it seemed that, with the exception of one group, not much had changed.

I've concluded, therefore, that this group of people--and perhaps this is a trait of the entire ethnic group--prefers a careful and thorough approach to the task of collecting words, rather than the "blitz" approach. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just that there's no funding to organize another couple of days of word collection in order to finish the folders that will not get finished during these two weeks.

Total word count at the end of Day 4 is 4,800. (Granary image to be added)

Sharyn Thomson, Director of SIL Burkina Faso, came down to visit today. She has been considering doing a RWC workshop in Buamu, the language where she coordinated the team that translated the New Testament into the Buamu Ouarkoye dialect, has read a lot about Rapid Word Collection, and was interested in seeing what one actually looked like. So she left the capital city around 7am for the 3-hour drive to Garango and returned mid-afternoon, so as to be back in the office on Friday.

We were able to make an exciting presentation to the workshop participants today. Pam was able to upload the words that had been typed as of Wednesday afternoon to the Webonary website, and today at the end of coffee break, we were able to show everyone the data on the internet. Pam will continue to update the website as more data is collected.

Pam showing the Bissa Barka dictionary data on Webonary to the participants

Tomorrow will be my last day here in Garango. I plan to return to Ouagadougou on Saturday morning, either with Pam (if she decides to go back home for the weekend) or by bus.

March 11: Word Collection Day #3

3285 words collected by the end of Day 3

The Bissa Barka continue to make good progress in their word collection, topping 3000 words by the end of the day today. For the first part of the morning, the typists also decided to help the glossers, who had quite a stack of work waiting for them.

Typists and glossers working together to translate words into French

Word-collection group #5

These beams of sunshine, however, were diminished somewhat by two “clouds” that appeared during the day. First thing in the morning, we had a bit of dissension in the ranks, as one of the most vocal members of the entire group complained to me that the glossers/translators were striking out words that their group had collected just because they didn’t know how to translate them into French. He was concerned that real Bissa Barka words would be excluded from the dictionary as a result. I assured him that I would talk to the glossers once they were all there to make sure that they were not doing what he thought because he was certainly correct in believing that they should not be crossing out words for that reason. (There are numerous valid reasons for them to cross words out, but that is not one of them.) (I later learned that he had also complained to Pam, Alphonse, and Thomas!!)

When I talked to the glossers a short while later, I learned that, while they were not crossing off words for the reason they were being accused of, they were crossing off words simply because they had already come up in another semantic domain. I explained to them that a thesaurus or thematic dictionary needed to have the same word in multiple domains because words are often used in a variety of contexts. A knife, for example, is something found in a kitchen and is also a tool used for cutting. Excluding the word from one of those domains would mean that the person using the dictionary to get a list of all cutting tools would not find the word for knife, or the person looking for a list of things used in cooking would not find it listed there. They seemed to understand that logic and agreed that they would no longer strike off words simply because they had translated them before.

Glossers working together to translate Bissa Barka words into French

The second “cloud” came in the middle of the morning, when I was informed that a woman who had been serving as scribe for one of the word-collection groups had gone into labor, so a replacement had to be found for her. At the start of coffee break, I was told that she had delivered a stillborn child. That was very sad news. Pam and I accompanied Pastor Alphonse to the maternity ward of the local clinic to express our condolences and pray with her. I later learned that she had been pregnant with twins and that one had been stillborn, while the other died soon after birth. It was especially sad for this woman because she and her husband had apparently been trying to get pregnant for some time before succeeding. They have a 5-year-old child and were really looking forward to this new baby. (I’m not sure if they knew she was carrying twins or not.)

The glossers and typists are taking their jobs very seriously, not only providing French translations and typing data into the computer, but also checking to make sure that words are in the correct form for a dictionary, that they really belong in the semantic domain where they were written down, that they are spelled correctly, and that they are real words and not just ones that someone made up on the spur of the moment. Words may legitimately be crossed off or corrected in some way if they violate any of these principles. The down side of the level of vigilance exhibited by the administrative team is that they are a bit behind with the translating and typing. There is not enough of a backlog yet at this point to be too concerned, but if they continue to fall further behind, something will need to be done, so I’m keeping an eye on the situation.

March 10: Word Collection Day #2

Today was the first day where we spent the entire day collecting words. The groups working through the folders of related semantic domains got the full experience of how everything works. For the most part, they seem to be doing a thorough job of collecting the vocabulary that is relevant for each topic. By the end of the day, the total word count was approaching 2000, which seems to be a reasonable expectation for the end of day two, as I look back on the various workshops I've been involved in.

Representing the 1860 words collected pictorially



Word-collection group #4 at work

As we looked at the statistics at the end of the day to see how things were going, we were a bit concerned by the amount of time the word-collection groups are spending on each semantic domain in order to collect the words. If we don't find a way to help them pick up the pace, they will only complete about two-thirds of the topics. So tomorrow I plan once again to use the image of a baby learning to walk to motivate them to move a bit faster. The analogy goes like this:

When you're learning to do something new (such as a baby learning to walk), it is expected and perfectly normal that you don't do it perfectly at first. No one learns to walk without falling down many times; that's part of the learning process. However, as time goes by and the baby becomes more accustomed to walking, he becomes better at it and there is more forward progress and less falling. Before long, he is walking almost without any falls at all, and eventually he is able to run, only with the occasional misstep that sends him sprawling. In the same way, the first day of the word-collection phase of this workshop is like a baby taking his first steps. A lot of mistakes are made, but there is a lot of hand-holding and close supervision by the workshop leaders to help keep the falls to a minimum and to help the group get back on its feet when a mistake is made. The second day is analogous to the infant who is still somewhat unsteady on his feet, but who is able to walk for some distance before losing his balance. The third day should be like a child who is comfortable walking, but not yet ready to run, and by the fourth day, groups should be "running."

In that light, I plan to encourage word-collection groups to feel confident of their abilities in this new activity and begin walking with vigor, some of them maybe even beginning to run a bit today. But all of them should be walking confidently at a good pace today.

5 of the 6 glossers/translators

I spent quite a bit of my time today helping Thomas with the record-keeping. At the end of the day, I looked over what he had done and I found that he had done an excellent job even when I wasn't helping him, so tomorrow I should be free to spend more time helping others. Pam, Ernest, and Alphonse have been a big help in monitoring how things are going and helping those who get stuck or simply have a question.

Thomas - record-keeper

March 9: Word Collection Day #1

Parking lot

The activities for this first day of the word-collection phase of the workshop began with an opening ceremony, which is a fairly big deal in the culture here. Important people from the local area are invited, speeches are made, and food is served. The committee that organized this ceremony went one step further, however, and invited some artists to provide some entertainment. There were three speeches—by the translation project leader, by the prefect, and by the consultant (yours truly) —with songs and dances interspersed.

Opening Ceremony speech by Kevin with SIL linguist Pam Morris, who organized the workshop

Dancers

A singer/guitarist

While the final song was being sung, all of the invited guests were ushered to the next room for refreshments. The workshop participants remained behind and received their usual coffee-break fare. Once everyone had eaten what was served to them, we all gathered in the room where the ceremony had been held, and I gave some brief instructions to those who had not been present last week. Then there were the formalities of assigning individuals to specific groups and having everyone sign a form that allows us to use pictures of them in places like this blog, our newsletter, and SIL publications. It was at least 11:30 before we got started with the actual word-collection process.

As the groups began collecting words, I asked my two trainees to help me interact closely with the different groups to make sure that they understood how to apply what we had taught them last week. There were a number of places where people didn’t quite remember or hadn’t quite understood, so it was good that we were monitoring them closely and could provide correction early on. By the end of the day, in spite of a number of things that had gone wrong, I had a good feeling about how the groups were doing in general. Everyone seems to be taking their responsibilities very seriously, wanting to do the job correctly, so they respond very well to the words of advice and correction that we express to them.

Emile, a group leader

Granary, for keeping track of words collected

Each group was able to finish at least one folder in the three hours of time that we had to work today. That left them all feeling encouraged, I think. One group finished two folders. Apparently that group has a leader who understands French quite well, so they were able to be very productive.

I was able to get some of the computers ready for typing, which will start tomorrow morning. There are still a few that are resisting my efforts to get them set up the way they need to be. I’ll continue working with those tomorrow morning. Two folders were glossed and are now ready to be typed. Five others are either partially glossed or waiting to be glossed.

March 6: Training Day #3

In this final day of the training phase of this workshop, we talked about compound words and idiomatic expressions, comparing them with other things in the language that look a lot like them. We want compound words (e.g., kɛmin “roof” (literally, “house head”)) in the dictionary, but not sequences of words like bir min “cow’s head” (literally, “cow head”). We want idiomatic expressions (e.g., to run circles around the competition), but not ordinary phrases (e.g., to run laps) or proverbs (e.g., Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.) Helping people with no linguistic training to be able to distinguish between these and choose only the ones that are desired is one of the challenges that I face in my job.

We also showed the typists how they will be doing their job the next two weeks, alerting them to some of the things that they should or shouldn’t do in order to have the best results. That left us with about three hours for some practice exercises.

For the first exercise, we had them divide up into six small groups of three or four people per group. Then we had each group collect words for the same semantic domain. After they worked on that for 20 minutes or so, each group sent their scribe to the blackboard to write the list of the words that they had come up with. Then I asked everyone to comment on what they observed. First we noted that some groups wrote down more or fewer words than other groups. Then we noticed that, while a few words were found in everyone’s list, most were not. I emphasized the fact that, in the context of this workshop, it is not possible to think of all the words in the language that relate to a particular topic. Different groups will find different subsets of the words that belong there, and that is normal and expected.

Next some of the participants pointed out that a few words had been written incorrectly. One or two had been written with a suffix, whereas we had talked about the fact that the form of each word that is to be written down is the one that has no suffix. One of the scribes had learned to write a few years ago, when the digraph ny was used, so he was still writing that, but the rules had changed and the ny was replaced with the symbol ɲ. I emphasized that it was important that everyone do his or her best to use the current alphabet, but that we must be understanding about the fact that people have learned what they know at different times, and it is hard to unlearn a habit and relearn a new one.

For the second exercise, I had the participants go back into their six small groups again. Then I chose three different semantic domains to work on, Two groups worked on the domain for "Beautiful"; two worked on "Show, let someone see"; and two worked on "Strong." They worked for about 20 minutes with no formal help from me or any of the other leaders. The results were written up on the chalkboard again, with the lists arranged on the board so that each pair of groups who worked on the same semantic domain had their lists of words side by side for easy comparison. 

We took 10 minutes to compare each pair of word lists. We noted that there were fewer spelling mistakes than there had been the first time around, but we saw  that there was still some confusion about what constituted a compound word or an idiom. I did my best to highlight the things that they had done right—making fewer mistakes in writing the words and making an effort to include onomatopoeic words (e.g., vroom) and idioms. I also acknowledged that they hadn’t always gotten it quite right in their efforts to include things other than just “ordinary” words. I reminded them that they were being trained to do something that they haven’t ever done before—collect words for a dictionary, and that it is normal for us to make mistakes when we’re learning to do something new. I asked them if any of them had learned to walk without falling down at all, and they all agreed that that was an unrealistic expectation. I told them that they had just taken their first steps today, since everything up til now was “theory” and this was their first opportunity to put it into practice. I assured them that by Monday afternoon, they would be “walking,” and by Tuesday afternoon they would be “running.”

Everyone was glad to go home and have a couple of days to focus on something other than conscious thought about their language, but they seemed to be looking forward to what next week will bring. My weekend will include training the record-keeper, putting the finishing touches on the database that we’ll be using for the workshop, and getting the rooms ready for Monday’s opening ceremony and the word collection that will follow. I do sincerely hope that Sunday will be a day of rest. I’m feeling very healthy, and I am emotionally “up,” but this whole week has been a very busy one and my body is ready for some extra rest. I am very happy that I have been sleeping very well and that my jet lag was not too difficult to overcome. This has allowed me to function quite well during this critical time.

March 5: Training Day #2

My impression of the participants of this workshop changed slightly today, as a yellow flag began to wave itself vigorously during the opening session. I still love the energy that this group has, and I still think they have the potential to soar to great heights in terms of the outcome of the workshop. But...

Pastor Alphonse told me this morning at breakfast that the Bissa are a people who don’t beat around the bush; they speak their mind and they give it to you straight. That’s unusual for African people, in my experience. Alphonse’s statement was borne out early on during the day today, as I saw that they have a great propensity to discuss topics at great length in order to come to a consensus. (If someone says something that someone else is not in complete agreement with, the latter will immediately speak up to voice his opinion. A lengthy discussion often ensues, with many voices contributing to the cacophony, the hubbub only dissipating after prolonged high-decibel participation by numerous individuals.) With no effort to keep that tendency in check, they will use up great amounts of time making a decision about a single word—whether it’s really a word in Bissa, whether it should be spelled this way or that way, whether this or that pronunciation is the correct one, and so on. So I felt compelled to remind them a couple of times today that the primary objective of this workshop is to collect words—the details can be hashed out later; if they aren’t careful, they will spend a great deal of time collecting just a few words and the purpose of the workshop will not have been achieved. They saw the logic of that, but old habits are hard to break, so it’s almost certain that we leaders will have to intervene to remind them of the overall objective from time to time.

At the same time, I love the questions this group asks. I just absolutely love the fact that they ask so many questions. And the questions they ask are really good ones. I can tell from the questions they ask that they have been paying attention and that they are really trying to understand how this whole process works. If I can help them gain a clear understanding of everything by Monday morning, the results could be really great. Here is a picture of one of the happiest of those present:

The main thing we did today was provide detailed training for those who will be group leaders, glossers, and scribes. Because of all the questions and because of the fact that everything is being translated into Bissa, this training took longer than I expected it to. However, I feel very good about the participants’ understanding of what they are being asked to do. The picture below shows me explaining to the Group Leaders what their role entails.

Ernest surprised me at breakfast this morning when he said that he had been reading through the lesson plans and was especially intrigued by what the scribes are being asked to do, so he was interested in leading the training session for the scribes. I was delighted to learn that there was something in particular that he desired to teach, in order to gain experience as a workshop leader and consultant. I worked with him just a little bit to clarify a few questions he had, then turned him loose when the time came. He did an excellent job! This too was an encouragement for me—to see that someone else could take the notes that I had prepared and, with very little help from me, do an excellent job of teaching that topic.

Pam was last up with the controversial topic of which form of the verb to use in the dictionary (and therefore to write during the word-collection phase of the workshop). As was the case for Puguli, the Bissa have come to view a derived—and therefore non-basic—form of the verb as being the fundamental form, and that is the one that they instinctively want to write each time. Pam did an excellent job of presenting the linguistic evidence for using a different—and obviously more basic from an objective standpoint—form, apparently convincing her audience in about 30 minutes. Kudos to Pam for a job well done—though I was less surprised by her ability since I know her better than I do Ernest and know that her linguistic abilities are well above average. Here are pictures of Pam's presentation, with Thomas interpreting into Bissa.

After the participants had gone home, I showed the other members of the “administration” team for this workshop how to create a database in the program we’re using to collect words, then share it around to the other computers that the typists will be using. After we finished setting things up on our computers, we went our separate ways to rest or work on whatever we needed to do in preparation for tomorrow.

We have one day of training left, and there is still a lot to accomplish before the workshop starts on Monday. We’ll do what we can with the time we have left, but working 8:00 to 3:30 with an hour for lunch and a half-hour coffee break in the morning leaves us only six hours of work time in the day, and that seems to be barely sufficient for these days of training. We won’t be able to do all the practice exercises that I would prefer to do, but what we are doing, we are doing thoroughly, so the level of understanding seems to be quite high for this group.

Meanwhile, at the hotel where Pam and I each have a room, electricity had become somewhat of a problem. We were each having problems with light bulbs blowing out because of a short somewhere, and we had noticed that turning on the fan and the light at the same time caused the light to flicker and the fan to struggle. When we plugged in our computer in addition to those other power draws, the light or the fan would quit working, and sometimes it seemed that a breaker got thrown and all power would go off. This morning, after unplugging—yes unplugging, not plugging in—my computer caused the bulb in the bathroom to go “pop,” the hotel manager decided that it was time to call in an electrician. We left our room keys with him so that they would have access to the rooms in order to diagnose the problem, and when we returned in the evening, we were given new rooms. The electrician didn’t have time to check things out today, but promised to come by tomorrow. Meanwhile, we are now  in rooms where the electricity seems to be working okay.

My new room, however, has windows which do not open, so ventilation is limited to opening the door (which would let in mosquitoes) or a floor fan blowing the hot air around with everything closed up. Someone apparently did leave the door open, though, because there were mosquitoes in my bathroom. I thought I saw four of them when I first went in, but I’ve now killed five of them, so I’m not sure how many are lurking in there where I haven’t seen them yet. I’ll keep the bathroom door closed so there won’t be any sucking my blood out of me while I sleep.

Temperatures are now up to 100 degrees or maybe a bit more during the peak of the afternoon, but nights cool down to the low 70’s. I am enjoying this weather so much more than what I left behind! Before too much longer, the heat will become uncomfortable here, but for the moment, it’s only mildly uncomfortable in the hottest part of the afternoon.

March 4: Training Day #1

Today was the first of three days of training for those in the roles of Team Leader, Scribe, Glosser, Typist, Record-keeper, Coordinator, and Logistics Manager. That made for 25-30 people—and what a great bunch they seem to be! There is a good mix of men and women, and interest seems to be very high. Everyone who was invited to take part showed up for the first day! So far all bodes well for the success of this workshop.

I began my instruction, as usual, with a presentation of my family tree, transitioning to an explanation of the fact that words are related to each other—closely or distantly—just like people are. This presentation seems to always captivate my audience, the part about relationships in a family being something that they can relate to and which is of great interest to them. Helping them make the connection to relationships between words is always a bit of a trick, but it seemed that I succeeded better than usual today. Whether I did as well as I think I did or not will become more obvious once we put this all into practice next week.

After a lunch of “riz gras” (oily rice)—hmm! Sounds much better in French than in English—I led them through an exercise that is intended to illustrate how general notions which have too many words associated with them are broken down into smaller, more specific topics so that people are focused in their attempt to retrieve words from their mental storehouses. I use a drawing of a house, then we talk about the parts of such a building, like roof, walls, floor, ceiling, door, window, etc. Then we list a few words that exist in association with each of these major parts of a house. We talk about making sure that each word is associated with the right part—so we don’t associate the word ‘pane’ with wall, but rather with ‘window.’ The picture below was taken during this exercise.

The next topic I presented was the “Response Sheet”—the sheet that will be used for each semantic domain to write down the words that are collected there. It takes longer to explain that than I think should be necessary, but it’s important for everyone to understand how we’re going to be doing the word collection.

Finally, toward the close of the day, I outlined the workflow that we’ll follow during the word-collection phase. This is the part of the training where the participants are first introduced to the big picture of the “how” of the workshop. Most of what is taught prior to this focuses on the “why.” There were lots of questions and a few animated discussions as the participants began to better understand just how everyone would contribute to the group goal of collecting thousands of words in two weeks.

On the personal front, I got set up for internet access today, so that I was finally able to read my email that had accumulated since we left the capital city for the town of Garango, where we are now. For reasons we were never able to figure out, I was unable to access the internet the same way Pam has been doing. Instead, I had to pay $20 for a 1-month subscription that provides me with up to 5Gb of data. But now that I’ve done that, I do seem to have a good internet connection. (The word “good” is of course a relative term. I won’t be surfing the net—more like wading in the shallows.) However, if I succeed here, I will have posted this to the blog myself, instead of having to send it to Anita to post for me. That fact alone earns at least the qualification "good."

March 3: Setup Day for Bissa Barka training

It was nice to have a full day (today) to prepare for the training phase of the workshop (starting tomorrow). We logged a 10-hour workday today, as we did our best to make sure everything is ready for tomorrow.

Alphonse, the Logistics Manager/Coordinator for the workshop, spent a lot of time on his cell phone, contacting each of the 25 people or so who are supposed to be present tomorrow, reminding them of the fact that this event starts tomorrow at 8:00 AM. I invited Pam (Consultant-in-Training/Coordinator), Ernest (Consultant-in-Training), Alphonse, and Thomas (Record-keeper) to ask whatever questions they had about the workshop. They responded to my invitation with questions that ranged from how to organize the meals to what each of the various roles entailed to how the computer program works that we'll be using. When they had asked about all that they were aware that they were curious about, I had some questions for them, so we talked about some of those details.

We went to the Catholic Multi-purpose Facility where we'll be having the workshop and looked at the two rooms that will be available to us. I was pleased to learn that there are two large blackboards as well as a screen that we should be able to make use of when I have a presentation to make from my computer. Tables and benches have been lined up for the trainees, so it feels like we're pretty much set for the kickoff tomorrow.

At the end of the day, I successfully installed the software we'll be using on four different computers. There were a few panic-filled minutes, however, when I discovered that I had not brought the installation file for the program with me and we had to download it from the internet. Fortunately, the Bissa Barka translation team has a monthly subscription to the internet that provided us with a sufficiently good connection to download the file (180Mb) in about 30 minutes. While that was happening, I explained to them how multiple people can work together on a shared database. They haven't been doing that to this point, so this workshop will be the start of something new for them in that way.

All in all, it was a productive but very tiring day. Time now to get some rest in preparation for the first day of training tomorrow.

Burkina Faso countryside, nearing the end of the dry season (Kevin, March 2, 2015).

A full load and a good vantage point (Kevin, March 2, 2015).

Kevin Warfel

March 2: Travel day for Bissa Word Collection workshop training in Burkina Faso

Today was filled with preparations for the workshop that could be done while still in the capital city, followed by the 3-hour trip from Ouagadougou to Garango. We had planned to leave at 2:00, but it was 2:30 by the time we were finally able to push off. But I won't bore you with the details of the workshop preparations. I think you'll find other components of this Monday morning more interesting.

Since I arrived at the SIL center in Ouagadougou near the end of the workday on Friday, this morning was my first opportunity to see and greet most of my friends who work there M-F. The first hour of the workday morning was therefore spent going from office to office, greeting people. For the few who had ordered something from the U.S., I had something to deliver, and of course that made them quite happy. It was good to see so many of my friends—both Burkinabè and expat—again.

I also squeezed into my morning a visit to the tailor who has made all of the clothes that I have from Burkina Faso. He works a few miles from the SIL center, so I rented the SIL motorcycle and went to see him. My primary motivation for this trip was the fact that I had a piece of clothing with a broken zipper to get replaced. (We take advantage of these trips to Burkina to get our shoe and clothing problems fixed, since we have people with the necessary skills whom we know and trust and we can help them out financially by giving them work—and save money ourselves at the same time.)

My tailor friend (Matthew) was delighted to see me. He expounded for a couple of minutes on the fact that many who came to him for their sewing needs when they were based in Burkina Faso never come to visit him, even when they return for a short visit, but that there are a select few of us who always stop by each time we come back. He made me know he was very glad to see me. And then I gave him some business—which cost me all of 60 cents for time and materials. I also gave him some cloth that I had bought and asked him to make me some more shirts. That's more involved than just replacing a zipper, so each shirt will cost me 7 or 8 dollars to make (in addition to the cost of the cloth, which is about the same amount).

The trip to Garango with our SIL colleague Pam Morris was all on paved roads, though some of them had very large holes in places, so it wasn't quite like the trip to Washington, DC last week. Her truck has the old-fashioned form of air conditioning, so we each got to contribute to the regulation of the airflow by winding our window up or down. The scenery was mostly dry and dusty.

In Garango, I met Pastors Alphonse Bambara and Thomas Yembone, who are working on the translation of the New Testament in Bissa Barka. Alphonse is the logistics coordinator for the upcoming Rapid Word Collection workshop and I believe that Thomas will be doing the record-keeping. I'll find out more about that tomorrow when we sit down to talk about the details of the workshop preparations.

I am staying in Hôtel Boulgou, where the room is similar to the one I stayed in when I was in southern Ethiopia. There are some differences, though, that made my transition here quite a bit easier than that one.
Even though the chair is a simple wooden one that makes it hard to stay seated long enough to write this blog entry, the room is a bit bigger and there is a clothes closet where I am able to lay my clothes out or hang them up. The shower doesn't have any hot water, so no difference there. But there is electricity, I can talk with most of the people that I want or need to, and there are screens on the windows, so no mosquitoes.

Kevin Warfel

Reconnecting with friends and making final preparations for the workshop

This weekend has consisted primarily of two things: reconnecting with friends and making final preparations for the upcoming workshop.

Yesterday, I was able to meet with Pam Morris, the SIL linguist who is assigned to the Bissa Barka project and orchestrating all the practical details of the workshop, to discuss what still needed to be done. She took care of the final shopping errands, so now things are in place for the transition to the town of Garango, where the workshop will be held.

The mealtimes on Saturday were spent in the company of good Burkinabè friends. For the noon meal, I was invited to the home of Zakaria and Fatou Soré, where I was served an excellent rice dish. It was good to see these dear friends again whom God brought into our lives so many years ago. Their two girls, ages 6 and 4, are growing (surprise!), so it was good to update my mental image of them (photo below).

For the evening meal, I invited Jacques Malo, the coordinator for the Puguli translation project which we began in 1996, out to eat with me at a local restaurant. It was good to catch up on what has been happening in his life, the life of his family, and the Puguli project. Times have been tough economically, but he, his family, and the language team have remained faithful to their respective callings.

Today (Sunday), I saw a number of people at church that I knew from when we lived here, and it was great to be able to greet them again and transmit Anita's greetings to them as well. I was invited for lunch to the home of some of our SIL colleagues and friends—good food and great fellowship, but the time was too short. In the afternoon, I was able to connect (in a limited sort of way) with Anita via Skype. The connection wasn't very good, so we got about 15 minutes of dialogue accomplished in half an hour. Otherwise, it's been a day of rest—good preparation for tomorrow and the coming week.