Working with bamboo

This week we’ve had the Kovol people helping us in a big way. They cut bamboo in the jungle, carried it to our house and then walled in parts of our houses. The Hansen family had recently had an extension built onto their house and my little office under our house hadn’t had an exterior wall put on yet.

Our houses have 3 layers of wall. On the inside we have 4mm plywood sheets which give us a neat interior finish that we can paint. In the middle is a blue plastic layer to provide water proofing and then we have a outer bamboo layer to offer protection. Kovol houses have a wall consisting of 1 and, rarely, 2 layers of woven bamboo. There are gaps in the weave which strong wind and rain go push through hence the occasional double layer. It isn’t the norm though because of the work involved in doing it.

Bamboo is cut and gathered in the jungle. Bundles are tied together and carried on the shoulder to the build site. A machete is used to split the bamboo tube in the middle. Hammers, axes or machetes are then used to pulverise the “knuckles” flat. The result is a long flat piece of bamboo.

The bamboo is then woven onto the wall. The weave ends up being quite tight. People use sticks to hammer it into place.
It’s amazing to watch the skill people have with this job. What’s more amazing is that everybody knows how to do it. Every Kovol boy learns how to do this and they get plenty of practice as they grow up. It’s incredible what people can get done in a few hours. They don’t need instructions or much coordination, the community just gets on with things.

The scaffolding they created to climb on next to the house was as impressive as the weaving. Jungle logs and vine get turned into a suprisingly stable scaffold. Being twice the weight of the average Kovol person I didn’t trust myself to it though!
There’s also the fact that I only get in the way. I had a go at contributing and hammered flat a single short piece. I cut my hand in 3 separate places in the 2 minutes I was handling the bamboo! At the end of the day I checked the hands of some of the guys and despite working all day, tugging on and weaving bamboo together they didn’t have a single scratch on their hands!

My work on days like this is to make sure that everyone has the tools and materials they need, and that they get a good meal at the end. Well, I don’t do any cooking. We have the same routine as a grass cutting day where we give 7kg of rice and 14 tins of tuna to the Kovol ladies and they prepare it along with garden food. Not only do the Kovol people work for us, they also provide garden food (sweet potato, taro and greens) to go with the rice! We feel so well looked after. Time and time again the Kovol people display the fact that we’re part of their community and they care for us.
I’m glad to give back by selling bars of soap to people and having a look at the different cases of sickness that come to us. A malaria test revealed a child had malaria and we were able to sell the right medicine. We are careful not to take on too much with medical assistance, but it’s great we are able to give back and help out with some of the the more common sicknesses.

With so many people around of course, it was a great opportunity to do more comprehension checking of translated Bible portions. Gen 40 where Joseph interprets the two prisoners’ dreams is now mostly communicating well. The king’s cupbearer and chief baker involved some vocabulary choices. Bread isn’t an item the Kovol people have a word for. They do know it from town and know the Tok Pisin “bret” so I started with that. We had the “the bread-house looking-after man”. After he had been introduced, I started to refer to him as the “bread looking-after man”. My comprehension checkers regularly came back with “the food-looking-after man” though. The current text then introduces him as a man who looks after the bread house, using the Tok Pisin word but afterwards it becomes the more general and natural term. The cupbearer ended up becoming the “strong water looking-after man”, strong water meaning alchohol.

Tweaks were needed here and there. No one could link the 3 vine branches / 3 baskets with 3 days. I had Joseph saying “The 3 branches are like 3 days. 3 days will go and then….” Something about that wasn’t quite clear and I had translator’s block for a long time and couldn’t figure out an alternative. Inspiration struck and I ended up with “The 3 branches are a picture. The root is 3 days”. This seems to communicate well, but it needs another check.

For some reason the final paragraph where Pharoah summons the two from prison proved difficult. I don’t think my 1st draft set the scene well enough. Everyone understood that there was a feast, but not the reason why and who was talking to whom seemed tricky. I think I have it now, but there’s one detail still not working. When I ask people “and did the cupbearer remember Joseph?” Everyone says yes! I then read the verse again and people respond correctly no. The verse Gen 40:23 says “the strong water looking-after man did his work, but he forgot Joseph. He didn’t talk to the king”.
When read in isolation people understand it, but in context people understand the opposite. What am I to do with that? It’s very hard for people to shake a preconceived idea. Joseph told the guy to remember, and they know that later in the story Joseph does in fact leave the prison. Hence, he must have remembered. Do I signal this even stronger somehow? Right now I’m using the word oomoo “but”. Does it need adapting? Is the misunderstanding my fault as a translator? Or is the hearer at fault for not paying attention? I tend to think it’s my fault as the translator. Something isn’t right with the paragraph right now, but I can’t put my finger on it. Perphaps inspiration will strike next week and provide me with an alternative wording that fixes things? 🙂