Helping hands

Digicel treated us to a complimentary internet detox this last week. The tower stopped working and cut us off from the internet for a week, hence no blog last week. It’s a good opportunity to take stock and be thankful that we’ve had such a steady internet connection that being cut off is the exception and not the norm 🙂

I’m back up to speed with my emails, news and YouTube videos 😀 It feels a lot more isolated here without the internet, but it’s not all bad to take a step back from the email inbox and news feeds. On the flip side coordinating supplies using just our inreach satellite device with its character limit is pretty challenging! I also missed Paratext’s send/receive feature. Paratext is the software we use for Bible translation and it has a feature where you can send your work to their servers. This serves as a backup feature and syncing tool between team members. I feel much better with Bible translation progress once again in the cloud seeing as my fudge fingers managed to lose 15 verses I had drafted when I somehow overwrote it all and the undo button didn’t work. Grr, setbacks.

Setbacks aside Bible translation progress is steady and we have a visitor 😀
Carol, a friend of ours from training in the UK is once again visiting us. She was last here with her husband 2 years ago. Her son has come to Papua New Guinea to start his work in tech services and Carol tagged along on the plane ride to help with her grandkids and then come on to us. She’s going to be with us for 6 weeks.
Carol is serving us by helping with meals, childcare, cleaning and helping us with community medical work. She says “I’m not a language learner, but I can help out in the kitchen for you guys”. It’s a real blessing to us, and to the Hansen family. She is giving Gerdine particularly a real boost. Gerdine is constantly torn between home school, chores and language learning. When I take over with the kids at the end of my work day it is Gerdine’s time to get some language study in. Many days though she’s feeling the stress to catch up on home school prep or get on with chores. With lower energy at the end of a day of school, it can be challenging to get out for language study. Having someone come alongside and take the chores off her hands has freed Gerdine up to get several really good language sessions in.

In providential timing, Carol will be with us for our literacy kick-off starting next week. Literacy kick-off is when we spend 2 weeks putting together and preparing our literacy program. A pair of literacy consultants are coming and they will guide us through the process of going through every one of the syllables needed to learn to read the Kovol language and preparing primers for them. It’s going to be 2 weeks of full days working with the Kovol community to write stories for all these primers. There is new software to learn, plans to be made for what a literacy course will look like and thinking ahead to structuring a post-literacy program. It’s going to be a hectic 2 weeks! We’ll be doing it all in public, under one of our houses so the entire Kovol community can come, go and participate.
I’m sure we’re going to be exhausted and peopled out! Not needing to worry so much about meals for those 2 weeks is going to be great.

We’ve also started to plan for our first translation check. I’m nearing the end of translating the Joseph story with 1 1/2 chapters left to go. It’s a pretty amazing feeling to click through the chapters and see page after page of Kovol text. We’re looking at bringing a translation consultant in sometime in April so they can check our translation. We’ll be deep-diving with them to make sure we’ve translated faithfully in a way that communicates. When I finished my language study time I was quite pleased that I wouldn’t have any more language tests… but this feels similar! I’m sure we will catch several issues and end up with a better translation because of it.

This week in translating Genesis 44 I had to translate Joseph saying “I’m a man that practices divination”. What makes it extra challenging is that presumably, he’s lying to frighten his brothers. Perhaps he isn’t lying, the text doesn’t say. My first draft went with him being “a man who when someone does something secret he sees it” and “a man who sees hidden things”. That seemed a good first attempt, but none of the people I asked to repeat paragraphs back to me could remember that. It seems that it was a grammatically correct sentence that didn’t mean anything.
I’ve studied the Kovol culture and know of some words I could try. I know a word for sorcerer, but it’s not that. Nothing quite seemed to fit. I’m pleased that someone suggested “a man who turns his eyes to come down” which seemed to fit perfectly.
With my new phrase in place I checked it again for comprehension, and sure enough now people remembered it. I then asked the guy to translate that into Tok Pisin. He’s recognising it, and knows what it is, but can he tell me in other words what it is? “Someone who sees things that haven’t happened yet”. Perfect.