Arriving back into Kovol after our break feels like returning home. Our break was fantastically refreshing and we really enjoyed it. As good as our break was, arriving back at our bush home felt like coming back to where we belong. The Kovol community greeted us warmly, but at the same time our arrival was run-of-the-mill, normal life which meant we weren’t overwhelmed with attention.
We had time to pack away our supplies and wonder to ourselves, “was the floor by the door always this bouncy?”. “Was our house always this worn-out and dirty looking?” The answer to both of those questions is probably yes, but it’s home for us nonetheless.
The day I arrived, I was back into the literacy class. The progress the students have made is wonderful. It’s amazing to see their attendance record and the motivation they have had to consistently come to class. I saw Hulumo’s empty seat and grieved internally. His death leaves a gap in the class 🙁
I then went and confused the students by writing on the board and writing my “y” in a different style to what Philip and Natalie had been using, which was a different style from the literacy books we have produced. Oops! Turns out that the teacher style guide document I hadn’t gotten round to creating would have been really useful to have in place before now!
After settling in, it was time to get back to school and work on translation, literacy and Bible lessons. I felt a little uneasy getting going again. It felt like I’d forgotten how to do it. My time is entirely my own to manage. I pick what to work on each day. After 2 weeks of spending my time prioritising family and relaxation I felt like I no longer knew how to fill a morning with Bible translation. The best way to try, it turned out, was simply giving it a go, and within a day I was back in the groove.
Back to wrestling with translation
I wrestled with translating portions of Genesis 15. “I am your shield” God says to Abram. Kovol has a perfect word for that. The Kovol ancestors fought with bows and arrows and a plank of wood was used as a shield and so the language has a word for it. “Your reward shall be very great/ I will be your reward” is a little more difficult. First of all you have to choose between the two main options for how to translate. Is God the reward, or will God give the reward?
After settling that, what does reward mean? The word means wages for work done, but the work Abram has done doesn’t seem to be the focus. Kovol lacks a generic word for wages that I could use. I had to go with “I will straighten you good/bless you” to convey a general sense of prospering Abram.
Abram asks what he could possibly receive because he had no children. One of his servants would be his heir. No word for heir or inheritance either, so I worded it as “I will die, and my work man will look after my things.”
Translation is such a fascinating problem though. On the surface this seemed to be good to my helpers and me, but a comprehension check revealed a problem: “I will die” collocated with judgement and misfortune. Concepts come with cultural baggage attached to them. In Kovol the idea of death is strongly linked to God’s judgement and misfortune. God had just told Abram that he would bless him. Thus the person I read the passage to repeated what he had understood as “God told Abram he wouldn’t die. He would bless him.”
Seeking to describe an inheritance I had inadvertently added a good deal of confusion. This is why multiple checks are so important! The change was quite easy. I had Abram say “Afterwards, my work man will look after all my things.” This avoided the word death bringing all its baggage with it – even though inheriting requires a death to happen.
Preparing for post literacy
We’re now only 6 weeks away from the first literacy class graduating! Time is flying. It’s time to get our post literacy course prepared for printing. We want to keep the momentum going and get these students into the next class so they can continue to practise.
We’ll be trying out a “9 hole” program. Students receive a bookmark that has 7 levels marked out. Each level has 9 tasks. Upon completion of a task the teacher punches a hole in their bookmark and after 9 holes they graduate to the next level. Each level asks more of the students.
The aim is to have students progressing at their own speed to finally arrive at reading out loud at a speed of 100 words per minute. I prepared the program 6 months ago while in the UK. All the stories need checking to make sure they flow well.
With a little literacy experience as well now, I decided to test the snail level on 2 of our current students. It’s important that the snail level is not too difficult. Faster students can breeze through it, but we don’t want struggling students to not make any progress.
The testing process showed me that I just hadn’t thought properly about the flashcard tasks. The final goal is for students to read at 100 words per minute and so for that level’s flashcard tasks, students were supposed to read 100 flashcards in 1 minute. That’s more than one per second! After a little trial I found that flicking through just 30 flashcards in a minute required quite a bit of practice as a teacher. There’s no time for fumbling the cards! That’s not going to work – and so a little restructuring is in order.
After several months of concerted effort we want to make sure our students have a road forwards for continuing to develop their reading and writing skills. In an ideal world we would have a clear roadmap for ways that graduates of both programs could then use their literacy skills in their every day life.
Life in the bush
Having not watched any of the group stage of the world cup, now that it was the knockout stage I decided it was time to start watching the England games. We were able to stream the England vs Mexico game underneath one of our houses and had a good crowd watching with us. Whenever we have a culturally acceptable way to share our lives with the Kovol people we love to take it. I feel that so often our contact is so compartmentalized. There are so many things that don’t really make sense to share.
Saturday pizza night with the family is an example. If we invite some Kovol friends the question becomes who gets to eat the white- man food and who doesn’t? We’d invite a small group and that would create jealousy. So then we’d need a rota to rotate through everyone, hundreds of people. I think we’d very quickly tire of it and would long for family time again.
So when something like the world cup comes along which we can enjoy together and which will finish after a few more matches it’s so great to be able to share that. While enjoying the game I had to keep reminding people that England was playing in white. It was also surprising for them to see players with black skin playing for England, they assumed they would all have white skin.
In other news we have 3 new guinea pig pups. We’ve separated mum and pups from the male and we’re bringing them inside at night. Lots of cuddles and squeaks and a great experience for our kids.
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