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Pigs are a big part of life in Kovol and Papua New Guinea in general. Pigs are a valuable source of meat, and the meat is an essential part of any important social event. If you apologize publicly to someone for wronging them, but don’t kill a pig to give meat, was it even a real apology? If you don’t kill a pig to celebrate a successful marriage in the pennam ceremony, your words and actions don’t match. You’re saying you have a good marriage with the celebration, but if you don’t kill a pig, then your actions are saying the marriage isn’t worth celebrating.

This week was a huge milestone in the Kovol work, our first translation check. We arranged for a translation consultant to come in to check Genesis 37,39,40,41,42,43,44,45, and 46:1-7. Those chapters cover the Joseph story and total about 200 verses of “simple” narrative, which is great material to get started on as a new translator.

Next week will be my first translation check. Having finished drafting the 200 or so verses of the Joseph story from Genesis, and having checked that it is communicating clearly in Kovol, having gone through it with a fine-tooth comb looking for parts added or omitted, it is time for an expert to take a look.

5 months in the bush certainly felt like a long time! It was a real delight to spend 2 weeks in Madang town enjoying the heat, beaches and food.

It’s over 5 years now since we moved into Kovol. That feels like a long time and I guess it is. I feel that I should have mastered this Kovol language by now. I know there are good reasons I Read more…

Some weeks fly by without you noticing them much; some weeks are memorable, some are enjoyable, and some are harder than usual. Some are a mix of different things, and that’s what we’ve had this week! This week, we’ve had a few challenges and some blessings, and I guess that all balances out to become a neutral week. 😀

With literacy kick-off finishing last week it was high time to slow down a bit and take a breather. That would have been the smart thing to do, but instead, we scheduled a language check for Gerdine, Philip and Natalie 🙂 Our literacy consultants left us on Friday, and then language learning consultants flew in from Monday to Wednesday.

Our team has just reached a significant milestone with the completion of the first draft of our literacy materials 🙂 We spent 2 weeks of focused time working on them with the help of two literacy consultants and we now have 87 lessons that teach all the syllables needed to read in the Kovol language. Some lessons introduce new syllables and some lessons are practice lessons that use syllables that have already been introduced to tell short stories for practice reading.