Bakwe Archives - Page 6 of 8

Bakwé Teacher Training Seminar

Bakwe' Mission on September 9, 2008

Twenty six adults, from ten villages, came to our Bakwé teacher training course which ran from September 2nd through the 5th. Pastor Firmain and Perez ran the course and, from what I hear, did a great job. Four of the participants that came were women; two were non-Bakwé interested in teaching reading and writing in their churches. All the participants enthusiastically entered into the discussions and some brave souls even participated in getting up in front of the class to demonstrate what they had learned. On the last day of the four-day seminar, the group voted in a new committee for Bakwé literacy.

We are happy that Bakwé reading and writing classes are spreading into more villages every year. This year we have classes starting in the furthest village North and South of the Bakwé area. These two villages speak different dialects of Bakwé but are still able to use the primer with the teachers making some local modifications for their audiences. There are three main Bakwé dialects.

Primer

Our reading and writing primer is almost ready for its third printing. After a number of years of experience, we divided the primer into two separate volumes; one for beginner level and another for the intermediate level. We have third primer that we use for adult pre-literates.

Communication

We are still having trouble from time to time with our Internet connection in the village. This week the break in communication was caused by Perez’s computer crashing. Alexis got it running again by Monday the 8th and we’re good for now. What a blessing Skype, Google Calendar and Google Documents have already been when we have the connection! Skype is an Internet chatting application. Google Calendar allows us to see each other’s work schedules. Google Documents allows us to jointly edit documents online.

You can read more personal news at the passworded area of this site. To receive the password, please contact Csaba by email. Then you click on the words “login” in the top right-hand of the page. A password box will appear. Type the password in and you will be in.

Mission accomplished

Bakwe' Mission on July 4, 2008

We are back in Moscow, Idaho and very grateful to God for a successful trip. We were able to accomplish just about everything important that we had planned.

Following the Ji ‘Mi -Gba micro-finance seminar, we were able to finish off training the Bakwé team. It was intense up until the last day. First there was wave after wave of music groups coming in to give the Bakwé team recording practice. Word had gotten out that we had some professional recording gear. In between the waves we helped the team set up a local network with access to the internet. Here, we were able to set up things adequately but not in the way we had originally planned –giving direct access to a friend in the States who could repair and trouble shoot their computers from a distance.

During this time Perez’s laptop gave up the ghost. We set aside a day to recover his old hard drive and put in a new one, but it turned out that the HDD was OK and the computer itself was bad. It had already served us about 8 years, so it is time to find a replacement. He can work using the spare desktop computer for the time being.

The last day, on our way out of the village we made a stop in the village of Petit-Gabo, the last Bakwé village to the south on the road to San-Pédro. Here we met the chief and observed our newest Bakwé reading and writing class in session. You can see pictures of this class in the “photos” section. We then made a stop in San-Pédro and relaxed a bit on the beach! The weather was overcast and rainy so we didn’t do any swimming, but the down-time was much needed before the 5 hour road trip back to Abidjan.

Benjamin flew out on Wednesday. During the next two days before my departure on Friday, I trained Alexis on how to use Accronis backup software, Google Agenda, Google documents, and FileZilla. Alexis and I also worked on a Bakwé text that I had transcribed from a recording. This text will be useful in my continued analysis of Bakwé discourse grammar.

Join us in thanking the Lord for keeping us healthy and safe, and for all that we were able to accomplish in such a short period of time! Thanks for your prayers.

‘Killer bees’

Bakwe' Mission on July 4, 2008

Behind our house in Touadji II we have a bee hive that hadn’t received attention since we moved to the States six years ago. The bees were still there, but the old Langstroth hive was rotting away.

One evening I decided to transfer the bees into a new horizontal top-bar hive I had made for this purpose some years ago. Janvier helped me and Benjamin stood in the background taking some pictures. We work the bees at night in order to avoid having the bees sting people passing by. Of course that means that ALL the bees are home, making for all-out war! African bees (the supposed ‘killer bee’) are extremely aggressive and this night I couldn’t work quickly since the old hive was all glued shut with propolis and hard to open.

Forty-five minutes and twelve stings later I was able to finally put the hive into the new hive with as much of their brood comb as I could transfer over. The honey we found we harvested. The honey, collected from forest flowers, was dark and rich with exotic flavors. We shared it with the old men of the village and with all those that ate breakfast with us over the next few days.

For years I have been working the African bee, learning how to manage it, with hopes of training our Bakwé friends to produce a high quality forest honey to sell to tourists and hotels. The best hive to use in that part of West Africa seems to be the modified Kenyan Top-bar Hive. Though we are living out of the area right now I still have hopes of some day helping the Bakwé start up a local bee-keeping business. While here in the States I continue to learn about bee-keeping while helping a friend work and manage his bees in Moscow, Idaho.

Ji ‘Mi -Gba Microfinance Seminar

Bakwe' Mission on June 21, 2008

On Thursday Benjamin finished up teaching the micro business seminar with the help of Perez and Alexis translating into Bakwé. About fifteen Bakwé men and women came to receive a refresher course on what Dr. Kjell Christophersen taught a year ago –how to determine whether a business activity is viable or not. After a day of review and some teaching on good business practices, Benjamin went on to teach basic accounting & book keeping. He walked them through many examples and showed them how they should keep track of their expenses and income; and also, how to calculate profit. The hardest thing for them was to understand how amortize their larger equipment. After many questions and examples worked out on the board I think they got it.

On the last day we passed out T-shirts that were donated by Credenda and took a group picture (see photos). Before everyone returned to their villages there were some short speeches thanking us for coming. Everyone was very appreciative.

One of the highlights for me during the seminar was seeing a group of older men, during lunch break, reading out loud from the Bakwé Scriptures we have translated. Thank you for your prayers. Benjamin did a great job!

Sowuta of Gblétia

Bakwe' Mission on June 16, 2008

While we were on the porch this evening before dinner Perez brought by Sowuta, an older woman from Gblétia, a village 30km to the north of us. She has learned to read and Perez, one of our Bakwé literacy teachers, was so proud of her. Other people had told me about this woman. She had some gray hair and was obviously older. She said that she had never gone to school, but that she has learned to read in our literacy classes. She has amazed everyone! To prove it to us Perez handed her the Bakwé primer and she read the first several pages that had pictures and words under them. I praised her but I was wondering if she had just memorized these, but then she turned to the very back of the primer and began reading the last and hardest story about Rat and Lizard. She read fluently! She handed the primer back to Perez.

Then, she fumbled with her bag and pulled out a well worn copy of the Gospel of John in Bakwé. I could tell it had been well used because it had oily brown stains where you flip the pages and some pages were bent at the tips. She opened it up and began reading from John 1:1. Again, she read fluently. Tears came to my eyes. After several verses he stopped and explained to Perez how she had read the whole book, all the way to where it talks about Lazarus dying and Jesus raising him to life, and to where it talks about Jesus dying. She was so proud. She said the Baoulé and the Mossi had their Bibles, but the Bakwé didn’t for a long time, and she now can read it in her own language. She also said that many Bakwé don’t get it; they don’t see the importance in reading. So she is on a campaign. She tells everyone she meets to come to class and learn to read or themselves. I was so encouraged and you could tell that Perez was proud of her too.

It makes it all worth it to see someone excited about reading God’s Word! And someone who had no access to it before this! Praise God who blesses the work of our hands and the sweat, the tears, the malaria, the typhoid and the fatigue)! On our way to San-Pédro on the 24th we will leave here at 6:30am and stop in the village of Petit Gabo on the way to San-Pédro just to observe another reading class in action. This village has literacy class at 7am in the morning before going to the fields.