June 08 Trip Archives - Christ Church

‘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.

Galatians and James Checked

Bakwe' Mission on June 16, 2008

It took less time than we thought it would and we didn’t have to work evenings. Jonathan Burmeister, long time veteran Bible translator and translation consultant, checked over every verse of Galatians and James in two days. We worked solid Tuesday through Wednesday using a Bakwé person that didn’t participate in the translation process to back-translate from Bakwé to literal French. This way Jonathan, who doesn’t know any Bakwé, could see our translation and check it against the Greek. He often would ask questions of the back-translator to satisfy himself that we were faithfully translating the original. Overall Jonathan didn’t find any real problems and he said that we were doing a good job. He was surprised that it only took two days to check both books. We took a third day to add some more footnotes to both books and discuss the future books that we are going to translate. In all it was a very encouraging time.

Mission accomplished