Bakwe' MissionIt 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.
Arrival in Touadji II
We pulled into the village around 5pm on Monday. Not a lot of people were home yet from their various activities, but we did get some shouts and waves welcoming us from the courtyards that we drove by. Tuesday morning we went out early to give our condolences to two families that lost a family member since I was here last November. Then we went around and greeted each family in the village, which is the custom when you have been away for a while. And you have to do it very early. We actually woke up some people out of their beds. Sounds rude, but that is the custom here.
After the greetings, which took an hour and a half, we returned to the house and had coffee and baguettes. Then we worked for 9 hours. I worked with my team checking the first four chapters of Galatians with Mr. Burmeister (a translation consultant). Benjamin worked with Pastor Firmain in another room training him on the new audio equipment we brought out. Later in the day as we worked in the next room we could hear the Bakwé singing and drumming group raising their voices in the recording studio.
We are making good progress and the weather is nearly perfect. Today we should finish Galatians and start checking our translation of James. More on translation checking another time. For now I hear breakfast being made in the kitchen, so off we go for coffee and French baguettes.
Spokane-Minneapolis-Paris-Abidjan
It took about 35 hours of travel including the layovers. We were tired as we pulled into the Guest House in Abidjan but grateful for an uneventful trip. All our baggage arrived! It was early evening and we were welcomed by one of our colleagues and offered a hot spaghetti meal and mangoes for desert! After eating and visiting for a while I was happy to get back up to our apartment and listen to the night noises coming in the windows. The frog and cricket chorus is especially good during rainy season, which is in full swing right now! The night was cooler but humid.
We slept well. After coffee and a ‘pain-au-chocolat’ we drove to the Cocody UEESO Church for Lord’s Day worship service. More boisterous than ours, but then we’re in Africa! Clapping, subdued dancing, and singing –all at the same time– is definitely something people here are good at! (I wonder what King David’s dancing looked like?)
After church I took Benjamin to a cook shop in the poorer section of town where we could get a plate of rice and peanut sauce for less than two bucks. No, I’m not trying to kill him; just the experience you now! OK, you do have to wave the flies off your food, but it was tasty and acceptably clean. The cook worked for years cooking for the German embassy folks I’m told.
The rest of this sabbath day we mostly relaxed and wrote home. Tomorrow after a meeting in the morning with my field director we will get in my truck and drive west for 6-8 hours (depending on the road) to the village of Touadji and try to get set up before it gets too late in the evening. A translation consultant is coming out with us to do a verse by verse check of our translation of Galatians and James into Bakwé. We should have some more interesting pictures coming soon.
June Trip Preparations
June 6th is just around the corner and preparations are going well. Benjamin and I will be meeting with Kjell Christophersen every week now to get his input on the two booklets that we want to provide the Bakwé microentrepreneurs –one on assessing the feasibility of a business; the second, on basic accounting principles. I just got Alexis, my Bakwé colleague and co-translator, up on Google Calendar so he can see our proposed schedule for the three weeks we are together. Amazing this technology! I’m sure there are more web tools we could use to more effectively work at a distance from each other. If you know of any, let me know.
Yesterday I sent off our back-translation of Galatians and James to our translation consultant who will be checking both epistles in June. A back-translation is a rather literal translation from Bakwé into French. It allows the consultant to see behind our translation as he keeps his eye on the Greek text during the verse-by-verse checking process. This literal back-translation allows the consultant to also see some of the idioms and grammatical structure of Bakwé.
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