Scott and Csaba
My hard drive died after the first day of translation checking. When Scott arrived he lost no time in getting my laptop back up and running with a new hard drive. He recovered my data.
Scott is making progress configuring the new computer equipment we brought out.
Here are Csaba, Perez and Alexis working on checking their translation of the Gospel of Luke into Bakwé. Cracking jokes in French and Bakwé from time to time helps relieve the intense hours of focusing on verse after verse.
Tomorrow we should be done with chapter 12 by noon; praise the Lord!
My laptop’s hard drive died, so I am using someone else’s until Scott and Benjamin arrive on Sunday with another hard drive. Today I had to do the translation checking the old-fashioned way –on paper. It still works though; and, it doesn’t have batteries or need a hard drive! It does mean that I will have to type in all the changes and corrections I made on the manuscript later on when I get my laptop going again.
Our departure date is fast approaching. We leave Friday. Thirty five hours and two layovers after take-off, we will climb out of a state of the art Airbus and enter another world and culture. Working on translation from a distance and making two trips out per year has its benefits. It also has its cons. Aside from the obvious ones, there is one I didn’t expect. The sheer speed in which you change cultures. When you plan to be gone for four years you do much more mental preparation for the transplant. For these short trips, one day you are weed-whacking the backyard and the next day you are eating grilled aloko plantains on the streets in Abidjan. And then after three fully packed weeks of working all hours of the day you are again sitting in your backyard sipping iced-tea and listening to the the neighbor’s sprinklers watering the grass. And your head sort of feels like the sprinkler. Its a lot of fun though.
Benjamin Nieuwsma is traveling with me on this trip and we have a lot we would like to accomplish, including the following: have a translation consultant check my translation of Galatians and James; teach a small group of Bakwé micro-entrepreneurs; setup a wireless network and train our Bakwé colleagues how to troubleshoot it; set up and train in the use of the new audio recording equipment; train in the use of other software; visit each of the Bakwé micro-entrepreneurs.
We will try to update this site with some text and some pictures as our trip progresses, so check back every couple of days.
Bakwe' Mission
