Exabier I Mesken!

Today has been a very good day. After two weeks in the classroom, today was the first day that we were allowed to speak. Sure, stumbling through our first sentences was painfully slow, we mis-conjugated most verbs and mispronounced most other words, but our encouraging teacher was pleased with our initial attempts. With new confidence, we hit the streets on the way home. Turning the corner we encountered Boaz, a shoe shining boy who is extremely outgoing and friendly toward us. Noticing his recent hair cut I said “segura kurit? Betan tinish segura!” (Eng: hair you cut? Very short hair!). Once again, this is terrible Amharic but the message was communicated. He corrected my sentence with the correct words (which I don’t remember now) and encouraged us in our learning. Later down the road, we stopped at our milk and egg store. Andrea stepped up the plate and ordered “hulet witet ena sedist encolal afelagalo” (Eng: Two milk and six egg I need). Oops, she forgot the plural markers on the nouns, but it didn’t matter, the milk and egg man smiled as he collected our order. Next door at the bread store, Travis imperfectly communicated his point as well, “Hulet dabo afelagalo” (Eng: Two bread I need). Once again the missing plural marker on “bread” didn’t cause miscommunication so we received exactly what we wanted. Effective communication is a simple success compared to how little we know, but it still feels good!

(Side note for you linguistic geeks, all the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph: what do you notice about the sentence structure in the examples above? Specifically, how is the relation between the major grammatical elements (nouns and verbs) different from English? What about the relation between the adjective with the noun that it modifies? Is it different or similar to English? These are the kind of grammatical questions and observations our brains are starting to pick up as we begin to speak Amharic.)

Feeling pleased by our simple conversations, our excitement level doubled as we arrived home. As soon as our guard opened the gate, we heard an amazing sound – the sound of rushing water! We both asked at the same time, “Wuha ale?” (Eng: Water there is?) The guard responded with a huge smile on his face, “Wuha ale!” (Eng: Water there is!) You see, here in Addis Ababa, pipes frequently break causing water outages for whole neighborhoods on a regular basis. Usually they are resolved in a day or two; however, this particular time we were without water for eight days. We have two 1000 liter reserve tanks that were gone by day four. Thankfully, the other guesthouse down the block did not have its water shut off so we would occasionally transport water in jugs. But still, no water coming in means serious conservation. It means minimal hand washing and certainly no showers (unless we go to the other house). It also meant dirty dishes piling up, and probably the worst given our GI sickness this past weekend, it meant only flushing the toilet once a day! “Wuha ale” was the best news we could have heard upon arrival at our gate. Equally excited, the guard then launched into a long string of Amharic, 97% of which went right over our heads. But at the very end he said “Chiga ri yelem” This very common phrase means “there is no problem.” Both Andrea and I excitedly repeated this phrase with thumbs up! I opened the lid of our ground tank to see the water rushing in! Ahh, “chiga ri yelem, wuha ale!”
So today we were doubly excited. Not only do we have water coming to our house again, but we were able to use Amharic to share in that exciting news with the guard and later, the house worker. Our language learning progress is slow, but the Lord is answering our prayers for positive attitudes and encouraging interactions with Ethiopians. For that we say “Exabier i mesken” (Eng: God be praised)!

Precious Lives in Transition

Two weekends ago we had the amazing privilege of visiting Carson and Madelyn, two Ethiopian orphans who will soon be adopted into the “Seeker” family of Louisville, KY (names have been changed to protect the innocent). The Seekers are friends of ours from our Moody days (that is, our days at Moody Bible Institute) who have been in the adoption process for more than a year now. We are excited along with the Seekers as the adoption could be finalized within the next week or so. Until then, they remain in the agencies house, a home for those kids who have already been matched up with adoptive parents and are just waiting for the paperwork to go through. The story below consists of excerpts from the email we wrote to the Seekers after our visit:

WE GOT TO HOLD YOUR BABIES and THEY’RE DOING GREAT!! We arrived at the home around 10am and were greeted at the gate by 12-15 happy faces, (all 2-10 year old children) as well as several ladies doing countless pieces of children’s laundry (by hand). Before we made it inside, Travis had one boy clinging to his feet and I (Andrea) had one of little girl named Sarah content to ride the rest of the home tour in my arms.

After a tour of the first floor, we climbed up the stairs and finally came into the room with Carson’s crib. There he was sitting quietly - just staring at us with his big beautiful eyes! At first Carson was a bit scared of the new faces so we couldn’t pick him up right away. Instead, we continued the tour. When we finally came to the last room in the house, there were three baby girls all lined up. There in middle was Madelyn, just waking up from a nap.

We went back into the hallway, where a lady was now holding little one-year-one Carson, who she soon handed over to Travis. We then took smiley Madelyn and we all headed down to the big kids’ room where they were all playing. We sat down with Carson and Madelyn and a bunch of other kids sitting around and playing. Little Sarah was still holding onto me until she decided to start playing with my hair. When my arms were free I immediately picked Madelyn up. She is such a happy and sweet baby! So many smiles!

We also got to see one five year old girl who had just arrived last night (while she was still sleeping). Though waking up in a totally new setting, she was so happy and smiling on her first morning at the house (seemingly unaware of her mother’s impending death from AIDS and her own infection with this disease). We got to see her be introduced to her adoptive family via a care package and pictures sent from the States. What an exciting time for her and the rest of us.

It seems like such a great atmosphere there at the house. Not the dirty, rat infested orphanages that you sometimes picture. The ladies working there are all nice and diligent workers. And the fact that all the kids have families that they’re going to be united with soon is wonderful! So please know that Madelyn and Carson are in a good place, being well taken care of as they await your arrival!

The hardest part was saying goodbye. Madelyn, as usual, was full of smiles as I kissed her forehead. Carson, on the other hand, was noticeably sad as we placed him back in his crib. He whimpered a little bit so I just kept holding his hand and giving him kisses on the head. We left with the promise of returning again, but more importantly, with the hope of their very soon adoption into the Seeker family, where there is already indescribable love for these two precious lives in transition.

(sorry we can’t post pictures for this, although we have some GREAT ones!)

In Sickness and in Health

“In sickness and in health…” I’ve heard that line before and I even said it four years ago last Thursday. But I’ve been thinking more about this line in recent days for reasons described below. We have said that this blog would contain the good, the bad, and the ugly, and this entry definitely falls into the ugly category. Yet, God is not absent in difficulty, neither are God’s people. And so, even in the tough times, there is reason for rejoicing and thanking God – hence the tone of this blog.

Moving to Africa meant the need to expect more times of sickness in comparison to the States. For better or worse, there are not as many preservatives in the food here so it spoils faster. There are not as many health standards and sanitation regulations. The soil in which food grows and the water with which it is irrigated may be compromised with impurities not common in the States. Plus, there are different strains of normal colds that our bodies have never seen. Therefore, we came expecting to experience sickness, at least at first. It’s part of the lifestyle we’ve been called to.

As mentioned in earlier emails and blogs, Andrea got one of these common virus’ (or a normal cold) while we were out in the Gmz region. Down country is a terrible place to feel rotten. We were sleeping in a different “bed” each night, travelling by car over rough roads for several hours a day, and eating only the local food to which our stomachs are still in transition. On top of this Andrea had a fever (100-102) for five days which later turned into a cough for several weeks after our return to the capital. Despite feeling rotten, she still participated in almost every school visitation (all except 1) and every invitation to coffee or dinner (except one…it is very offensive for us to turn down such offers, even when she was REALLY sick and stayed in the car one day, there were many words spoken to me about how she should come).

As for me, I am now familiar with what it feels like to have giardia, a digestive track illness, the effects of which has made me a difficult person to live with. I praise Andrea for her patience with my ability to render a whole room useless with even the smallest emissions (definitely rivaling Eng for those of you who know what that means). Giardia though wasn’t a major deal, unlike the sickness that walloped me yesterday. I was feeling perfectly fine on Friday only to wake up Saturday with what began as a very angry digestive track and later evolved into fever, nausea, weakness, cramping and achiness. In reading all of our self-diagnosis literature, we narrowed the possible ailment down to salmonella, dysentery or food poisoning. Given the fact that today (Sunday) is much better, we are assuming that its food poisoning which is not at all uncommon when you eat at a local restaurant (as we did in taking our language school teacher out for lunch on Friday).

Coming out of yesterday’s adventure, I am thankful to God for two evidences of his grace. First, he allowed this sickness to come on a day when we had nothing important scheduled. The only thing I had to give up was playing basketball at the MK school, which I try to do every Saturday. Really, this could not have happened on a better day so I praise God for that.
Second, and much more importantly, I praise God for the loving companion that he gave to me. Andrea’s constant attention to my needs, yet not overwhelming me with unwanted interrogation was such a blessing. While sick, she studied for class with me, she watched one and a half movies, and she even made some generous trades which helped me win the board game “Settlers of Catan.” Yesterday is just one example among many in the last four years where Andrea has fulfilled her promise to love me “in sickness and in health.”

A Profound Respect

Up until this point, most of our blogs have been fun personal stories. This one goes a bit deeper into my (Travis’) thinking since arriving here in Ethiopia. Before I start, I must tell you: this is long and boring. There is no fun story, no good jokes and no wity punch line at the end. If you are prone to falling asleep while reading, stop right now. Consider yourself warned.

The topic: My growing respect for language. Sure, I’ve studied languages inside and out in the classroom, but my respect for languages has jumped to a new level in the last six weeks. Here are two points I have boiled down my thoughts into:

1. It is exhausting to be immersed in an environment where only a foreign language is spoken, even if you don’t understand a lick of it. I was surprised at how wearing it can be to hear Amharic all around me, even if I am not trying to understand what they are saying. Then, once I learn a little bit so as to pick up bits and pieces, listening becomes even more tiring. When someone speaks my mother tongue to me, I am relaxed and there is very little mental work going on. All the vocabulary and grammar roads have already been nicely leveled and paved in my mind. When working with a second language, the roads are still very rough. My ears strain to catalogue each sound because sounds come in individually - not as whole word or even phrase units as is the case in my mother tongue. My mind then strains to put sounds together into meaningful units and then connect those units to their proper meaning. Then the words need to be connected to each other in a meaningful way (that is, grammar). And that’s just one side of communication! The whole process needs to be reversed in order to respond to your conversation partner! It’s exhausting and therefore speakers of a second language have earned my respect (Americans, in general, are sadly way behind the rest of the world when it comes to knowing multiple languages).
   
   
2. I am amazed at the flexibility of language. I’m not talking about breaking grammar and phonological rules (like my Texas friends do all the time!). Rather, I’m talking about the flexibility of the actual language to communicate the same message in multiple ways. How many different ways do we have to say that something belongs to me? MY car, That car is MINE, That is Travis’ car, That is the car of Travis or the car of me. Then take this last form “car of Travis” and think of the “love of God.” Is this referring to the love that God has for us, or the love that we have for God. Actually it can mean both which leads to many exegetical decisions to make when we encounter this phrase in the Bible. Also, I think a lot about the flexibility to speak quickly or with slurred speech. For example, our co-workers who have been here for many years know Amharic pretty well, but when a native Ethiopian is speaking to another native, it is hard for even these experienced folks to keep up. Amharic has a lot of contraction in it. Like “can” and “not” contracting to “can’t”, Amharic likes to smash words together to make them come out faster and easier. That makes understanding slower and harder for us foreigners as we have to identify and un-contract these structures. In the same way, slightly differing pronunciation can cause problems for non-native speakers. Because many of our co-workers are German, it is not unusual for German to be spoken in the office or in social gatherings. This way, Germans can communicate without everybody knowing what they are saying. At first I was bummed because Andrea and I didn’t have a language like this, until I realized something. We can speak a little Spanish, which none of the Europeans know. Or, when our Spanish fails us, we can speak Pig Latin (igpe atinle). The extra step of taking the final consonant and making it word initial is a MAJOR difficulty for non-native English speakers (as it would be for us). Or, we have found that we can speak normal English with a heavy drawl or twang (thanks to our excellent teachers in Texas – especially Sherry, Logan and Libby). The exaggerated accent makes familiar words sound brand new to those who speak English as a second language. Therefore, language has incredible flexibility among mother tongue speakers, but much more narrow limits among the second language speakers. Is this a good case for mother tongue Scriptures? I think so.

Congratulations on reading this to the end. I applaud you (NOT you cheaters who skipped from the first paragraph to here!). I realize that the majority of you read it simply out of pity on my analytical mind, and maybe 5% of you might have actually enjoyed it - you should consider a career in linguistics as well! If you are part of the pity group and now need a Starbucks espresso to relieve your heavy eyelids, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Doro Wot

Ethiopia is known for its amazingly tasty ethnic dishes, but of these fine meals, one stands out as extra special in the eyes of Ethiopians. It’s simply called doro wot (chicken stew or I prefer “chicken sauce”). It’s a red pepper spicy onion/garlic sauce with pieces of chicken and hardboiled eggs (both the proverbial “chicken and the egg”). We had some EXCELLENT Doro Wot out in the Gmz region, which was served with great pride to us as honored guests. Then, about one week later, as part of our orientation schedule, we participated in the making of this special meal. We started from scratch, I mean FROM SCRATCH! Early that morning, we purchased two live chickens from a roadside market. After bringing them home, Travis, the only male in our group, had the customary responsibility of killing one of the chickens (following the example of the guard who was on-duty that day). You can see the murderous look in Travis’ eye as he prepares for the slaughter in the picture. We could include other pictures of the process but it gets pretty gruesome after this one (the fact that the knife was dull did not help any!). Though we’ve heard stories, we didn’t get to experience seeing a chicken run around with its head cut-off because the ladies who were helping us cook had us cover them up with a tub to eliminate the blood splattering everywhere (see the first chicken’s blood-splattered tub in the background of the picture?). After we slaughtered, plucked and cleaned our chickens, the ladies pretty much took it from there, but it was helpful orientation none-the-less. Chicken is VERY expensive here so if we want any chicken in our diet, we will probably go with the self-slaughter route now that we know how it works (and now that we’ve become cold-hearted killers). It is a lot of work though, so it won’t be a common routine.



A funny follow-up to our doro wot experience took place this week in language school. As we were learning the names of the body parts our teacher would draw the pieces of the face on the board and say the Amharic word (no English). He drew two eyes “Ain, Ain.” He drew a nose, “Afincha, Afincha.” He drew a mouth “Af, Af.” He drew teeth “terse, terse.” He drew an ear “Joro, Joro…doro wot, not juro wot!” We all busted up laughing at the thought of a new Amharic speaker ordering Joro Wot (Ear Stew) at a restaurant. Random laughs like this make language learning entertaining at times.

Back to School - AGAIN!

You would think that 20.5 years of formal education (not counting pre-school) would be enough, but no, this morning we landed ourselves back in a classroom. This however, is a classroom unlike all the previous. First, there are only 6 students - our Romanian colleague with our organization (SIL-Ethiopia) as well as three Germans from another agency. Actually, this is a fairly large group for this school, but we seemed to learn well together. Also, for the first time, this class is taught entirely in a language we don’t understand – Amharic. It’s total immersion. Well, today, we were given orientation in English, but after this, English is strictly prohibited (especially be the teacher).

So then, we hear only Amharic when we enter the classroom and we are supposed to learn the language as children do. That means that for the first two weeks, we aren’t allowed to talk. We only listen as the teacher uses many props and actions to teach us new words. Today it was things like man, woman, boy, girl, old man, old woman, baby, I, we, you (female), you (male), he, she, window, door, floor, white board, table, and simple commands like shut the door, open the window, knock on the window, pick up the man, stand up, sit down, sleep, etc (these commands are different depending on whether you are talking to a male or a female). It was definitely an information dump but very manageable as we recorded the key terms and have to listen through our recordings four times before tomorrow’s class. After the first two weeks, we can start trying to speak for ourselves, then after another two weeks we can first try to write something down! The theory is that we were all expert language learners as children, so why not try to duplicate that process. So far, it’s had good results with past students – hopefully we don’t blow their record!

Actually, it is quite fun to see how much we could follow the teacher after just an hour. Andrea’s highlight was the when one student was told to “stand up,” “go to the window” and “open the window.” Then, Andrea was told to “stand up,” “go to the window” and “wutchi the window.” After a quizzical look at the teacher, Andrea proceeded to climb out the window as she was told (wutchi is the command “exit!”). The whole class erupted with laughter that she actually did it! Thankfully, our classroom is on the ground level!

Travis’ moment of glory came a little later as he was asked to perform some commands. Being the only male student (and verbs are different whether you are talking to a male or female) Travis ends up being referred to a lot or having o perform a lot of actions. In this case, he was told to stand up, go to the door, open the door, exit, close the door (behind you), then knock on the door. Up until this point, an Amharic-speaking woman had been commanded to do these same things for demonstration so Travis was pretty confident on what was coming. However, the teacher threw a curveball while Travis was still outside. After saying knock on the door, he said knock on the window (the only nearby window was about 7 feet off the ground). Much to our teacher’s delight, Travis hand appeared and knocked on the window as he was told. Once again the class erupted before Travis was commanded to open the door, enter, shut the door and sit down.

So as you can see, learning can be fun in this type of setting. Now, if we could only get some of those dry linguistic professors down in Dallas to spice up their method!

Scripture for Shnsh

One of the highlights of our trip to the Gmz region actually occurred in a city mainly inhabited by the “Shnsh“ people. After settling into our rather decent motel (20 birr a night, that’s about $1.80), Andrea, myself and the man from our agency who was leading this trip all felt like skipping dinner (our lunch experience was the Sedo mentioned in the previous blog…let’s just say, our stomachs were still trying to figure out what was going on.) So instead of dinner, we went on a walk in hopes of finding a particular local man our co-worker knew. In small towns like this, everybody knows everybody so it didn’t take us asking more than one person before we were escorted right to Ato M’s front gate. We were welcomed by several young ladies and escorted into a very dark living room (the only light coming in was from the nearly-set sun on the opposite horizon). After a short discussion in Amharic, we were told to leave because Ato M was actually just leaving his office. His son then escorted us down the street another “block” where our co-worker spotted his old friend. After some customary hand shakes and shoulder-to-shoulder bumps, we were introduced to Ato M in English, “This is the man I was telling you about, the Bible translator into the Shnsh language.” We had heard parts of his story and so we were excited to meet him in person. Before leaving, he showed us his translation office. It was a mud-walled building with a nice metal door (as can be seen a bit in the picture). Inside was a 12’ by 12’ room with a few chairs and a desk with an old computer monitor and printer on top. After the quick tour in the mostly darkened room, we began our slow walk home. Ato M was very excited about our desire to work among the Gmz and had a Gmz friend he wanted us to meet, but it was late in the evening and knew that his friend was in evening devotions with his family. Our meeting would have to wait until our next trip.

Nevertheless, we had opportunity to talk with Ato M about his own project. From what we understand, it was just three years ago that he got started on Bible translation into his mother tongue, Shnsh. Before that, he was a teacher at the public school, and an excellent teacher at that! However, it was his teachers heart that caused him concern when he saw his own people attending church and getting little out of it. Because Amharic Scriptures were read and the sermon delivered in Amharic, the congregation was not learning or growing. He knew that the best learning would have to take place in the mother tongue. It was this conviction that led him into Bible translation. Because our agency does not have an adequate training program, he was connected with an organization called Word for the World. He is in the third year of the four year program which is designed to train educated mother tongue speakers in linguistics and translation. While taking this training, he has been working very hard on his translation. In fact, he has 100% of the New Testament drafted and 30% of it fully consultant checked and ready to print. Now, while waiting for the checking of the rest, he has started drafting the Old Testament – all that accomplished in only three years! Hearing him share of his progress (with profound humility) confirmed the incredible giftedness and dedication of this Shnsh man. It is a privilege to have him nearby the Gmz people where we might learn from him, make connections and hopefully find a Gmz man comparatively gifted and dedicated for the task ahead of us. Although our time with Ato M was short, it turned out to be the highlight of the trip for us, for obvious reasons. Now, we only look forward to spending more time with him in the future.

Sedo = slime + Play-do

Bugs haven’t been part of the cuisine we’ve been offered here…at least not yet. However, if experiencing the “gag-factor” in food consumption if part of what makes a missionary, we’re legit. This is one of those stories that would be better with an audio file to go along, so you’ll have to imagine the sound of obnoxious slurping with each bite…you’ll see.

The education bureau representative that we were traveling with during the Gumuz mother tongue literacy supervision trip had relatives in one particular area that we visited. Our friend and these relatives couldn’t pass up the opportunity (or obligation) to feed us since we stopped by after the morning observation of the nearby school. They were sure to feed us their traditional food, called “Porridge and Sedo”.

The most filing part of the dish consists of a stiff porridge made from grain and water (the consistency of warm play-do). The sedo is the flavorful topping for the bland porridge. For those who feel queasy just at the sight of a strange food would have lost your breakfast as soon as our host dipped his first handful of porridge into the brown, snot-like Sedo.

An important part of this particular culture is for the host or others around the table to the guests (and each other). The first mouthful went to our German coworker who had experienced similar food in a different cultural group of Ethiopia but never been feed it from someone else’s hand. Travis and I weren’t in suspense very long as another handful of porridge was dipped into the sedo sauce, twisted around to catch the long strand of slime between the host’s hand and the bowl, and soon advancing toward our mouths…ready or not!

One mouthful and then another came in quick succession - that’s when our gag reflex started to kick in. When you taste a new food for the first time it’s typical to take small bites, allowing your palate to figure out what it’s experiencing. But our host wasn’t in tune to this need of the “forengies” (foreigners) as he served us the size he was probably used to sucking up himself. We were coached as we sat chewing on our first mouthful, “You don’t need to chew it, just swallow.” Yeah, right! Too bad the audio file is lacking here to really get the full effect of the sucking, slurping sound produced when trying to prevent the slimey sedo sauce from falling from the host’s hand onto your lap (can you see the dripping Sedo in the picture?). Unforgetable, we can’t wait for you to come visit, we’ll plan this meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Now that’s a weight loss plan!