About a month ago, a Gmz lady came from her rural area into Addis for a surgery. Since the surgery a few weeks ago and subsequent recovery time, she has been waiting for a ride back to her home area, where our friends from another organization are doing medical and church planting work. When we heard of her delay in returning home, we asked permission to visit with her in order to begin our initial Gmz language learning and so last Friday (March 5) we were brought to the community where she is living and introduced to Inkonj, a beautiful young Gmz lady. From a distance, it was easy to pick out Inkonj, even though she was surrounded by 7 or 8 other women. You see, Gmz people have a very dark skin color in comparison to the lighter skinned highland Ethiopians. She stood and greeted our friend who had brought us. Then she greeted Andrea with a warm hug before offering me (Travis) a very distant handshake. Right away, I knew that I had a lot of trust to gain. After all, I am a big burly man…ok scratch that. Believe it or not, I’ve actually lost significant weight since coming to Ethiopia (probably because we are eating so much healthier!).
That first day’s language lesson was fun, but not really very productive. The four of us (Us, Inkonj and our friend Caleb – a med-student from the States) sat around a table and had a hard time getting Inkonj to respond. We suggested that Andrea and her go for a walk which really helped her to feel comfortable. Caleb and I watched from a distance as Andrea would point at things and pick things up to elicit Gmz vocabulary. They came back with a handful of items: a rock, grass, a stick, a flower, a seed, etc. I started our digital recorder which for the next 67 minutes captured our attempts to learn our first Gmz words. Andrea was clearly the hero of the day as Inkonj seemed to cling to her like an old friend. It was funny that whenever I would ask a question, Inkonj would either be totally unresponsive or she would lean over and quietly speak the answer into Andrea’s ear. So, my job quickly became cueing Andrea with the questions I wanted to ask, which seemed to work much better.
The second visit was some better. It was fun that we arrived when a bunch of women were peeling fresh garlic for their dinner. Inkonj was super excited to see us. I still received a handshake as compared to Andrea’s warm hug and kisses upon arrival. After the greetings we sat down with the garlic-cutting ladies for a while and Inkonj squeezed herself between Andrea and another lady just so she could sit by her friend. As for me, I was happy that I was getting more eye contact at least. That day, it seemed like Inkonj was catching on to what we were wanting. We reviewed some of the vocab from the first day and then added some more – body parts. My natural reaction to people being uncomfortable around me is to try to get them to laugh. The first day, Inkonj wasn’t having anything to do with it! This day, I did get some giggles when Andrea elicited the word for “lip.” I wanted to make sure that the word she gave us was really the word for “lip” and not the word for “mouth.” So I grabbed my bottom lip and started wiggling it around, while trying to say the word (that’s not easy). Her laughter was encouraging to me.
Today was our third visit with Inkonj and once again she was thrilled to see us come – I even got a small hug as a greeting! We reviewed the body parts, then added the names of clothes. Then we tried to get household items: chair, table, bed, blankets, fire, door, window, etc. We were mildly successful in this. Our big goal for the day was to get some verbs like hit, jump, go, come, pick up, see, eat, drink, drop, and throw. Eliciting the word for “throw” ended up turning into the biggest joke I’ve ever told. You see, I had been acting out each of the actions in order to find out the words. I had hit a tree with a stick…I had jumped in the air…I had dropped my pen, but I guess I didn’t think through my action for the word “throw.” You see, I threw my pen quite a ways away and turned to Inkonj in order to carefully hear how she pronounced the word “begwegobesha.” Then I turned to write the word down and realized what I had done. On the video/audio you can hear this event as I first make a sound effect of the pen flying, Inkonj is amused by my throw and then I say “Oh, I need something to write with.” I run over to retrieve the pen and Inkonj realizes what happened and she busts up laughing. When I returned, she was still laughing and Andrea says “she’s laughing so hard she’s drooling!” If laughter is truly a way to make friends, Inkonj and I are buds now.
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