Are you refreshed?

“Are you refreshed by your time here in Addis?” I was asked just yesterday as I came across a friend who had just come in from down country. I smiled at the thought of Addis Ababa being a place of refreshment for some. Sure, there are paved roads, nice restaurants, and generally access to more things, but refreshment is not found in a bottle of orange soda or strawberry wafers.

 

Unfortunately, this past trip into Addis was the epitome of non-refreshment. The smog of the city driving in was amusing until my already annoyed respiratory system caught a whiff of it and acted like a puffer fish in my sinuses. Then, after 12 hours on the road, I most looked forward to a long hot shower; dreams of which were quickly dashed when we arrived to find that the water to our whole neighborhood had been off for almost a week. Ok, so, no shower, but how about going to pick up a pizza for dinner? Well, that WAS the plan, until we saw that the electricity had been shut off in our neighborhood as well, meaning that the ovens at the little café near us were not functioning so as to cook our pizza. So, there we sat in our candlelit house munching on old stale cereal and thinking “how is this refreshing?”

 

Thankfully, the electricity came on a few hours later, but the water stayed away another three days until just after we had gone to the school gymnasium to take much needed showers. Our time in Addis was then busy as usual. We come with a long to-do list of where to go, who to meet with, what to look for, buy, send, fix, etc. This particular trip into Addis was especially difficult at the end because we were rushed into leaving one day earlier than the departure we had been pacing ourselves for. Mind you, we don’t mind getting back to our Gesses house a day earlier, it’s just that yesterday was crazy in getting two days worth of buying, cooking, cleaning and packing into one, only to rise before the sun and take off down that 12-hour road.

 

And so, all that to say, I’m writing this blog on the side of the road as Micah fills both his tummy and britches. With our Addis stay cut short by a day, none of the new blog entries that are swirling around in my head got written or posted so hopefully nothing exciting happens between now and the next time that we have internet access (possibly in two weeks). Hold tight until then and I’ll try to catch you up to date. Until then, we’re headed back to our Gmz work…where also we find the refreshment we all need.

The Lord's Prayer

At this stage, Andrea and I are pleased to sit in church and understand next to nothing. By that I mean, our lack of understanding shows how little the Amharic language has infiltrated the Gmz church setting. Although we are paying careful attention to the still meaningless sounds that pass through our ears, our brains immediately kick into a different, meaning-processing gear whenever the preacher switches to Amharic in the reading of Scripture or even uses just one Amharic loan word in a Gmz sentence. No doubt the exact OPPOSITE is true for many of the Gmz believers worshipping with us. For them, an Amharic word or Scripture reading throws a wrench of confusion into the effortless processing of their mother tongue. For this reason, such borrowed words and phrases are to be avoided in Scripture translation as much as possible.

This is, however, much easier said than done, as evidenced in the translation of the Lord’s Prayer. (Apparently, the guy who first planted the church here among the Gmz was from a particular denominational background where the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer was a MUST in every church service. Although I may have resisted importing such traditions onto what it means for the Gmz to “do church,” I do praise God that these early church planters valued the mother tongue enough to take the time to translate and teach it in Gmz. By doing this, they avoided many other, more dangerous, pitfalls.) So, all that to say, Andrea and I have heard the Lord’s Prayer in Gmz a number of times but it wasn’t until today that we asked our teacher, Habtamu, to help us decipher its meaning in detail. This language learning exercise turned out to be helpful in that it showed us two new grammatical forms: the relative clause “(our Father) who is in heaven,” and the jussive “(your will) let it be done.”

After working through the whole prayer, I went back with a red pen and circled three words: kedus (holy); mengist (kingdom); and kebir (glory). All three of these very important words were borrowed directly from Amharic. Do Gmz words for these important ideas exist? I certainly hope so, but that doesn’t mean that finding them will come easily. The discovery and selection of “key words” such as these is one of the hardest parts of Bible translation, yet a necessary one. If all the difficult theological concepts are communicated through words borrowed from other languages, words that, without explanation, are meaningless to the Gmz ear, then does God really speak Gmz? It appears not. All that to say, we need a band of people who will faithfully pray for the discovery and selection of just the right Gmz words to communicate these difficult “key term” concepts.

Inside the Hay House

“Will you be living in one of those hay houses?” a young attender of one of our presentations asked us before we left for Ethiopia. Our standard response was, “No, our house will probably have a tin roof to keep the bugs from falling on us in the middle of the night.”

With Micah being just 2 months old when we moved out among the Gmz, we decided not to be too adventurous right away. By that I mean, we mostly stayed at home learning from the Gmz teachers who would come each day, rather than sitting around fires each night drinking “keya” with the Gmz. There would be time for that down the road, but preferably not until Micah was big enough to take his own malaria prophylaxis. However, because language and culture are inseparable, we knew that our classroom at times would HAVE to take place out from under our tin roof and what better place than inside what our young supporter so eloquently referred to as a “hay house.” So, in our fifth week of language learning, we made arrangements to visit each of our teachers in their homes.

The first visit was with Wohis, one of our close neighbors. As we walked up the hill and past the other houses in Wohis’ village, a few curious Gmz children fell in step behind us, chattering about the unusual visit from the foreigners.

Wohis led us to the doorway of a very large house where he stooped down to remove the two heavy logs which had been leaned against the woven mat which covered the doorway. Upon entering, the brightness of the sun outside at first blinded us to the contents which lie in the darkness of this large Gmz house.

As our eyes adjusted, we scanned the circumference of the circular room. The walls, both inside and outside, were plastered with mud which had been smoothed to give a nice appearance. In the few places where the dried mud had cracked off, we could see the horizontal vines woven in and out of the strong vertical poles which formed the house’s skeleton. Looking to the roof, we saw the many long bamboo canes which joined together at the top of the solid center pole, all of which is charred from the cooking fires inside the house.

And poking through the bamboo was the dried grass, or “hay” which provided necessary shelter from both sun and rain.

Not sure what to do with foreigners in his house, Wohis offered us a seat and then just looked at the dirt beneath his feet. Taking that as my cue, I started to point at things and ask questions. Soon Wohis and I were moving around the room picking up and pointing out many types of pots, baskets, tools, etc. Within the context of Gmz everyday life, the Gmz language felt right at home. Questions that I would have never thought to ask while sitting on my patio, now found their voice. “Why are there two fires for cooking?” (ans: the big one is for the main porridge and the other for the sauce.)

“What are these stakes for?” (ans: At night, the goats get tied to them to protect them from predators outside. (ie. hyenas)) “What are those baskets hanging on the wall?” (ans: that is where the chickens lay their eggs.) “What is this flat stone used for?” (ans: the women grind grain on it)

“What is this cone-shaped tightly woven basket?” (ans: it is a strainer for the “keya” drink).

What is this woven platform? (ans: That is the bed where the three smallest children sleep.)

Language learning is so much more efficient when you are sitting within the world it most naturally describes. Gone were the roadblocks that I frequently ran into while trying to learn how the Gmz language defines MY world. (ie. there is no Gmz words for shirt, pants, socks. It’s all one word - ahwa).

After spending an hour or so in Wohis’ house on Tuesday, we repeated the experience on Friday with Habtamu, whose village is a good 30 minute walk UP the mountain. Habtamu’s house was smaller and a bit older, but we saw many of the same things there, performing the necessary vocabulary checks on Wohis’ words. Before we left, Habtamu went out to his field and picked a nice pumpkin for us. It may be green, but it tastes the same as the Halloween variety back in the States - a very welcome gift since we both enjoy baked pumpkin, pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup, and of course homemade pumpkin pie. Suffering for Jesus, I know.

Middle of Nowhere; P.O.Box #11

I’m impressed. After 13 hours on the road, the sun was beginning to set on a Saturday evening as we were passing through Dibate, the final small town before arriving at our down-country home among the Gmz people. Tired from the road, I didn’t bother to look for familiar faces as I passed on autopilot through the town’s main square. Suddenly, my slow coast through town was interrupted by someone running after the car, yelling, “Postal ale. Postal ale.” Snapping my head back, I saw a familiar face excited to see that I had returned from a week away in the capital city - it was the man who works at the Dibate Post Office.

You see, about one month earlier, I had stopped by the Post Office to inquire about renting a P.O. box. I had my doubts when after many such trips through Dibate, this was the first day that I actually saw the door unlocked and open. Nevertheless, I walked up to the window and poked my head in. Nobody…go figure. Outside the office, I certainly wasn’t alone, as anything I do in town draws the attention of a large group of spectators, so I turned around and asked for help. “Oh, he’s over there, I’ll get him,” was the response I got as my new friend took off running across the square. Sure enough, he returned a few minutes later with the post office worker, who then escorted me into the dark office building and quickly began filling out a postal box rental form. I paid a whole ANNUAL fee of 63 birr (that’s less than $5) and was handed a receipt. “What is my box number?” I asked. “Oh yea, I forgot” he replied and retrieved the receipt pad from the table where he had thrown it. Starting at the very beginning, he quickly counted all the previous carbon copy receipts, “1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10…you’re number 11.” I don’t know how long the Post Office in Dibate has been open and operational, but I am quite confident that I am only the 11^th person to EVER request a P.O. Box there. I was given the #11 key, shiny and new, and given basic instructions on how to receive mail. “Just have people send mail to:

Travis and Andrea Williamson
Dibate P.O. Box 11
ETHIOPIA

That’s it? Those few words on an envelope will bring it not just way out in the boonies, but out in these particular boonies? The first chance I had, I shot an email home to my parents requesting a trial letter to be sent to our shiny new P.O. box. As requested, on September 7, a small mailing envelope filled with Crystal Light drink mixes was sent on its way. And now, here I was on Saturday, October 2^nd, driving through Dibate when I heard the welcome news “postal ale” (trans. “there is a letter!”). Apparently, the post office worker was just as excited as I was since he ran after my car to flag me down, then unlocked the post office after hours and delivered my envelope to the vehicle. Pretty exciting as that night we enjoyed some of the drink mixes and the long letter catching us up on everything that happened with my parents this summer.

(So, a disclaimer must be stated, this is not a plea for mail, rather just another glimpse of the world through our eyes. For those who are wondering, our Addis Ababa mailing address is still good as people from our organization check it regularly and we collect that mail whenever we return to Addis.)