Internal culture wars

For the past two years, I have carefully trained myself to use only my right hand in interaction with other people.

This conflicts with a sudden unaccountable desire to keep my left hand as prominently displayed as possible.

guest blogger

Sharon's Ghost Writer... (written Friday night just before Sharon
flew to the US. Due to trouble finding an internet connection
this is only going out on Monday, but that is still before most
of you will see Sharon.)

Sharon says she doesn't do blogs during transition times, which
she's already reported to you all. However, I thought it was
worth telling everyone what her last week has been like, I think
many of you will see your prayers answered in all this.

Last Saturday the Oroko song book that Sharon and Hans had worked
so hard on finally arrived. The middle page was still put in
backwards (song 7 appeared before song 6), but 15 minutes of
unbending staples, flipping pages, and rebending staples, and the
3 of us (Sharon, Hans and I) had the printer's error fixed.

Sunday morning Hans handed out all the books and tested out some
of the songs with the congregation. It was fun watching people
following along and trying out these old songs in their own
language.

Now most of you know Sharon even better than us, so you'll
appreciate the courage of this next event. After announcements
Sharon popped up and said she had something to announce - that
this was her last Sunday and she was thankful for the fellowship
they had extended to her. She did this all in her very best
pidgin - which was pretty good at that!

Monday Sharon finished going through the entire English-Oroko
index to the Oroko dictionary she has been working on. This index
had been basically a haphazard offshoot of our Oroko work, and
benefitted very much from Sharon's editing. She'd been working on
this hard the last few weeks, and it was great to see her make
her own target.

That same evening Sharon finished a Hebrew research project Lisa
had given her - to list all the Hebrew "emotional" language in
the first part of the story of Joseph in Genesis (37,39,40) and
cross reference it to the Oroko that Lisa listed. This will help
us create a corpus of expressive language in Oroko and translate
the Hebrew more accurately into Oroko. Great work! She even
managed to do this by about 8 pm and therefore get to bed at a
reasonable time.

Tuesday she began the dreaded packing. Now packing is one of the
things that totally stresses Sharon out (except when Jessica was
around to lend some help). Sharon managed to finish all her
sorting and packing before 5 pm. Shortly after that the youth
group arrived for their pre-arranged sendoff. I was curious what
they would do. Whether planned or not, in the end they decided to
sing through the entire translated songbook! In a couple places
she and Hans had to sing through parts to get the syllable timing
correctly. Needless to say she was pretty pumped at the end.

Wednesday we went to Kumba and Sharon got another of her wishes -
roasted African "plums" by the side of the road. We'd only had a
couple before we left Bekondo, so it was nice to get a last taste
of one of these plums that has become a favorite of Sharon's.
Wednesday afternoon we drove to Mutengene for a couple days of
R&R before her departure. She got to say good-bye to Irene (our
landlord's daughter), another of her wishes. She got a bit
carsick on the windy, bumpy drive, but the instant we stopped,
she felt fine - another answer to someone's prayers I'm sure.

Thursday morning we got mangoes for breakfast - a fruit that we
saw only briefly this year in the village and Sharon had really
hoped to have more of before leaving.

Thursday afternoon we went to the beach and enjoyed a wonderful
day in the surf and ... horseback riding. The hotel had a couple
horses available to ride, and we all took advantage of it.

So, now we're ready to head to the airport, and I can't really
think of a better ending to Sharon's time here. Now for a short
vignette from Lord of the Rings before turning Sharon back over
to her family and friends in the US.

When Lisa and I watched Lord of the Rings, there was one scene
that really impacted us as a parallel to what we sometimes feel
as missionaries when we think of returning to the US. Remember
that scene when the 4 hobbits are back in the pub in the shire
and they are all looking at each other. It is like nobody around
them has a clue how the last year of their life has impacted
them, and have merrily continued on in their life without
realizing all that was happening somewhere else (This is the
movie version - not the book version - I know). Sam made his
choice to continue where he left off, although different inside.
It is now almost 8 pm and we have to eat yet before sending
Sharon off to the airport for her 11 pm flight, so I'll have to
end my reminiscing there - but I'm sure each of you will pick up
some more parallels between Sharon and Sam. I didn't know Sharon
before she arrived in Cameroon, but I do know that she is a
different person than when she came - and I trust it is for the
better.

With that, we send her off with our best wishes for her future,
and pray that God would continue to work in her life and guide
her and Jim's future.

God Bless
Dan Friesen

Official Posting Holiday

I have five days left in the village.

I have seven days left in the country.

Motivation to do many things has left me. Packing is the most
notable of these unfortunate things.

Posting on my blog may not happen to be one of those unfortunate
things, because it is not on my to-do list and therefore I don't
HAVE to be motivated to do it.

Nevertheless, I am taking an official posting holiday of
undetermined length.

Hart Upper Even, #240

I slid the CD into my computer; I'd just borrowed it from a
friend here, never heard it before. Suddenly, I was back in a
second-floor dorm room... three lofted beds, three desks, three
computers, and five bookcases, decorated in dusty rose, burgundy,
and sage green, with the "Shakespeare's Thoughts on Love" poster
on our door. The same room where one night in a fateful gesture
I threw my Aeschylus against the wall and proclaimed that I
didn't know why anyone would want to read it.

My roommates introduced me to Loreena McKennitt my freshman year.
The music is beautiful. But the very sound of her unique voice
and style and instrumentation also brings back a certain tension
in the pit of my stomach. It brings back the turmoil and
insecurity of being a freshman, adjusting to living with
roommates, establishing an adult identity (or failing to), and
entering a constantly changing community of 18-22-year-olds. It
was, if you like, the sound track for my freshman year.

Somehow, though, it also underlines for me the fact that I am not
that 18-year-old any more. It's good every once in a while to
realise that you've grown-- even that you've outgrown. That the
becoming is there, even when it's slow.

It gives me hope as I end yet another known life, enter yet
another unknown, another uncertain place with uncertain
expectations. It gives me hope that even though God continues to
bring me back to that place of being "a freshman" over and over
again, I'm not going in circles but in spirals. He really is
teaching me. Thanks be to God!

'Well, this is Africa.'

That's the catch-all answer to an indignant Westerner's demand
for justice as he sees it. Those who have been here long enough
to find themselves saying it, know that 'justice' means something
totally different here.

Some of the most frustrating situations (for a Westerner) involve
the question, 'Who pays?' I honestly don't think this is because
all Westerners hang on to their money like misers... I think it
has more to do with our concept of personal responsibility.
Consider the following situations.

A motorcycle taxi driver runs into a legally parked truck and
dents it. The truck owner (who was not present) pays for the
repairs to the motorcycle (and the truck).

The court gives a release-on-bail date for a prisoner awaiting
trial, but on the stated day they refuse to release him, giving
no reason. His wife has to pay his taxi fare back to jail.

A neighbour borrows a bicycle and brings it back with a broken
axle. The bicycle owner pays for the repairs.

A print shop takes a job to a nearby photocopy shop, who mix up
the pages. The resulting booklet is unusable and parts of it
must be re-printed. The client pays for the extra paper and ink.

The Western instinct in these situations is, "You break (or
inconvenience, or mess up), you pay." That seems right to us.
Individuals (or corporate institutions) should take
responsibility for their own actions. That's just how things are
supposed to be.

Except that in Africa, they aren't. It's every bit as obvious in
African culture that the one who has more, pays; or the one who
is most closely connected, pays. If YOU are rich enough to own a
bicycle and lend it to me, then obviously it is not right to make
me pay you for repairs when I don't even have a bicycle. If it's
YOUR relative who is in jail (or in the hospital, or anywhere
else) obviously you are going to care for him, not the
institution. Community (resources are shared based on the
closeness of relational ties) and 'leveling' (the one who has
less is entitled to receive from the one who has more) trump
individual responsibility.

The scary thing is that, despite my visceral sense of injustice
in
these cases-- some of this is actually starting to make sense.

Indices

Using an index is pretty straightforward.

Do you want recipes for chicken soup? It's probably under both
"chicken" and "soup" in the cookbook index. Want to know where
to find the motion equations in your high school physics
textbook? "Motion" is a good key word to check first, but the
index may even have a list of key equations as subentries of
"equation." Where in Whittier is Santa Gertrudes Ave.? The
index on the back of the map should list the name of each and
every street...

Writing an index, however, is not straightforward. Especially if
it refers to dictionary entries in a different language.

This is because you have to guess what word people will want to
look up in order to find a certain concept. Given the fact that
concept-word boundaries don't match in different languages, and
given the general unpredictability of people (and the existence
of many different English dialects into the bargain) this can
be... difficult.

There are the Oroko words that just don't have an English
equivalent, and require a long explanation... for example,
"ground cocoyams wrapped in leaves of plantains or cocoyams."
It's a favourite food here, but how in the world do you put it in
the English index?

Then there are words that don't even have a conceptual equivalent
in Western culture, like "someone becoming a bird to steal
cocoa."

And then there's my personal favourite hard-to-index word: "the
sound of hitting something." This is a real word in Oroko. But
honestly, now, would you ever look up the English equivalents
"whump," "whap," or "thwack"-- in an index?

Musing

Is it because time is a distension of the mind that three weeks
seems so very much shorter than four weeks?

Midnight musings

Or 3am, to be more precise.

My eyes flew open at the thunderous clatter on our tin roof. It
was not St. Nick. It was the tropical rainstorm that had been
brooding over us for two days in suffocating heat, finally
breaking in all its fury.

I did not wake up simply because my sleep was disturbed, however.
Thunderstorms mean action, and I was the only adult in the house.

Therefore, at 3am, I moved all of the tables and desks in the
house away from our east-facing windows.

Then I went back to bed.

When several brilliant flashes, followed by deafening claps of
thunder, woke me again, I unplugged the radio antenna.

Then I went back to bed.

The cat desperately wanted attention, and when I discovered that
he had sneaked into my room to sleep on my bed, I was too tired
to do anything about it.

Until he woke me up by a violent fit of hairball coughing, and I
got up and put him off my bed and outside my door.

Then I went back to bed.

At 5am the other cat came to my window and insisted that it was
time for me to get up and let him in.

I ignored him and went back to sleep.