Bum of bag...

... is the name of a book which translates French idioms literally for
the amusement of English speakers. ("Bum of bag" being "cul de sac".)
The book shows in a humorous way that idiomatic expressions translated
literally are often incomprehensible.

I had my doubts when in Psalm 28:3 I read in our Monkolé text, "Maà
dasim si bɔgɔ akã do ilu kukã ŋa do woo ce laalɔ ŋa", which means
"don't put me in one bag with the wicked and those who do evil". I
checked the French versions, and sure enough I found one with that
meaning, "Ne me mets pas dans le même sac que les méchants, eux qui font
le malheur des autres".

Now, as I have already mentioned, I am not a native Monkolé speaker, so
though I had my doubts, I simply asked my translators if the expression
existed in Monkolé. They decided to change it to "Don't treat me as you
treat...", which I suspect does make more sense!

Tinsel and snow

When we were down in Cotonou at the end of November, we were amused to see this big Christmas display in the hypermarket. We don't see anything like this in the rural north!



I took this photo, and later was looking at it before sending it to my family, when it struck me how funny it was to see our kids in "summer" clothes in front of the "snowy" scene. What was equally amusing was that when I was taking the  photo I hadn't thought of that at all!

More loss in translation...

I'm not a poet and I don't pretend to be one. But I can enjoy poetry.

I'm also not a native Monkolé speaker, and I couldn't even dream of
pretending to be one. So I feel that it isn't up to me to decide whether
something sounds "right" or "poetic" in Monkolé.

And translating poetry is really really difficult, including the Psalms.
Sometimes I feel that getting the meaning right, leaves it sounding very
*clunky* in Monkolé. We will discuss this in the team, but ultimately
it's not my call.

I just long for something of the beauty of the Psalms to shine through
in Monkolé.

Parallels

I am currently working on checking parallel passages. I need to make
sure that where passages are identical, we have an identical text, but
that where they vary, our translation varies accordingly.

Look up 1 Chronicles 17:16-27 and compare it to 2 Samuel 7:18-29 if you
want to get an idea of what I'm up against!

More sightings on the road

Our travels often give us good photos. Here are a few more:



Underneath the artwork it says, in English despite this being a Beninese lorry, "Horn Be For Over Taking". In case you're wondering, in the Benin Highway Code it does say that if you are overtaking someone you should sound your horn. Presumably because so many people either don't have mirrors or don't use them!



This one amused me. Above it says (in French this time) "Ya Allah, separate me from all that separates me from you" and underneath (in English) "Bob Marley, One Love".



This was a rather scary lorry, travelling on the wrong side of the road, and - we hope - probably trying to find a place to stop to sort out its leaning load! I asked Marc to stay as far from it as possible as we passed it!



These Bariba princes rode past the SIM compound in Parakou while we were there, with a loud banging of drums. Unfortunately I came out of the gate a bit too late, but even from behind they are impressive. The prince over on the right saw me, and did a small dressage (African style!) display which I videoed ... unfortunately the video is 23MB so there's no way I could upload it for you!

Women's Day

Last Sunday was Women's Day at church. It is organised by the central leadership of our denomination, and so at least in theory, all the UEEB churches are celebrating Women's Day on the same day.

The Wednesday before was a Bank Holiday. I was just pruning some bushes early in the morning - the only bearable time to do it, but I'm rarely free to do so - when the pastor's wife arrived. She told me that the woman from our church who had been supposed to preach at the Women's Day service was feeling unwell, and had pulled out. And they didn't know who on earth they could ask at such short notice...! I didn't feel I had much choice but to accept!

Usually women don't preach in our church, but Women's Day is an exception. I was given the title "The wife is the happiness of the home" ... at least that's the closest I can get to translating it ... which didn't seem to be directly taken from the Bible! I was also given the other woman's notes, so I started as she did with "why God created the woman" but then continued differently.

None of the women felt capable of translating, so I asked Marc to do it, and in fact gave him a written translation in French in advance (in case he didn't understand my Monkolé well enough!).

The service was a very joyful one. The usual choir is replaced by a choir made up only of married women, and they had prepared some fun sketches as well. And I think the sermon went well. It was hard to get any kind of feedback as I spoke (Marc says that is usual) but was impressed with how quiet it was, despite all the children being present.

Here is the board from that service. (I'm "Ilari" - Hilary pronounced the French way and then transliterated.)

Busy busy busy!

I have not been blogging lately, mainly due to lots of travelling and time going even faster than usual! Here is a photo from our recent SIM Benin-Togo missionary conference, with the Reverend Richard Hibbert, vicar of Christ Church Bedford, speaking on the resurrection of Jesus. Marc was translating into French for him.

Lots of water

When I talk about our home, I tend to say that we live in "the dry North" of Benin, and compared to the rest of the country, it is very dry for most of the year. However, for a month or so during rainy season we can get a lot of rain, and usually once a year we get a huge rainfall which is so heavy that the ground can't soak it up as it falls.

This year it was last Saturday. We had plans to go down to Bembéréké to visit a friend who had given birth. There was a huge storm on Friday night, and the rain started again at about 5 on Saturday morning. We thought at first that we would wait until the rain stopped to set out, but as the rain continued steadily and showed no signs of slowing, we decided to set out anyway at 10.

This was what we saw as we headed towards the gate of our compound:



And between us and the road:



There was a lot of water about. We gasped as we saw familiar countryside under water, and as we passed over one bridge and saw part of the riverbank slip and crash into the swirling torrent below.

At this bridge (missing its safety barrier), what is usually a river 4 or 5 metres wide looked more like a lake:



And then we saw a queue of vehicles ahead of us, which is never a good sign! We parked, and Marc got out and walked down to see what was going on. It turned out that a bridge was entirely under water, and the police had sensibly closed it. They said they'd open it again when the water level had gone down, but since it was still raining, we didn't have much hope of that being any time soon, and turned back, disappointed not to have seen our friends. In Europe we'd have tried to find an alternative route, but we knew that we were on the only north-south tarmacked road and if that was blocked, there was no alternative.

Yesterday we heard that later the road had been blocked in a couple of other places, and we were glad we hadn't ended up stuck in between two of these!

Two Gods?

You sometimes hear people talk about "the God of the Old Testament" who they see as an angry God, and "the God of the New Testament" who they see as being full of compassion. Quite apart from the un-Christian idea that there is a different God in each part of the Bible, or even that God might change over time, I'm not sure that these people have been reading the Bible fairly.

I'm reading a book by John Goldingay, and one of the chapters addresses this very question of God's nature. He begins by saying,

"The Bible portrays God as having both a soft side and a tough side. The soft, positive, generous, creative, life-giving, merciful, faithful side of God expresses itself in creating the world, having mercy on it despite humanity's rebelliousness, and acting to restore it to what it was designed to be. The tough, angry, negative side expresses itself in killing people for falsifying their pledges, pouring bowls of wrath over them, and sending them to hell." (John Goldingay, Key Questions about Christian Faith: Old Testament answers, page 12.)

He goes on to say that he has deliberately taken examples of what he calls God's "soft side" from the Old Testament, and examples of the "tough side" from the New Testament. Many people don't even realise that hell isn't talked about at all in the Old Testament. Goldingay goes on to say that he doesn't think that God's soft side and His tough side balance each other out. God's nature is overall merciful, generous and loving, and just occasionally his tough side has to break through.

As I work on Old Testament translation, I am struck again and again by God's amazing patience. His people Israel just keep forgetting all His goodness towards them, and rebel against Him time and time again. And yes, He may get angry and punish them, but always with the intention of bringing them back to Him.

This is summed up by two verses I came across when I was working on Psalm 78 this morning:

"Their hearts were not loyal to him,

they were not faithful to his covenant.

Yet he was merciful;

he forgave their iniquities

and did not destroy them." (Psalm 78:37,38 NIV)

It reminds me of something Paul says in one of his letters to Timothy:

"Here is a trustworthy saying:

If we died with him,

we will also live with him;

if we endure,

we will also reign with him.

If we disown him,

he will also disown us;

if we are faithless,

he will remain faithful,

for he cannot disown himself." (2 Tim. 2:11-13)

I feel very strongly that we need to stop repeating what other people say about God, however sure they may be about it, and however right it might sound to us, and get back to reading God's word in depth and in breadth, so that we might discover who He really is.

Photos

Bad internet always puts me off blogging, but here are a few recent photos...



Opening home-made cards on my birthday.





Family Fun Day with missionary friends.





School Camp.



Back to (home) school on a rather wet rainy season morning!

Internet

For the last two weeks we've hardly had any internet access at home at
all. And I mean some days we literally haven't been able to connect at
all, others we've had a connection for just a few minutes.

We don't use the internet much for entertainment as our connection is
way too slow. We use it mainly for the kids' schoolwork, to save our
translation work to a remote server and for emails. I use it on my phone
for whatsapp and facebook, and I enjoy getting world news via an app,
but even before these particular problems our connection wasn't good
enough for this to work well.

It is frustrating not to be able to decide when we will use the internet
at home, and of course the connection always seems to start working at
just the most inconvenient moments. Or if we choose to, we can go to
Kandi, find a quiet spot and sit sweating in the car while we try to do
what we need to do. It's only ten minutes' drive, but it's really not
that convenient either, and we certainly can't plan to do that once the
school year starts again and the kids need to work on-line for certain
subjects.

We have heard that the problems are due to the equipment being renewed
in Kandi, and certainly the 3G connection in Kandi is already working
better than it has done for ages. But the 3G doesn't reach as far as us,
and we just don't know for certain that they're going to renew the 2G
network as well.

We would certainly appreciate prayer for this!!

Added note: Since I wrote this the internet is working better on my
phone, but not yet on our computers (hence my not having being able to
post this yet!).

Language games

Eve is taking part in family conversations more and more, and showing her personality.

What you need to know to understand the following conversation is that our kids are bilingual but very much keep one language for each person. So Simon and I always speak English to each other, and the kids too always speak English to each other.

I had just corrected something Simon had said in English.

Me : It's like that in French but you can't say it that way in English.

Simon : I prefer French anyway.

Me : D'accord, si tu préfères le français, on peut se parler en français ! ("Ok, if you prefer French, we can speak to each other in French!")

Simon : Mummeeeeee!

Eve : Je t'aime, Simon!

("I love you, Simon!", deliberately said in French, which is not the language she usually uses with Simon, and which he had just protested about my using to speak to him. Cheeky girl!)

Oops!

When you put the new signs up before you finish working on the road...



(We never did find that elusive speed bump ...)

Holiday fun

Our kids are on school holidays now, and Simon particularly is full of ideas of things to do. His projects often require the participation of his brother and sister, which is great, as it occupies them too! So far this holiday we have had:

A play







Butterfly catching



Simon heard that his cousins had been to the Lego Discovery Centre in Manchester, and so decided to create his own.



And finally, Simon produced artwork probably better than he had done all year at school!

... terrible tusks in his terrible jaws ...

No, it's not a gruffalo (for those who know children's books) but the pet of some missionary friends of ours. They always have interesting pets, and when we went to their house on Saturday, we met their warthog!

Rainy season starts again...

The rains have started, and so it's time to get planting. This year the boys have been quite enthusiastic about working in the vegetable plot ... though even so, I suspect that Hélène has done most of the work!







And up comes the corn! Eve might not want to work in the garden, but she is happy to pose in front of the "field"!

Editing

This screen shot shows the amount a verse can change between a draft form (on the right) and after work by the team (on the left). It may of course be improved again when we work on it with our consultant.

This is Ezekiel 43:13

Also seen on the roads this month...

Just one of the aftermaths-of-accidents we saw on the roads:



We assume the driver fell asleep, that seems to be how a lot of accidents happen.

There was a lot of rain in the South, with flooding on some roads:





This was at the beginning of May, and when we got up to the North, it was still as dry as when we left it:

On the road...

Seen on the road in Benin this month:









And a lorry with some good advice for travelling in Benin:

Where did that word come from?

Philémon and I were talking about language change this morning. At the moment he and Pastor Samuel are going out regularly to test the comprehension of parts of our translation in other Monkolé villages. Philémon was explaining that in one village they didn't know several of the words used in the translation, and the explanation that these villagers gave was, "It's not Monkolé, it must be Hausa."

Philémon was saying that these words might have originally come from Hausa, but such a long time ago that he wasn't sure it could be said that they aren't now Monkolé words. This is the difficulty with a language evolving differently in different localities – and these villages aren't even all that far apart as the crow flies! I told him about how some European languages were taken over to the Americas and have now evolved so that, for example, you can have a German dialect which is very different from the German now spoken in Germany (which has also changed a lot over time). He said that obviously true German is the German spoken in Germany, which made me laugh because as I told him, I sometimes tell Americans or Canadians that I speak "true" English because I am English … but I only say it as a joke!

The question for our translation is how strict we want to be about this. How long does a word have to be in a language before it can be considered to belong to that language? Or should we simply decide that if there is a more truly Monkolé word which means the same, that is the word we should use, and that we should only use borrowed words if there is no equivalent Monkolé word? But then what if the borrowed word is the one everyone uses?

Monkolé cultural festival

Last Saturday, as part of the Monkolé linguistic commission's four-yearly general meeting, there was a Monkolé cultural festival in our village.



I couldn't help but notice a certain irony in instructing people to be proud of their Monkolé language ... in French!





There were official speeches but also a horse performance ...



dances (a video would be better, but I don't have the bandwidth to upload one) ...



and even a couple of Monkolé rap groups. It was fascinating!

Happy Easter!

Last week

Our translation consultant, Pierre, was with us last week, and we were able to finish checking Isaiah and begin Jeremiah. The afternoons were hot - only once was the temperature under 40°C - but a real answer to prayer was that our cool mornings have continued until now! Beginning the day at 20°C is so much more pleasant than the 30°C we have at breakfast time when hot season really gets going.

Once again, I was very grateful for a good team where no one complains about the heat or gets irritable. Here they are (left to right: Philémon, Pastor Samuel, Pierre).



I was also grateful that the kids behaved themselves for Marc. He is used to having them all morning for school, but usually I look after them in the afternoons. So checking weeks are quite different for the family, since I work full-time for the week.

On Saturday evening we decided to have a rare treat, a meal out at a newish hotel the other side of Kandi, our nearest town. Despite their year in France, our kids do react like African village kids sometimes. As we went into the hotel, Benjy said, "Wow, it's so posh! They have tiles on the floor!" and after eating his meal glued to the Disney Channel on the television, Simon said, "It's as if we were in Cotonou!"

Clash of cultures

Each year our church welcomes students who have come to do a year-long
teacher training course in the village. Despite their short stay, some
of these students get quite involved with the church.

At the beginning of the school year, it was announced that the church
was going to start having official welcomers. "What a great idea!" I
thought.

Then the duties of these welcomers were explained. They would tell
people where to sit when they arrive at church, and then wake up anyone
who nods off to sleep during the service. With a stick.

In fact, just to make sure no one nods off, anyone leaning forward with
their elbows on their knees is told to sit up straight.

What I find even odder is that it is the recently-arrived students who
have been given this responsibility, and that no one seems to find it
strange that these newcomers end up telling people how to behave in
their own church!

Cotton

Every year, from about the month of November, we see heaps of harvested cotton in the fields here.



This cotton is collected by lorries and transported to the factories which treat it. This season it has taken longer to collect the cotton, as the hangars for stocking cotton at the factories are no longer in use, and so the lorries have to wait to unload it directly into the factory.

When we went down to Parakou a couple of months ago we saw lots of lorries waiting outside one of the factories.





We also saw these men working to stuff pillows and mattresses with the spare cotton. Whether it is just the cotton that falls from the lorries or whether it is cotton which the factory has rejected, we're not sure.



At any rate, I've felt one of these pillows in the market, and they are harder than anything I'd like to rest my head on at night!