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!

Words words words

One of the helpful tools in the Paratext software we use for translation is the Word List. This gives all the words in a project - in our case all the words in one book of the Bible - in alphabetical order. I pride myself on being pretty good at proof-reading, even in Monkolé, but sometimes my brain is my worst enemy. When we read, our brains deliberately don't look at every detail, they make sense of what they see. So after proof-reading I always use the word list for another check. And I may see something like this:



There are 28 instances of the word "inaabo", which means female (usually found in "ama inaabo", "daughter"), and - oops - two instances of "inaaabo", a spelling mistake! One of our team doesn't touch-type, which makes this kind of typo easier to make, and when re-reading, our brains very easily slide over an extra "a" when there are already two in the word!

In case you're wondering, "inaaboi" is "female" with a possessif marker, ie. "female of", usually found in "ama inaaboi", "daughter of". And then "[ama] inaabou" is "the daughter" and "[ama] inaaboɛ" is his/her/your daughter", depending on the context.

Anyway, thanks to the word list I removed the extra "a" from the two instances of "inaaabo", and was able to correct many other such similar errors.

If you can read the bottom line in my photo, you might be interested to know that "woo ce alisi inaabo" means "sorceress"!

New baby and weaving

Yesterday we went out to visit a local pastor's family. They had had a new baby last month, and we wanted to congratulate them and give them some gifts. Here are the mother and baby:



And the mother teaches girls to weave traditional cloth. Here are some of her apprentices:



And in this photo you can see the looms better:

Disguise?

Nothing to do with translation, but this is how I can get Eve to eat brown bread...

January

A few January photos. First of all, our front gate (seen as I walk home from working in the office):



Some of the lemons and other small citrus fruit which grow in our compound:



The kids in their hideout under the lemon tree:



Our rabbit friends: