Christmas 2013

I thought I would give a few snapshots, in words and pictures, of our Christmas here in the village.

On Christmas Eve we were visited by the church children, who were visiting all the church leaders to bring Christmas greetings. They marched in, sat down, sang to us, and then marched off again. They made a colourful picture!

On Christmas morning our kids had stockings. The boys opened their small presents and then enjoyed helping their sister to open hers. We then took our traditional family Christmas one-take self-timer photo.

We went to church at 9, though we knew it would start a bit later because of Christmas, so sat outside for a while, greeting people as they arrived. Eve isn't a big fan of church at the moment, as it is her nap-time and she doesn't like sitting still. So I just stayed for half an hour of singing at the beginning, but it was good to be worshipping with fellow Christians to celebrate Jesus' birth!

We had guineafowl for Christmas dinner, with roast and green veg, and gravy and bread sauce.

After the afternoon nap, there were more presents, and then an outing to watch the church playing a friendly football match. You might spot some familiar heads among the spectators!

Finally we started a new tradition of a family video night, watching Shrek 3, which Benjy had had for Christmas. It is rare that we all sit down together to watch something, and it was fun! (Eve was already in bed, she'll have to wait a few years to be included!)

blowing your own trumpet? or something else?

Our translators translate from French - using several different versions - into Monkolé. I then check the Hebrew text against what we have in Monkolé. People sometimes ask me if it isn't good enough to simply translate from the French.

Here is just a small example of why I think we get a better translation if we compare it with the Hebrew. As we were translating II Samuel we came across several instances of the Israelites blowing a "trumpet". This had been translated from the French into Monkolé as "kãakãakĩ" and when I asked my translators what it was, to check, they said "a trumpet", and confirmed that it was a metallic instrument.

In Hebrew the word is (if I transliterate) "shofar", a ram's horn which is blown through to create a loud, carrying sound. And in Monkolé, a similar horn is called a "kuu". So where appropriate, we have been changing "kãakãakĩ" in our text to "kuu".

(I have just had a look in a few English versions out of interest and have found a lot of "trumpets" but one "horns"!)

where we live

After posting my last post, I thought it would be good to show a few more photos of the landscape around where we live. The photos were taken at the beginning of this month - seen at another time of year the countryside would look very different!

Here is our house, seen across a field of cotton:

A view looking the other way, back over other fields (you may spot a "mountain" in the distance!):

Our happy African baby:

A cotton plant close up:

making a mountain out of a molehill?

This post is not specifically about Bible translation, but more generally about the concepts behind the words we use.

In Monkolé it seems as if there is a word for "hill", "geete", and a word for "mountain", "iri kuta" (literally "head/top [of] stone"). However, the ideas behind the words are not necessarily the same as they are in English or French. I knew this already, but it was illustrated well in a conversation we had recently as we were working on translating 1 Samuel.

We came across the expression "was hiding in the mountains", and Philémon, the youngest of our team, looked slightly perplexed and said, "Hiding inside a cave or something, then."

"Not necessarily," I said.

He looked even more confused and said, "But if someone was just on a mountain, you'd see them straight away."

I realised that he was applying his idea of a mountain – shown here in a photo of a local "mountain":

Pastor Samuel, the older translator, said to him, "Oh no, what we have here aren't really mountains. In other countries they can be much much bigger."

"Yes, but still!" Philémon answered, and I realised he was just making the mountain five or ten times bigger in his mind.

This is when I am glad I have most of our photos on my computer. I found him this photo I'd taken in 2005 of Grenoble and the mountains beyond. I could almost see Philémon's understanding being widened as he answered, "Ah, ok, I understand now!"

While this was not a Bible translation problem as such, it does illustrate the way that any language tends only to describe what it needs to describe in the lives of the people who speak it. The Monkolé language has never needed to describe anything more than small hills … and this is the kind of difficulty we often come up against as we attempt to communicate the Biblical text faithfully. Recently we have been wrestling with the concept of "concubines". While polygamy is a way of life here, the idea of having full wives and then "second-rank wives" is totally foreign, and we still aren't entirely sure how to handle it.

speaking of clothes...

... I blogged a long time ago about how for special occasions a particular design of material is often chosen, and anyone involved can get clothes made from that material. So last April our whole family got clothes made for a wedding we were attending:

Another popular thing to do is to get T-shirts or polo shirts made for your event. So the first Sunday in November was "Women's Day" at church, and our church had this shirt made:

On the front it says "UEEB (the denomination) Women's Day - CEE (language grouping) Monkolé - 03/11/2013". On the back it quotes Proverbs 18:22, and I was pleased someone came to see me to check the validated translation of this verse. It also meant they got the spelling right!

Sadly, I wasn't here for the Women's Day service ... but I couldn't miss out on the shirt! Not my favourite colours, but it makes a good shirt to wear for work.

a colourful life?

I had a problem when I heard that for our last meal at our annual conference we were supposed to wear black and white! Back in Europe, our wardrobe was mainly filled with black, grey and dark blue clothes. But here in Benin, this is what it looks like:

Marc managed to find pale cream trousers and a black T-shirt, and I did remember I had one black top ... but I ended up with a purple and grey skirt, as I had nothing else black and white at all. Fortunately they still let me eat!

bread or a stone?

Eve was happily munching on a piece of bread at break, so I thought I could have a biscuit and we'd munch together. Hah! As soon as she saw my biscuit she threw her bread on the floor, and pointed to the box where her (special sugar-reduced) biscuits are kept.

Now I'm not against her eating biscuits as a general rule, but the bread was left over from breakfast, and I'm not going to let her skip breakfast and catch up on biscuits mid-morning. So I said, "No!" and rather meanly went on eating my biscuit. She wailed and whined and pointed her finger and furrowed her brow, and generally let me know how unhappy she was … and eventually took the piece of bread I held back out to her and went on munching as if she'd never stopped.

I think there are several things I can take away from this episode. One is just how much you can communicate without words. Another is that being firm can have the desired effect. And finally, the reassurance that our third child is healthily developing her sense of self and her personality!

sights and smells

It is my favourite season of the year again. I am sure I have already blogged about just how much I love harmattan, but I am ready to annonce it again! The dry season here begins at some point in October, and the harmattan wind starts blowing at some point in the next weeks (usually November). This year it is starting early. One of the things I love is fresh lemons from our tree:

I'm sorry you can't smell the fresh lemon fragrance as we zest or squeeze these little orbs of zingyness!

I love the "monotony" of dry season weather. I never get fed up with knowing that every day will be bright and sunny. In harmattan, evenings and nights are cool, and mornings are fresh. So when the temperature mounts in the afternoon, it's never oppressive as you know it won't last long.

If I have to admit to not liking anything about dry season, then it must be the dust (which gets everywhere, in gradually increasing quantities) and the dry skin on my hands and lips. But I can put up with them*! And with a baby in cloth nappies, I love knowing that any washing will dry during the day.

* Though I do tend to let out a few yelps when fresh lemon juice hits the tiny cracks in my fingers!!

back to my back (problems)

I have had problems with my back since I was about twelve. The doctor said something along the lines of “ah yes, classic problem for tall teenage girls”, which didn't help much!

In 2002 when I came to Benin for the first time I suffered my first slipped disk, not helped by backless benches in churches, hundreds of miles in an old minibus and bush taxis, and then – the straw that broke the camel's back – slipping in the shower. My doctor back in France prescribed x-rays, a scan, strong anti-inflammatories and physio-therapy. She said the problem might well re-absorb back into my body and she'd rather it went that way than have to operate.

In 2004 my doctor said she found it strange that my back was still hurting me so much, and sent me for another scan … which showed that I had a new slipped disk one vertabrae higher up. I had an MRI which didn't seem to do much other than to give me a nice picture of it. A month off work, more anti-inflammatories and a new (and better) physiotherapist, and gradually I got back to my normal.

Marc and I got married in August 2004, when I was still having to be very careful with my back, and our pastor in France said that if we were thinking of overseas mission, perhaps we should pray that part of the guidance would be for my back to be significantly better.

In 2006 when I was pregnant and had no more back problems than your average pregnant woman, that was a huge answer to prayer. Of course I have had to carry on being careful, and I am aware of my limits. And of course there are times I do something despite the little voice inside me saying "are you sure that's a good idea?" … and I regret it later, but overall my back problems are not something which affect my life significantly as they did in 2002-2005. The climate here is generally good for my back – in dry season I rarely even have any twinges (cold and wet was always the worst for it).

I was thinking about this recently though, as I woke up on Thursday last week with my back completely blocked. I couldn't actually stand up completely straight that morning, and I certainly couldn't lift up Eve. I think it probably happened because the night started out hot, I had trouble getting to sleep but then slept like a log, and in the morning a chilly breeze was blowing through our bedroom but didn't wake me just froze up my back.

Being handicapped by my back again for a couple of days actually made me even more grateful for the amazing improvement I have experienced. It is so hard to look after a baby with a bad back, yet as a mother it is difficult to have to ask other people to do it all!

a text taken out of context is a pretext*

The translation team is currently working through Amos. I work ahead of the team, firstly re-formating the Monkolé text where the prophecies need to be in poetic form, and then reading and analysing the text and the translation.

So my first stage is just re-jigging the text, before having really read it through. As I was doing this, I noticed a few key words in a verse, and thought that it sounded like a good quote for a verse for our ministry. In English it reads,

“'The days are coming,' declares the Sovereign Lord,

'when I will send a famine through the land –

not a famine of food or a thirst for water,

but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.'” (Amos 8:11)

Well, this is what we want among the Monkolé people, isn't it? Er, except that if you read the following verse it says,

“Men will stagger from sea to sea

and wander from north to east,

searching for the word of the Lord,

but they will not find it.” (Amos 8:12)

Ah. Because in fact in this context the “famine” is a punishment. God's people have rejected Him and so He has finally lost patience with them and given them what they wanted. These verses come in a sequence of verses about the judgement of God. There is also the question of whether God's word in this case was the Scriptures existing at that time or, more probably, the prophetic word Amos and others were bringing. So not really all that relevant to our ministry here at all.

In any case, it was a good reminder of the dangers of pulling a verse out of context. Let's be responsible in the way we treat God's Word, especially if we are teaching others! And we can still be praying that there will be a hunger and a thirst for the Bible among the Monkolé people, even if we can't use this verse to encourage you to!

* This is a quote from one of our lecturers at Bible College who himself was quoting someone else ... my point is that I can't take credit for this catchy expression!

trying another language!

Although only in his third year of primary school, Simon has to begin learning a new modern language this year. We had the choice between English, German and Spanish. It seemed a bit silly to choose English, and a waste of an opportunity to learn a new language, so we didn't consider that for long. Neither Marc nor I had done any German since secondary school, so we didn't feel capable of helping Simon much with that. But since I studied Spanish for three years at university, and felt it would probably come back to me quickly, we signed him up for Spanish.

I was also confident that the resources provided would be comprehensive ... and they are! We have to cover sixty lessons (of about an hour) this year, which means trying to do two a week when we are at home. We got started last week, so have already done two lessons, and it is fun! To be honest, I don't think their method is the absolute best (that's the problem with having a doctorate in linguistics, three teaching qualifications and a lot of experience learning and teaching languages!) but there is a lot of listening to "real" Spanish speakers, which is great.

The only problem really is that the majority of the sound files are only available on-line ... which means that if we have a day like yesterday where the internet connection was flat-lining in the afternoon, we either have to scrape by with me doing the talking (not at all ideal!) or wait for another day (let's hope it works better this afternoon!).

It is also very different for Simon to learn a language academically rather than just picking it up orally and on a need-to-know basis. But at least I don't have the problem of a child who doesn't even understand the concept of a foreign language ... I know some small children think foreigners must have to translate from English in their heads before saying anything in their own language!

back to school ... and life at sea?

This has been quite an eventful week. On Monday Simon went back to school for his third year, and Benjy started his first year at school! Marc is teaching them (using materials provided by the French education system) and they all have matching school uniform. Here they are, hard at work:

Then on Wednesday night it rained all night, and on Thursday we woke up to the highest levels of water we'd ever seen here. This is our (supposedly raised-up) car port, and the view over the wall of our compound towards the main road.

We had been praying for rain, but this was a rather overwhelming answer! Thankfully the water levels went down relatively fast, and despite further rain since, we haven't been flooded like this again. Down in the village one whole area was completely flooded, with water thigh-high in some people's homes. Apparently my dress-maker's workshop was full of water and all the clothes were soaked. Part of the problem was a "bridge" which had been built over the drainage ditch leaving only a tiny hole for water to get through, meaning that the floodwaters built up in the village instead of flowing down to the river. As Marc said, a good example of the problems of urbanisation (and lack of town planning?)!

vvvvvvvvshshshpppp language shbbbbbbbssssh understanding ssssvvvvvvshshshs

I remember, at one point during our Monkolé language learning, reflecting that it was a bit like listening to a bad radio signal. So much of what we heard around us was no more comprehensible than static, but every now and again a recognisable word would break through. Yet gradually the radio signal was becoming clearer and we were understanding more and more.

We stopped our full-time language learning at the end of August 2011. At that point I joined the translation team and Marc began home-schooling Simon and preparing Bible teaching to be used in the Monkolé churches. We wanted to find some way to intentionally improve our language after that, but I think if we're honest we never did much more than informal visits to people in the village.

However, the translation team not only translates into Monkolé, but all our conversations about our work are in Monkolé. At first it was frustrating at times, and even now I sometimes find myself using a very complicated way to say something quite simple, but it has definitely improved my language no end! And while for months I was very aware that my team members used simple language and slowed down to speak to me, recently I realised that I was understanding a large amount of the conversation between them at normal speed.

My main problem at church is the volume – some men lead services using the same voice they would to talk to someone standing next to them – and competing noise (people walking in and out, babies crying, motorbikes driving past, lorries revving up), but if I can hear it I can generally understand it. Of course these days I am also distracted by trying to keep Eve happy and quiet, but this is just a "season" and one day I will be able to participate more fully again!

I suppose what I am really saying is that we are seeing the fruit of good groundwork (the fulltime language learning we did) and perseverance, plus a generous dose of humility (being willing to say "I don't understand" despite feeling that I ought to be able to and that everyone else expects me to!). On top of that, I don't think we could have persevered this far without having so many people praying for us and encouraging us, and so I thank our supporters too!

Language learning goes so slowly, but when I suddenly realise that sometimes I don't even have to think, that Monkolé does actually flow out of my mouth quite naturally, it is its own reward! And more importantly, fluency in the language is a great help in our main tasks here: making the Bible available in Monkolé, and encouraging the Monkolé people themselves to read it.

Eve, of course, is growing up with three languages, and takes this entirely for granted! (Here we are with a mum, Marie, from church whose baby girl, Honorine, was born a week after Eve. The other girl is her 2nd daughter, Sabine.)

holidays part two

Our two and a half weeks in the UK were a real blessing too. We had a long weekend with my sister and her family in Bedford – and were warmly welcomed when we visited Christ Church, one of our supporting churches – and had some time at my parents' new house in Derbyshire. The weather was ideal for exploring the beautiful Peak District. Some called it a heatwave, we called it « very pleasant temperatures » !

We also went to the church that Mum and Dad are now attending, St John's Walton, and were briefly interviewed so that people would see who we were. It is great to see that Mum and Dad have found a good church to be part of.

We also had four days in a big house my parents rented so that they, my family and the families of my two sisters could all be together. What a treat! We even had a small children's play area and an indoor swimming pool to ourselves, since no one else was staying in the other holiday cottages!

We are a close family in terms of relationships, but very spread out geographically, so it is really special when we do manage to meet up. It was lovely too to see the three baby cousins born at the end of last year meeting at last, and the older four boys running about playing together.

Me and my sisters (l-r: Ali, me, Ruth):

time off! (but speedy internet - yippee!)

Missionary life is full of changes and transitions. Even when we ourselves stay put for a while, we always have missionary colleagues coming and going, and anyway, it is rare that we stay in the village for more than two months running. What with mission meetings in Parakou and administrative obligations in Cotonou, we find ourselves travelling often within Benin.

This summer (now I'm using European terms!) we wanted to take holidays in France and England to see our families. We are planning to work for 4 years in Benin, followed by a full year in France (with some visits to England), but 4 years seemed far too long for our children not to see Europe and our families, and difficult for us too! So now that we are 2 years into the 4, we took holiday time from this last year and the coming year so that we could spend 5 weeks with our families.

We feel like quite a nomadic family, and our kids never seem too upset by changes in their environment or the travelling itself (for which we are very grateful!).

We are coming up to the end of our time in France, and have very much enjoyed it! A few photos:

Family walks

Happy grandmother!

 In Paris!

behind the scenes help

My last post was about the translation team, and I also mentioned Marc's support. I also want to say how thankful we are for the ladies who help us with the housework.

This is Hélène, our pastor's wife, who comes every weekday morning to look after the house and the compound, and who is absolutely wonderful with our kids (seen here with Benjy in 2010, and also with our 2010 Christmas guinea fowl):

And here is Sahada (also back in 2010 and unfortunately a bit far behind Benjy!) who comes twice a week to get through a mountain of washing for us!

We also rely on Jeannette, who has a small catering business in the village, and who sends up our lunch every weekday. It is great for me to come home from work and to find the meal ready and waiting!

Without the help of these three women, it wouldn't be possible for both Marc and I to work, and we are very grateful for their hard work and good humour.