Schrock and Awe

More uses for mosquito netting

2012-01-24T22:55:00.000-08:00

Terrill did a blog on mosquito netting a while back. Millions of nets are donated to Africa, yet don't always get used in the way they're intended to be used. We keep our eyes open for new uses of mosquito netting. Below are a few of our recent discoveries. Malo literally has no clothing. But...he has a mosquito net. It helps to keep the chill away.
Janet has no toys. But...she has a mosquito net and someone has tied it to a tree for her to swing from.

Ruka has no shoe repair kit. But...he has a mosquito net and it has faithfully held his shoe together for many miles of walking.

I think mosquito netting may have become the new duct tape...a solution for all of life's problems.

Family Fun

2012-01-20T00:38:00.000-08:00

I can't go another month or write another blog without giving you a glimpse of what our time with my dad & mom was like. I can't tell you enough how nice it is to have family visit us. These are people we can let our hair down with and by letting them in on our life, they understand a little better who we are and what we're about. On the way up to Kaabong, we stopped at our favorite restaurant in Jinja and enjoyed a meal of pork ribs. How can you not laugh with these guys around? Actually, my mom is the sweet one and my dad is the instigator as most of you already know. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree but I won't tell you which tree I fell from.

The next day we headed up to Sipi Falls where we hiked and relaxed for a few days. Dad, mom & I visited all three of the main falls.

When we got to Kaabong, we had to do some laundry. Dad was a trouper and gave a hand during the rinsing process.
And it was special when mom & I set up our little 4 ft. tree a few weeks before Christmas.

Dad & Terrill decided to take a 'walk about' and explore an unknown road to the near-by game park, Kidepo. The road literally vanished and had a 2 year-old tree growing in the middle of it. They had to turn around and take the well-worn road to Kidepo. But, it was an adventure and everybody knows that men can't resist adventure.

Once in Kidepo, they met some friends.
Back to Timu and we got to work. One night, the neighbor offered us some meat: monkey. Dad is debating the wisdom of consuming it. We didn't.
We started the renovations on the unused health building and did a good bit of painting in a week. This will be Terrill's office.
Dad & Terrill also worked on a sidewalk for me. We had so many weeds growing up in our sidewalk that they decided to put a nice stone walk in. Dad & Anton are cutting the stone to fit.
Mom & I visited several villages during the week. For some reason, she was drawn to all the babies around. Right in her element.

It was nice to introduce her to some of my friends too. This is Esther with us.

We ended the week by visiting a well-known elder, Lopie Faustino. Dad got a chance to interact with an older member of our community and give him a gift. It was lovely to share our life with others.

A parking update

2012-01-10T06:01:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have remembered a blog we did last month about the woes of parking in Jinja. Well, I was so frustrated that I decided to do something about it. We have this magazine in Uganda specifically for westerners to help them 'get around' and have the best stay possible. It's called The Eye. Besides recommendations for lodging, restaurants and entertainment, it also gives a lot of useful information for people living in Uganda. One can find emergency numbers, maps and fees for game parks in The Eye.

All it took was a little email sharing our experience and frustrations with the staff of The Eye. I simply requested that they print the official parking prices for each of the major Ugandan towns in The Eye so people like us would not get taken for a ride (literally and figuratively). Last week I got an email back. They liked my idea and wanted to help. So, starting in February, the official parking fees will be printed in The Eye. And no longer will I have to sit and argue with the parking attendants that are trying to rip me off. I'll simply show them my copy of The Eye and that should be enough. After all, can they really argue with printed prices?

Our 'cool gear' Top 20 list

2011-12-29T00:14:00.000-08:00

Preparing for life in the 'bush' back in 2007, we amassed a lot of gear like a good set of tools, hiking sandals, tent and sleeping bags, water filters, rain-gear, sun-gear, rechargeable batteries and charger, first-aid kit, maps, mini-mag flashlights, etc. But over the last four years, we've grown to love another set of handy 'gear', and we wanted to share that with you, just for fun:

1) Ratchet-straps: we're always carrying something on the roof-rack of our truck. With these ratchet-straps, I never have to tie or untie a knot. Just attach the two hooks and ratchet it down tight. That load ain't goin' nowheres!

2) Bungee-cords: a new addition to our vehicle kit. These cords of different lengths (and colors!) stretch and twist into all contortions to latch things down tightly.

3) Heavy-duty tow-strap: if you follow this blog, you will know why I need to specify 'heavy-duty'; otherwise, the tow-strap is rendered useless. Picture this: trying to pull a lawn-mower with floss. It just doesn't work. Basic physics. Thanks to my father-in-law, I am now the proud owner of a massive tow-strap. So proud, I may not even take it out of the packaging.

4) Plastic 'totes': these boxes made by Sterilite and sold in Wal-marts and other department stores make the best luggage containers. They are mostly water and air-proof, lockable, and have handles and wheels. And they stack nicely. Moreover, they are about the perfect size for check-in baggage on airlines. They are so handy that sometimes we just throw our stuff into one instead of using a suitcase or bag!

5) Pressure cooker: who would have known that dry beans can be cooked in just 15 minutes in a pressure cooker as opposed to four hours on a standard stove? Not to mention how a pressure cooker can allow you to can (in glass jars) all kinds of foods for your pantry: green beans, carrots, tomatoes, ground beef and pork, bacon and ham, salsa, broccoli, etc.

6) The garlic twist: this handy little circular object from Lehman's Hardware (check online) crushes garlic or ginger into smithereens with a few quick turns of the wrist. Yummy!

7) French press: this one is not a surprise. As much as we love African tea, sometimes a little extra caffeine is needed to cut through the funk. And Uganda produces some great coffees.

8) Collapsible fruit-basket: living in a small hut like we do, we've got more room above us than around us. So this nice collapsible fruit-basket hangs from the bamboo roof as a series of metal baskets, smallest at the top, increasing in size as it descends. And since we always have some sort of produce, it's always full.

9) Wide-mouth Nalgenes: thank you to Kate Shugart for introducing this to us! We've used the standard small-mouth Nalgenes for years, but the wide-mouth ones are easier to clean inside and come with a splash guard (which really helps on our bumpy roads. Ask Amber!).

10) Head-lamps: friends from the NGO world turned us on to head-lamp flashlights. Why should spelunkers be the only people to work in the dark hands-free? Nowadays we don't go anywhere without our head-lamps. Get you some! After using them, 'normal' flashlights will seem like 'cave man' technology.

11) Air-horns: when we first came to Uganda, security was a real issue. In a society where getting a legal gun is extremely difficult and where having a gun at all could endanger your life, you can protect yourself by splitting the night's silence with a blast from a hand-held fog-horn. It's highly effective; trust me. We usually keep one by our bed, and our guards have used them countless times to deter nighttime robbers.

12) Travel pillows: anyone who has stayed at a Ugandan hotel should recognize the need for a pillow that isn't the size and texture of a gunny sack filled with sand. Our small travel pillows have often saved us from that terrible neck crick that comes from sleeping with your head at a right angle to your body.

13) Kindle: this electronic book might be old news in the States, but we got our first one just this year. Thank you, Doug & Lisa! For folks who are avid readers and travelers, this device is the perfect antidote to carting heavy books wherever you go.

14) External hard-drive: we've always had one, but we recently bumped up to 1 terabyte (which is probably wimpy by now). This little baby lets us carry around movies, TV shows, music, language recordings, podcasts, tons of photos, etc., in addition to backing up our computer drives.

15) Portable, battery-capable printer: this HP Deskjet 460 that we got from Amber's parents for Christmas 2007 has been a truly awesome part of our lives and work. It's small, portable (with a nice case smaller than a briefcase), and can run on battery power. The only other person I've ever seen with one was a Taco-Bell manager somewhere in the mid-west. You all are really missing out!

16) Ear-plugs: it sometimes seems that the universe is conspiring to keep us from sleeping. Dormice in the attic, dogs attacking each other, the wind playing with that one loose piece of tin roofing, the guards' radio too early in the morning, the emotionally needy pet dog howling at some ungodly hour, and always, the birds who kick in about 6 am. Sometimes you just need to shut it all out with two tiny foam inserts.

17) Self-setting mouse traps: these amazing inventions (from Lehman's) set with a simple squeezing of a lever. No more cringing as you wait for the trap to slam shut on your tender fingers and send the peanut-butter flying all over the place. Works well for dormice too, which is always a plus.

18) Flossers: goat meat (not to mention mango) in Africa is legendary for filling all the gaps in your teeth with gristle, but that's no reason to avoid it, right? Especially if you've got a handy-danday flosser in your pocket...and in your car...and behind your ear...and anywhere else you might need it.

19) Refrigerated cooler: Amber's aunt and uncle from Ohio introduced us to this amazing cooler that plugs into the cigarette lighter of your vehicle. Before, we used to buy meat in Kampala and try to make it home in one day or stay somewhere where they had refrigeration. But with this cooler, we can keep our meat and drinks frosty even as we drive!

20) Spyderco knife: besides just looking totally cool, this wicked folding knife with a partly serrated blade is always there in my right pocket for all my slicing and dicing needs, whether it's sawing through a rope, peeling a piece of cassava root, or cutting off the top of a plastic bottle of honey, my Spyderco is always there, like a loyal guard-dog.

So, that's it! Our 'cool gear' Top 20 list. I hope you enjoyed it and got some gift ideas for your loved ones who are living on the 'backside of beyond'.

The long road home...

2011-12-23T05:28:00.001-08:00

My (Amber's) parents came to visit a few weeks ago. And as usual, my mom took loads of pictures (1160 in two weeks). What was interesting is that when we looked back over what my mom found fascinating, we discovered that they were pictures of our life in Uganda that have become 'the norm' to us. While spending time with others, we're reminded of how different this life might look through their eyes. In this particular blog, I wanted to take you along on our trip north from Kampala to Timu. The people change, different languages are spoken, and the pace of life slows as we travel north.

Below, we are starting our journey from our favorite guest house in Kampala. The vehicle is usually packed and Terrill can rarely see out the rearview mirror...although, he usually doesn't need to see through it after we exit Kampala.

The streets of Kampala. They are tight, a bit dirty and always busy.
Kampala boasts big stores like this one named Game. It's like a Walmart but more expensive with a lower quality of goods. This is where the rich and middle class will shop.
Kampala transportation includes motorcycles that carry goods and people for a small fee...
...minivans that they call 'taxis' that carry goods and people for a small fee (some of them also have funny advertisements, like this one, "I beat my wife, and my life changed for the worse.")...

...big trucks that they call 'lorries' which carry and are usually overloaded with goods and people...

and bicycles which can be hired for goods or people. Being able to hire a bicycle taxi is actually really helpful. Not only can you get other people to help you do errands, but they will have a job in this poor economy. Everyone is happy in the end.
Another common sight in the Kampala streets are food vendors. Dad & I had stopped to pick up a papaya and a pineapple. One thing I love about Uganda is being able to get fresh fruit along any road that we're traveling. There is always someone selling it. The man to the far left is also selling fried grasshoppers. They're actually not bad, tasting a bit like bacon.
These fruit vendors are selling green bananas called matooke. They are not a sweet banana but must be steamed in banana leaves to soften them and make them edible. I find the taste to be bland, but they are filling. For southern Ugandans, matooke is a staple food in their diet.
And now we are leaving Kampala. Someone is always walking alongside the road and carrying something on their head. I was quite impressed to see this man carrying goods as well. It's not a common sight as it's usually the work of women.

These children are relaxing in an animal trough.

And this is what a town looks like as we leave the populated southern area and enter Karamoja in the north-east.
People will move out of the way as you honk at them. Few vehicles travel this way, but you will see the occasional overloaded lorry.
The farther north you travel, the less developed it gets. But I personally think it also gets more beautiful. Red dirt roads, brilliant blue skies, mountains rising in the distance.
The houses go from being square to circular. They are made of mud and sticks with a grass roof.
The Karamojong men start wearing skirts...I mean...wraps. They are really just pieces of a heavy cloth that are cut to fit around the waist. This man is rewrapping; luckily he's not facing the road. :)
And Karamoja is not Karamoja without cows grazing in the vast landscape. A shepherd boy is probably napping under a near-by tree. Ah, the landscape of Kaabong district. Jagged hills and Euphorbia (candelabra) trees. They don't cut these trees down because they can't use the wood.
After a 12-14 hour trip, we arrive in Timu. The road here is long with many twists and turns.

'Parking' isn't always fun

2011-12-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

In major Ugandan cities, there is a parking authority that charges you per hour to park your vehicle along the streets. The charges vary from city to city, but the fee is usually pretty cheap. As is often the case when money has to change hands, there is no documentation available on how much it costs per hour. No signs, no pamphlets, no anything. So one has to largely trust the orange vest-wearing parking attendant to tell you how much you owe. Obviously this is a great opportunity for them to make a little 'extra' off your parking bill.

The last three times we've parked our car in Jinja, the city at the 'source of the Nile', we've had unpleasant run-ins with the parking authority. The first time the guy convinced us we had to buy five parking stubs, even though we only owed one. Not only did we buy the five stubs, we paid five times too much for them, as we'd find out later. The next time, just last week, the guy said each stub cost 1000 shillings and was good for half an hour. Amber's BS detector went off, and we told the guy we were going to the parking authority office to settle the issue once and for all. He protested briefly, but then realized we were determined not to be cheated. It might seem strange that he offered directions to the office until you understand that he gave us grossly wrong directions.

Not finding the office where he said it would be (surprise, surprise!), we stopped to ask some men where the office was. We parked, I got out, and Amber and Kate stayed in the car. In the sixty seconds I was outside the car, another parking attendant came up and wrote us a ticket. Amber asked him how much. He hesitated, thinking, and said '2000 shillings', ten times what we really owed. And since when do we need to pay for one minute of parking?

We drove to where the office was supposed to be but couldn't find it. We drove around the block twice and then asked a third person. He directed me around the corner, into an unmarked building, up a dingy set of stairs, down a hall, and into an unmarked room where a man sat behind a table piled with papers. 'Is this the parking office?', I asked. He said 'yes'. I told him their parking attendants were lying to people about the parking fee. Without interest or concern, he said 'you really have to watch those guys.' Great, thanks. At least he told me the real price: one stub costs 200 shillings and is good for 1 hour.

While I was in the dingy, unmarked office, we got a third parking ticket. What a circus. All we wanted to do was pay the real parking fee and get on our way. But it took us thirty minutes and three parking tickets, two bogus and one legit, just to leave Jinja without being deceived. While this is extremely frustrating, it's all just part of the deal. But today, as we got in our vehicle to leave Jinja once again, we had the pleasure of luring the parking attendant into a lie and busting him on it:

'How much do we owe?'

'Two thousand shillings.'

'You're lying. How much is it per hour?'

'Four hundred shillings.'

'You're lying.'

'You have to buy five stubs.'

'No I don't. I only want two.' I hand him four hundred shillings and two stubs. He walks away without another word.

Small but sufficient consolation for the embattled wazungu (white folks).

Towed from Timu

2011-12-02T21:26:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago we bought a whole batch of water-contaminated diesel. Of course we didn't know it at the time, but soon the engine started to lose power as we drove. Eventually, on our last trip up to Timu with Kate Shugart, we barely made it up the last hill, having to crawl in four-wheel low at 1000 rpms. I got some advice and tried to fix the problem as best I could, but it only got worse (says something about my skill as a mechanic...). By the end of the week, the truck wouldn't start at all.

This was the first time we had been officially stranded in Ikland. Really it wasn't all that bad. We felt safe. We still had food (though we were running out of the stuff we like to cook). And we had plenty of work to do in the mean time. We had peace in our hearts about the situation.

But, we still had to get to Kaabong to get to Kampala to get Kate to the airport. So I called a friend who has a small dump-truck or 'tipper' as they call them here. They agreed to come tow us down off the mountain, but it would have to be tomorrow because of all the rain. The next morning they left with a load of sand (to bring our way) at about 10 am., and it took them five hours to reach us, almost five times longer than it normally takes. They kept getting stuck in the mud on a dirt road that had just been graded but not compacted.

We spent the whole day waiting...and waiting...and waiting. 'Closing up shop' in Timu is quite an operation, and once we do it, it's extremely unnerving to do anything but leave as planned. We pack up things to protect them from dust, mice, bugs, etc. We do the dishes and dump the dishwater. We collect the trash and burn it. We pay employees. We take last-minute shopping requests. We host last-minute visitors. We pack this and put away that. We give last-minute instructions to our translator. It seriously takes half a day just to leave. And if our ride isn't available, then we're just sitting ducks for people to dream up what we could possibly bring them from 'Kampala', that distant and marvelous land where anything wonderful is available for a cheap price. We prayed the truck would come.

And come it did, about 4:3o pm. Dumping the sand and hooking the trucks together with a tow rope only took a few minutes. The tow strap I had looked awfully puny and hardly capable of connecting those two masses of metal. It was a bad omen, as I would soon discover.

Since our truck's engine couldn't be started, I had to operate the 'power' steering and power brakes with, well...no power. I got a good workout from that. After going down the first long hill, things got interesting. We went through a deep puddle, and while going up the other side, the tow strap broke. No problem. Just retie. A few minutes later it broke again, with a loud and very rude 'pop!' My heart stopped every time it did that and nearly stopped every time the driver ahead sped up when there was slack in the line. After the second break, the driver pulled out what looked like a very inadequate white nylon rope, to join to the failing tow strap. I laughed out loud. Shame on me. He quadrupled that rope, added it to the tow strap, and the thing never broke from then on. Never laugh at rural African ingenuity (R.A.I.), especially if it's your proverbial derriere on the line.

Back to the main road that had been graded and turned to mud pudding. On the first hill, we got stuck. So we dug out from around the wheels, cleared a little path for them ahead, and got a few more yards before getting stuck. The hill was just too steep and too long. Someone came up with a crazy plan to go back down the hill, drive off the road, and come up on the side. I confess I had no faith at all that this plan would work, but it did, and quite well. Another good mark for rural African ingenuity.

We continued like this for hours. Getting stuck, digging out, getting stuck again. By then the tow strap was so short, I couldn't see the ground between us and the tow truck. I had to concentrate 120% to keep from running into the back of it and to keep the line taut so it wouldn't break again. It got dark, and we labored under the light of flashlights and my slowly dimming headlights. My resolve was extremely weak---I kept suggesting we find a place to park the vehicle and come get it the following morning. But the driver and the five guys helping him never once considered not finishing the job. They were like the tow angels of the night. Finally, close to midnight, we reached our destination.

We and our African friends have a lot to learn from each other. They have a lot to teach me about just going with the flow of life, not getting stressed about circumstances that are mostly if not entirely out of my control. As Westerners we can tend to try to control life, and that's why life here can be so stressful. Things just don't usually go as planned. On the flip-side, our African friends can learn a little from us about altering the flow of life. We're not just victims of cosmic forces; we can bend and use them to our advantage. We are not just creatures of God; we are co-creators of the earth by God's design. When we face life's challenges together---like towing a vehicle through the mud at night---our different but complimentary perspectives come to light.

Really. Big. Mushroom.

2011-11-24T23:18:00.000-08:00

With all the rain we've been getting the last four months, we see some weird stuff growing out of the ground (and elsewhere, like the hideous slugs that emerge from our grass roof). For example, check out this mammoth mushroom. The Ik call it lomóí. Too bad it's toxic; we could have made some nice 'shroom steaks from this baby!

Investing in a future generation

2011-11-21T05:25:00.000-08:00

So, in the last blog I told you about how we're investing in the elderly. In this blog, I wanted to mention how we're getting involved with the youth. In early October, we were encouraged by our supervisor to think of other ways of getting involved in our local community. Since the Timu village school has no formal teachers (only parents who volunteer their time for free), we decided that we could come up with lessons and start a bit of teaching at the school. Kate has been doing English lessons. The kids are very receptive and always find something to laugh about. I think they've really enjoyed having an interactive teacher instead of learning every lesson by rote. For those of you who aren't familiar with rote education, it's basically when the teacher says something and the students repeat the sentence over and over until it is memorized. Below, Kate is teaching the kids some action words. She is telling them to 'come here'. After she has demonstrated the action while saying it, she will have someone come to the front and will instruct them to do something. Then the child will be the instructor and have another child come to the front, telling them to do something. A very effective method for learning. One of the first English lessons was the appropriate greetings to use. She is teaching them 'Good morning' below.
After all of the interactions, Kate will write the new English words on the board and the children will copy the words down in their little blue notebooks. They get pretty excited about writing new words. Many days she will give them an assignment and if they've done the assignment by the next class period, she will reward them with a pen or notebook (both of which is highly valuable in this classroom).
And these are the excited learners...well, maybe it was a 'down' day. They usually look happier to see us. Some days no teachers come to school and the children end up spending hours just sitting in this classroom, writing anything and everything down. They are truly eager to learn. But this school is not accredited by the government yet and no formally trained teachers have been sent to Timu. In order for that to happen, they will have to get officially registered and someone will have to build teacher housing (since none of the Ik who live here are trained teachers). There will also need to be Ik translators for those teachers, who will not speak the Ik language. And at this point, the children know little English so the teacher will not get the point across on his own. Then those translators will have to be paid from some budget that doesn't currently exist. It's a complicated issue but we are still praying that a teacher will find his way to this school and will start empowering our children through education.
These are the new desks that were kindly donated by friends of ours at Powhatan Mennonite church in Virginia. We are not the only ones investing in the lives of these Ik.

Many children really care about their studies like the one above. Lucia Lemu (below) is a bright girl who has just started going to school. She usually has to help her mother with chores at home but recently she's been given more freedom to attend. The story is the same for many of the girls. You'll notice in my pictures that most of the students are boys. Interestingly enough, many statistics say that the women are the majority of 'bread-winners' in Africa. They are the ones who figure out how to provide for their families even when living in abject poverty. Who knows what educating a woman will do for this society?

Kitella (below) is starting early with her education. Many of the girls have to bring their wards to school with them because the mother's are too busy to care for small children and do the bulk of the household chores.
Before I go, I just want to publicly thank Kate for investing with us in the future generation. She's graciously and lovingly given her time to these children and they are all learning much from her. She will be remembered well!

Old souls

2011-11-17T05:07:00.000-08:00

For the past several months, we've had a friend named Kate staying with us. She is on a Discovery trip with Wycliffe, observing what life looks like as an overseas missionary and seeing how she might fit in the organization if she were to join Wycliffe. We've given Kate several activities to be involved with so she might get a taste for different aspects of the work. One of the activities that she & I (Amber) have started doing together is to collect oral histories from the elderly Ik in and around Timu. We identify key elderly people who still have a clear mind and can remember the past well. Then we pick up our video camera and recorders and hike out to their villages. It's been great fun to visit each j'akam (old man) and duneim (old woman) and to hear their stories.
At each village, there are onlookers who are interested in what we're doing and wanting to listen to the histories. Many times they've tried to add input and we've had to shush them. The Ik like to talk; that's all there is to it. Once inside a village, we find a suitable and QUIET place to sit in order to get a clear recording. Our language helper, Philip, gets things started by asking permission to tape/record each elder. When they agree, we start the recorder and video camera and begin asking questions. What is their name? How old are they? Who were their parents? Where were they born? These are the easy questions...all except for the age question. Nobody knows their real age. The answer is either many years old or something like ten years old. That was the age when they stopped counting. Then Philip starts with questions about their lives: Tell us the story of how you met your wife and got married. What did the Ik wear when you were a child. What kind of foods did you eat 60 years ago? Do you remember when the gun was introduced into your area? What was your relationship like with your neighbors, the Karimojong and Turkana? Tell us your hunting stories. They each have something a little different to say. They each get excited about a particular aspect of life. One man went on and on about hunting elephants. It made him come alive. After we've done the interviews, which generally last about an hour, we pack up and go home. Once home, Philip starts the long process of translating what's been said into writing. One day we hope to put these stories into a book that can be given back to the community.

One of our favorite parts of the interview is when the old people start to sing. The men have something called a bull song, where they sing about the bull they were named after. It's a ritual that is done as a young man. The women also have their songs which the men sometimes know little about. The woman below is singing a special song that is sung after a woman gives birth.

So here we sit recording the details of a man's life. He tells us what he's been telling his children for years. We're going to try and save it for them in written and oral forms. It's been a privilege to be on the receiving end of these interesting stories. We receive the wisdom of old age...and what do we give them? They've been settling for knitted hats and other small gifts.

I think the whole process is also giving something back to the family though too. Below Elisabeth is listening to her grandmother tell her life story. She might learn something new, she might walk away with a better understanding of her loved one or she might just appreciate her grandmother a little more today than she did yesterday. To us, what matters is that we're saving a piece of the Iks' past for their future. May the Lord bless these efforts!

A picture says it all...

2011-11-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

Amber is well loved by the children in Timu, as this photo makes abundantly clear:

Terrill is well loved by the adults of Timu, as this picture makes abundantly clear:

The 'makings' of a good baby shower

2011-11-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

While in Entebbe at the beginning of October, Kate & I got to participate in a colleague's baby shower. Our friend, Irene, had delivered Josiah back in August. But in Uganda, it's typical to throw a party after the baby is born instead of beforehand. It did prove more convenient as well because Irene's husband could let us all know what the couple needed as far as baby apparel. The ladies of SIL who work with Irene decided to throw her a surprise party and her husband, Sam, was happy to help us. Below Robin is holding the baby boy, Josiah.
And a party isn't a party without good friends like Esther....
...and lots of food. Believe it or not, that fruit salad was almost finished by the time we left. Everyone was pretty excited about the grapes in the salad, which normally cost something like $5 per kilo. I personally hand't tasted a grape in about two years.
And then there were the party games, which Kate & I were responsible for. The first game involved picking safety pins out of a basket of rice while the participant is blind-folded. It was actually harder than one might think when using tiny safety pins. But we all giggled and cheered as the participants dug through the rice for their 60 seconds of picking. The next game involved birthing & pregnancy beliefs from different parts of the world. Kate & I had researched different traditions and we quizzed the ladies to see how close they could get to the country of origin. Below are some examples:

A woman is told not to do any knitting while she’s pregnant as it could cause the umbilical cord to become wrapped around the baby’s neck. (BOLIVIA)
The mother is supposed to keep her legs crossed during the postnatal period based on the belief that it will reduce the air flowing into her body, which could cause her abdomen to remain permanently fat. (GHANA)
During pregnancy, women frequently eat a special kind of salty clay. When chewed, the clay is believed to increase appetite and decrease nausea. (SUDAN)

Next came the presents. As we each presented Irene with a gift, we also offered her a word of encouragement for raising Josiah. At the end, we offered up some prayers for her & Sam as they spend the next twenty years raising Josiah.
But we couldn't leave without a group picture...so this is our first attempt at getting organized.
Yes, it had the makings of a good baby shower.

Dormice from H-E-double hockey sticks

2011-11-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

Personally I'm not really surprised that in animist societies, various birds and animals are attributed with spiritual powers. In Ik society, some creatures are called badiam, which translates loosely as 'wizard', 'sorcerer', or something having 'dark' or 'weird' powers. Included in this group are the owl, the hyena, and of course, the snake. The reason I say I'm not surprised is because at times during my life in Africa, in Tanzania before and in Uganda these past four years, I've been the victim of the strange ability of a creature to (seemingly) know what irritates me and to hone in on that very irritation. It's so uncanny and seemingly intentional that I've often just described it as 'demonic'.

In Tanzania, it was the rooster who would come right under my window every morning and crow its little head off. Of all the other places in our entire big backyard, it chose the worst, most annoying spot possible. Here in Uganda it's been the red-winged blackbirds who built their nest in the air vent in the ceiling right above...you guessed it, our bedroom window. Their syrupy-sweet slurry whistles at 6:00 am and the loud, grating cries of their young sent me to new heights of irritation. No matter how many times I shot one with the BB-gun, the other would quickly find another mate. No matter how many times I pulled their nest out, they would build another one. Finally after being dive-bombed and pecked on the head (after that I wore a helmet), I bested them by wrapping enough barbed wire around the air-vent opening.

Second only to the blackbirds have been the evil dormice. Dormice are little mouse-like critters with long bushy tails. They look like a tiny cross between a mouse and squirrel. They are noisy, energetic, and downright exasperating. And our ceiling is their playground.

Last night something fun(ny) happened, which is the whole reason I'm writing this post. Two dormice were really going at it, starting at about 9:30, while we were still watching The Fellowship of the Rings. They were chittering, chattering, squeaking, running, jumping, fighting, mating---whatever they were doing---with total impunity. At 11 pm, exhausted from the day, we put in our earplugs and hit the sack, thinking we'd be asleep in no time. Wrong! Those little &%$@!s came right over, directly above our bed, and carried on with their nonsense within seven feet of our heads. I started having fantasies about taking a broom and whacking at them with all my might, but I knew Amber would disapprove of the shower of dust that would fall on our bed. My irritation quickly became murderous. I got up and started pacing, knowing I could never sleep like this and not knowing what I could possibly do.

My inner hunter could take no more of this rodential pestilence. Wearing nothing but a loosely fitting pair of trousers, I got a light and reached for the BB-gun hanging above our closet door. I climbed the closet shelves, pushed up one of the ceiling tiles, and rather clumsily hoisted myself into the rank, dust-caked attic. There began a nice game of man-and-mouse. For twenty minutes or so (by now it was midnight), I hunted one of the dormice who was clearly not afraid of me at the beginning. After four narrowly missed shots, s/he got the idea that my goal was to inflict harm, permanent harm. That one eventually escaped. The second one was on the other end of the house chittering and chattering, not having learned his lesson. I turned the light out for ten minutes and then stalked toward it. When the light came back on, I saw him, raised my gun, and let fly a small nickel sphere, putting an abrupt end to his rowdy night out. I climbed down out of the attic, took a sponge bath, and crawled back into bed.

Rarely have I felt such satisfaction as I did over the utter silence that lasted the rest of the night.

Smiles from the local playground

2011-10-27T06:05:00.000-07:00

I've said it before but let me repeat myself with some pictures. Yes, the kids can annoy us when they stand at our gate and yell at us to give them things...but they are also a highlight of my time in Uganda. I will never forget how much fun it is jump rope with them. I will always remember which kids like to get hugs because their parents don't hug them much. And I will carry their little smiles with me the rest of my life. Recently, Terrill & I have started going to the local village school and teaching one-hour sessions to the kids. Terrill has been going over the Ik alphabet and I've started some health education. Only God knows what the kids will do with this education. My most heartfelt prayer for these kids is that they would come to know the Lord. Pray for the children of Lokinene, Timu with us, won't you?Pray for Kusam (above) who is reserved and sensitive. He is an orphan with little instruction in his life.
Pray that these boys would grow into men who claim the name of Jesus and who lead their people with integrity.
Pray that these girls would raise healthy & happy families.
Pray that these children can sleep in peace, not fearing evil men or the enemy of our souls.
Pray that these children will be added to the number who worship the Lord in spirit and truth.

Bundibugyo

2011-10-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we drove out to western Uganda, to a town called Bundibugyo, tucked in behind the Rwenzori Mountains and near the border with Congo. It was 280 miles and took us about 10 hours. The landscape in that part of Uganda is breathtakingly beautiful as you drive off the Ugandan plateau down into the Semliki Valley, which is part of the western Rift Valley.

The area of Bundibugyo is home to the Bwisi and Amba peoples, as well as a smattering of other tribes like the Konjo, Basua Pygmies, Tooro, and other groups coming over from Congo. Back in the 1990s, SIL members Waller & Mary Tabb started the Bwisi translation project. A couple of nights ago we had the privilege of driving even further into the jungle, so to speak, to see where the Tabbs used to live and where the translation project continues to this day.

But in fact the main reason we drove so far was to spend time with Connie Kutsch-Lojenga, a Dutch member of SIL who is a linguist specializing in developing good writing systems. Connie is going to supervise Terrill as he writes a grammatical description of Ik, so we wanted to get to know her a bit better. We also wanted to give Kate a chance to see another facet of the kind of work SIL does in Africa.

Connie was asked to help, not the Bwisi, but the new Kwamba (Amba) translation project to figure out some phonological problems with their writing system. Connie has a unique and increasingly popular way of getting groups of people to participate in the linguistic research process. It's called, appropriately enough, the 'participatory method'.

From Congo, Connie had come with a man named Papa Avuta to help her run the workshop. Papa Avuta is from the Ngiti tribe whose language, Ndruna, Connie has worked on for many years. We really enjoyed getting to know Avuta over the three days. He and his people have suffered greatly during the Congolese civil wars, and yet he is so full of life and love.

All this week and all next week, over twenty Kwamba speakers are voluntarily participating in this workshop. They are working to make some improvements in their alphabet, increase the words in their dictionary, and practice writing Kwamba as much as possible. Amber and Kate sat in for a few of the sessions, doing a little knitting to help cope with all the French, Swahili, and Kwamba flying around the room.

The Kwamba in attendance were quite enthusiastic about their language! Here is one of the women practicing her spelling. It's really great to see when speakers of a language take the development of their language into their own hands.

MIA at the OPUM

2011-10-02T05:12:00.000-07:00

[Hi! Sorry we have been absent from this blog for so long. I see our last post was over a month ago. :( For most of August and half of September, we were still in the Ik area. Our internet speed has gotten worse and worse this year, to the point where we were discouraged from even trying to blog. The last two weeks of September, we were in southern Karamoja (what this post is about), where we had internet but were caught up in a variety of fun activities. I know, excuses, excuses...]

So, if you were wondering why we were MIA on the blog recently, it's because we were definitely IA at the Orthodox Presbyterian Uganda Mission (OPUM) base in the village of Nakaale in southern Karamoja. Our good friends Bob & Martha Wright had invited us a while back to come visit them, their family, and the other families and volunteers that make up their team.

Our agenda for the ten days we were with them---besides having a great time with friends---was for Amber to spend time in their clinic, observing the work of a lab technician, for Kate to spend time with Martha, learning what an 'educational linguist' does (as opposed to a 'descriptive linguist' like Terrill) and helping her, and for Terrill to spend time with Bob and the boys, getting some good 'guy time' in, as well as getting some distraction-free computer work done.

We did have a good time with the OPC folks, and we so appreciate their hospitality. As a team they are serving the Pian sub-tribe of the Karimojong through evangelism, leadership training, literacy, healthcare, health education, farming (job creation), borehole drilling, and a host of other activities. Needless to say, they stay busy, but not too busy to incorporate the three of us into their community life, which was really something we needed.

This is a view of the mission station from a nearby hill:

This is Kate on the same hill:

And us:

Maybe toys are overrated?

2011-08-24T01:32:00.000-07:00

We were walking home one evening when Terrill mentioned how fun it would be to give the Ik children a jungle gym. Yes, I thought, it would be fun...but how sustainable? How would it stand up against the weather? Who would fix the problems and taking responsibility for upkeep? And besides, these kids wouldn't stop climbing trees if we provided them with metal bars to climb on. They wouldn't stop playing in piles of sand if we gave them a proper sandbox (aren't those things breeding grounds for disease anyway?). These kids are happy as bugs in a rug and they've never had store-bought toys. The world is their playground and it keeps them very occupied.

But the real reason for this post is a baby baboon...another 'plaything' for the Ik children. This baby was caught in a valley of Timu forest. An Ik man saw a group of baboons lounging around. He waited for the right moment and hid in the grass. When the baby came close, he pounced on it and promptly tied a rope around it's waist. Then he tied a stick to the rope so the baby wouldn't get far. He brought the baby to a near-by village before heading down to Kaabong to try and sell her to anyone willing to buy. We do not condone this practice and in fact, think it is very harmful to the animals. This baby will probably never see her family again and she may not live long. Children around here tend to play kind of roughly. They are not used to being gentle with animals. To give some credit to the parents, I heard quite a few admonishing the children not to throw rocks or hurt this baby. Unfortunately, the 'kidnapping' of these animals happens often. I've seen more than one monkey or baboon tied with a rope and kept in the villages. The kids spend hours watching their mannerisms and 'playing' with them. I can see that we may have to model for these children not just a respect of humankind but also a respect of all that God created.

Medical Manna

2011-08-21T23:47:00.001-07:00

As many of you know, I run a small clinic....and sometimes it feels more like a dispensary. They have a headache, I give a Tylenol. I usually buy the medicines from a wholesale pharmaceutical store that generally sells to hospitals. I've also been so very blessed through donations from churches and individuals at home who kindly send packages filled with over-the counter medicines that are much needed and appreciated by the Ik.

Recently, a friend in Uganda connected me with another expat living here who had an excess of medical supplies. After talking on the phone, he confirmed that I could come over to his house and pick out whatever I wanted from the excess. It was getting dark when we arrived and I only had 45 minutes to pick out supplies, but I filled a big cardboard box. It felt like Christmas. I picked out bandages, gauze, tape, Ace wraps, syringes, thermometers, catheters, bulb syringes and more. He said that everyone else had taken the mass supplies of medications that he'd received but I was happy with what I got. God provides in unexpected ways. There were several types of bandages, steri strips & dressings I picked out that I can't buy in Uganda. Blessings to all you who give! It really matters.

Signs of the times

2011-08-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

We used to have a 'work hours' sign that we brought from the US up on our fence. Some other Americans who saw it really got a kick out of it because they know the concept of 'work hours' is rather laughable in the context we work in. That sign has long since disappeared, so we decided to take this a step further and paint the sign on our gate, complete with English and a translation into Ik.

Now even if people don't actually adhere to the posted hours, we can still refer to the sign in a (nearly vain) attempt to defer their requests to the appropriate day and time slot. And in doing so we can at least pretend that this gesture carries some weight in this culture, at least enough to convince ourselves. That may be what we need to reserve some semblance of control.

So far the Ik haven't seemed terribly impressed with the sign. As I proudly showed off the Ik portion to our translator, he pointed out the one error I had made (which means he's a good language teacher!). But the most favorable reaction we've had was from the children whom we found trying to copy the writing in the dirt right in front of the door. I guess they're getting the literacy program off the ground on their own. Works for me!

Oh, by the way, I'll accept comments to this post Mon, Wed, and Fri, from 3-5pm, by appointment only.

First fruits

2011-08-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

It's the time of year here in Ikland when some of the crops are starting to get ready. What you see in the picture are some fresh greens and boiled fresh pumpkin that people brought to us. When you give someone a gift of first fruits in this culture, it's a sign of blessing. We learned that the other day when some Karimojong visitors were at our home. Their car had broken down near Timu, and I went to help them. We couldn't get their car started, so I brought them back to our house to wait for a mechanic. In the meantime, we picked the first corn from our little garden, roasted it, and gave it to the visitors. They said it was a real blessing to be the ones to eat our first harvest. After a long season of hard work in the gardens, those first bites of fresh produce just hit the spot.

Who are you giving the best of what you have to?

Life is cheap

2011-07-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

That is, to some, apparently. This morning a small group of people
made their way through the forest on foot to take their corn to town
to get it ground into flour. On the way, they were ambushed by Turkana
cattle-thieves. A gunman jumped out from behind a termite mound only
15 feet away and shot two men to death, one Ik and one Dodoth. A third
Ik man ran back to our village to report the incident, and the women
ran ahead and escaped. The only demonstrable reason for the murder was
to steal the little corn the people were carrying. However, these bush
warriors are also known to kill for sport, because they can, with
impunity. There is just something wrong with the world when a man will
shoot another man through the throat for a few meals of maize.

Much of this violence could be stopped, but someone is profiting from
it all. 'Peace-building' is big business in this area. You can get big
bucks to hold 'peace talks' where everyone gathers for eloquent
speeches, cultural dances, and a feast. Meanwhile, the real criminals
are still in the bush, preparing or executing their next raid (see my
March blog post called 'Peace talks'). Despite the continuing
violence, things are better now than they used to be. The Iks'
neighbors used to have more guns. And nowadays the Ik have cell phones
which they use to communicate with each other and with the armed
forces. I can only imagine the fear and helplessness these people have
lived with for so many years. Imagine the possibility of being shot
and killed on your drive to the grocery store on any given day. What
if that was part of your daily reality?

Please join us in saying a prayer for justice for this entire region.
The further development of the Ik and Karimojong societies is being
hindered and retarded by unpunished acts of violence. We know that
real, lasting peace is not possible as long as human hearts are
wicked, but we also know that something more can be done.

White Rhinos

2011-07-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

On our way back north toward Kaabong tomorrow, we plan to do something we've never done before: stop and see the rhinos (and spend the night) at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. We've seen the sign many times but have only ever driven on by. Then, in June, we met the people who founded the sanctuary. They are a whole family of white Africans passionately committed to increasing the number of rhinos in Uganda.

A century ago there were thousands and thousands of white rhinos in Uganda. By the 1960s, only about sixty were left. In 1982, the very last white rhino was slaughtered for its horns. But thanks to this family and those who work with and support them, the rhinos are making a slow and steady come-back. The family is now looking for a new place further north to serve as a future sanctuary for black rhinos. We may have this new sanctuary quite close to Ikland!

Both white and black rhinos are indigenous to Uganda. Contrary to popular belief, both kinds of rhino are basically the same color. 'White' rhino is actually a misnomer, as the name comes from the Afrikaans word weit which means 'wide' not 'white'. The mouth of the so-called white rhino is much wider than that of its black counterpart. The white rhino grazes on grass, while the black rhino, with its narrow, almost beak-like snout, browses bushes and trees.

So much of Uganda's glorious wildlife was decimated during the long, terrible years of civil war. Now that there's been peace for some years, the animals are wasting no time multiplying. The plight of the rhino is special, though, as their horns still fetch ungodly sums of money on the black market. Some Asian cultures belief rhino horn to be a powerful aphrodisiac and pay thousands of dollars to acquire it. This belief has been debunked scientifically, but the myth persists, prompting the widespread butchery of these unique, prehistoric beasts.

We are happy to support the welfare of the rhinos by supporting the Rhino Sanctuary. Please drop by the website and see for yourself!

A parting shot...

In any case

2011-07-05T03:46:00.000-07:00

Recently I discovered a new 'case' in the Ik language. 'Case' in linguistics refers to how some languages mark the relationship of nouns to the verb and other words in a sentence. Not all languages have case, for example, English. English usually uses word order to mark relationships, rather than case. Consider the following:

John saw Bill.

Bill saw John.

In these two sentences, the order of the words tells us who is seeing and who is being seen. Though English mostly uses word order, it still has the remnants of a once stronger case system, and these remnants are found in the pronouns:

I/me

(thou/thee)

She/her

He/him

We/us

(you/ye)

They/them

When using a pronoun, English speakers must choose which of the two forms to use, depending on whether it is a subject or object. We can even mix up the word order and still know what is being meant (though we might start sounding like Yoda...):

I saw him.

Him I saw.

Saw I him.

He saw me.

Me he saw.

Saw he me.

Classic European languages like Greek and Latin had well-developed case systems, as do modern ones like German, Hungarian, and Russian. Case languages are actually quite rare in Africa, but Ik is one of them. Until recently Ik was thought to have seven cases, but a few weeks ago a growing suspicion was confirmed that an eighth case was lurking around! The original seven cases include:

Oblique: the basic, unmarked case

Nominative: the subject case

Accusative: the object case

Genitive: the 'of' case

Dative: the indirect object case

Ablative: the 'from' case

Copulative: the 'it is' case

And...drum roll please...the new case: the Instrumental, the 'with' case!

Okay, so to give you a visual of what case looks like, let's take the example of the words 'tree' and 'trees' in Ik (the small vowels are whispered):

CASE Singular Plural Translation

OBL dakᵘ dakwítín TREE(S)

NOM dakwᵃ dakwítínᵃ tree(s)

ACC dakúkᵃ dakwítíníkᵃ tree(s)

GEN dakwí dakwítíní of the tree(s)

DAT dakúkᵉ dakwítíníkᵉ to the tree(s)

ABL dakúu dakwítínu from the tree(s)

INS daku dakwítínᵘ with the tree(s)

COP dakúkᴼ dakwítíníkᴼ it's the tree(s)

Up to now, linguists had thought that the 'instrumental' and 'ablative' cases were one and the same. It was only in hearing Ik spoken that I began to hear the difference. The thing that really tipped me off was hearing the difference between these two:

Atsá bee deikᵒ 'He came on foot (i.e. 'with feet')

Áts'á bee deikaᴼ 'It bit (me) on the feet (i.e. 'from the feet')

Hearing the different pronunciations of the word 'feet/legs', I knew they couldn't be the same case!

Enough linguistics for now...

Ikland movie

2011-07-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

A new film about the Ik has come out, and we hope you get a chance to see it!

Read more about the film and its producers at the film's website.

PAG church dedication

2011-06-30T00:56:00.000-07:00

Last month a new building was dedicated for the PAG (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) church in Lokinene, the Ik area we live in. PAG is one of the strategic partners in our work since they will most likely provide a translator in the future and be the first to benefit from Ik Scripture translations and related materials. It is also the church we attend when we are in the area.

Before the new building was built, the congregation of about forty Christians was meeting in a dilapidated (from age and use) structure made of logs, mud, and grass thatch. The Pentecostal church in Germany donated funds for the construction of a new, permanent church building.

The small Ik congregation in Lokinene is one of the reasons we decided to locate where we did. At the time (2008), they were the only non-Catholic church in the Ik area, and the only church who met in a physical structure. (Now the Catholic and Anglican churches have constructed church buildings in other areas). In SIL our aim is to serve all Christian churches with our work, but we have had the most enthusiastic support and encouragement from PAG so far. In Lokinene, we felt a spirit of peace and welcoming we hadn't in the other areas we visited.

So while we believe strongly that church buildings are only secondary to the 'living body' of the church that is Christians living in community, we are happy for the Ik pentecostals of Lokinene who now have a beautiful, secure, and spacious place of worship to call their own.

Here the superintendent of the German PAG church and the bishop of the the Ugandan PAG church together cut the ribbon to officially open the doors:
Lots of people crammed into the building to hear the choirs and speeches:
Terrill trying his hand at mingling a bit of posho (he's really just posing!):
The crowds line up for their share of the celebration feast, which they put in any container they had available, from plates to pitchers to pails (one lady even brought a watering can):

Plain Ole Grass

2011-06-23T22:12:00.000-07:00

Usually when I’m out in the woods here in Timu, I notice the many wonderful kinds of trees. But one morning recently, my focus shifted serendipitously to the smaller, humbler plant life around the rock I was sitting on. All of a sudden, what was before ‘just grass’ at my feet, sprung out at me in all its timid diversity. In a matter of minutes, I had picked out nine different kinds of grass (and I know I missed some) on the basis of their different seed-heads.

The thin, forked one:

The spiny head one:
The long, fuzzy one:
The one that smelled like a kitchen spice:
The froofy one:
The oatsy one:
The Christmas-tree-looking one:
The other Christmas-tree-looking one:
The the one whose seeds stick to everything:

I'm afraid those are about the most scientific descriptions I can give for now...

As human beings, we have the ability to focus our attention on things around us to discover (and sometimes create) meanings and patterns. But we’re made in such a way that we can only focus on so much detail at one time. Too often we go through life focused only on this thing or that thing and miss literally a whole universe. (Did you know that it is now thought that we have identified only 2% of the earth’s estimated 100,000,000 biological species? I wonder if all these kinds of grass are already known?)

What details are you missing (out on)?

Do you ever see snakes?

2011-06-15T05:59:00.000-07:00

Yes! We get this question a lot from visitors coming to Africa for the first time. What brought snakes to mind? I found a foot-long, blue-black thing slithering through my garden last evening. It was the first snake I've had to kill. Thank God it was small enough and easily cut with a hoe. For the amount of time we've been living in Uganda, we haven't actually seen all that many snakes. Sometimes Ik will come to me with a bite, mostly on the legs and feet which they got while working in their gardens where the grass is high and they're not wearing shoes. So far, nobody that I know has died from these bites. The leg becomes swollen and painful for a few days but eventually it heals and people have a good story to tell. The snake below we saw on the road while traveling through a remote area west of Kaabong. It was already dead when we found it. This particular snake is a puff adder and people who get bitten by these usually die. This snake we saw last fall and it was quite alive when we passed. Terrill immediately stopped the car. He & a friend got out and threw rocks at the snake until it was dead. It's just a common courtesy to kill a snake if you see one near-by. You never know who the snakes next victim might be. We do thank God for his protection over us from snakes these past few years.

Don't you hate it when...

2011-06-09T04:58:00.000-07:00

...the mice start eating your clothes? Sometimes it's difficult having two homesteads and having to keep rodents out of both at the same time. Sometimes we don't achieve this end. We returned to Kaabong last week to find several shirts eaten right off the hanger. Seriously, a tank top had no more shoulder straps. Below is a beloved t-shirt that had the misfortune of having its collar eaten away. So far I've lost three shirts and had multiple others nibbled on. I think it's time to box our clothes up for the sake of preservation. We've patched every hole in the ceiling that we can find, but we keep our eyes open for any other destruction lurking in dark corners.

Karimojong Bible Dedication

2011-06-07T00:05:00.000-07:00

In April we had the chance to attend one of the dedication ceremonies for the newly-printed Karimojong Bible called Ebaibul. It was intriguing to be there and imagine what it might be like in the future when the full Ik Bible is translated, published, and distributed. The first translation of the Karimojong New Testament was completed by the United Bible Societies in 1974. Then, in 1996, the Bible Society of Uganda produced a revised New Testament that accommodated more of the Karimojong dialects than the original. Now, the complete Karimojong Bible (including the Apocrypha for Catholics) is available in 2011.

As you can see, it's been a long time coming. And such things that take so long and so much effort deserve dedication and celebration, something that Africans do in a big way!

The first venue of the dedication was the Kotido Anglican church where celebrants gathered for introductions, singing, and staging the march through town.

After the beginning formalities, everyone marched through Kotido down behind a motorcade of vehicles, including one carrying loud speakers and a giant Bible. Speeches were made at the town center, the Pentecostal church, and then at the entrance of the Catholic school.

Finally, we all settled under white tents on loan from the United Nations to hear more speeches, sermons, pontifications, songs, etc., etc. from Catholic, Anglican, and Pentecostal Christians (the three mains churches in the area) as we waited (im)patiently for lunch...which didn't happen until close to 5 pm.

So you can see what written Karimojong looks like (it's quite beautiful, I think), here are the first five verses of the Bible, Genesis 1:1-5:

1 Anakisyakinet, abu Akuj tosub kidiama ka akwap. 2 Arae akwap ŋina amam iborekitamet ka amam ibore ayai tooma keŋ ka arapuwarit akiryonut kidiama nenicukul daadaŋ, aryakiryaki Etau ŋolo ka Akuj alokidiama ŋakipi. 3 Tema nai Akuj, "Toyakaun akica;" ido abu akica toyakaun. 4 Toanyu Akuj atemar ajok akica; totyaka Akuj akica anakiryonut. 5 Tolimok Akuj ekiro ka akica "Apaaran" ka ekiro ka akiryonut "Akuwar." Toyakaun ataboŋ ka toyakaun ataparacu, arae ŋin akoloŋit ŋina esyakinan.

Small friends

2011-06-01T06:01:00.000-07:00

Since we're now spending a majority of our time in Timu, the people and place have become my constant companions...especially the children. If I had loved them as a people group before, now I can love them one by one since I'm learning their names and getting to know them. Being in community has it's perks but also it's challenges. This week we're trying to figure out how to set boundaries with the community that will allow us quiet times apart from them. Although we enjoy them, we'll not survive here unless we get this time apart. Pray with us for this.

My friend, Lojore, is jumping into a sand pit near the school. Ik kids don't have man-made toys or electronics; they play with what they find in their natural environment.
We brought a jump rope for the kids to enjoy. Now we hear a daily request in the afternoons at our gate: Bire nci sim (bring the rope). They often ask for me to jump with them and then like to swing the rope faster on purpose. Lemu Lucia is the girl jumping. She has a bubbly personality and always provides us with a laugh.

My neighbor & friend, Siti Rosemary is jumping in this one. Although only 14, she runs the household for her mother and takes care of her five siblings. Kids grow up fast here. Lojore, Nancy & Nakiru have a bonding moment. The kids are their own community when parents get too busy and can't spend much time with them. I think I'm becoming part of that community. I'm praying that God will help us show love to these kids and will give us opportunities to teach them truth.

Nƙwaatikwa ni Ɲeriaŋi ('modern healers')-Part 2

2011-05-20T00:04:00.001-07:00

After a week with internet problems, I've been able to load more pictures from the medical team's visit. I wanted to give you a glimpse of what our mobile clinic looked like.

Before leaving, we slathered ourselves in sunscreen, filled our water bottles, and loaded every available backpack to the brim. Then we hiked...and hiked...and hiked some more along well-worn Ik trails that lead to their various places of daily living. Below is Doug & Lisa on one of those trails. Hats & sunscreen? Check! On occasion, we would maneuver ourselves through these small entryways into the Ik villages. They make them small so it's difficult for people to get through, as there is a history of violence & thievery when 'enemies' come to their villages. One woman told me that the smaller the doorway, the better, because it gives her time to get out another way while the intruder is crawling inside. It's helpful that the Ik are small themselves and can easily enter/exit their villages. Because of our varying sizes, we asked the sick Ik to come out to us for treatment.
This is a sitting area (Ik: diyw) outside one of the villages where we held a clinic. They brought us hand-made stools to sit on as we parked under the only available tree. The Ik gathered around us and sat in a certain order while waiting to be treated. For some unknown reason, the women & children gathered around Buddy while the men & older people sat beside Lisa.
Each doctor had a translator. Louie tended to the 'pharmacy' while I sat by and took notes. The doctors would call me to one side or the other to look at abnormalities or give me a piece of information. It was a good environment for learning. Terrill was a huge help in the language department. We can now understand enough Icetod (Ik language) that we know when one of the translators is saying something incorrectly and we can correct their instruction to the patients.

Louie's pharmacy included something to sit on and baggies of an assortment of medicines. Before leaving home, we had bagged and written instructions on medicines so they'd be ready to give out.

This Turkana man was visiting from Kenya. We saw quite a few Turkanas who were staying in Ik villages and bartering with them for food. Kenya is even drier than Uganda these days so the Turkanas bring their cows across the border (legally) to graze.

I think she was bored...

Many times, children are left at home with the elderly while mothers & fathers go to work in their gardens. There are also many orphans who end up living with grandparents.
Buddy examines the ear canal of a newborn.

This happy lady has just been medicated.
After holding one clinic, we ventured into the near-by village to visit a lady who had just given birth. Her complaint: the child wouldn't suckle. I haven't heard from her since, so everything must have turned out okay.
This was our medical team. Kneeling are Joseph & Zachary who translated. Standing (L-R) are Lisa, Philip, Louie, Buddy & me.

Nƙwaatikwa ni Ɲeriaŋi ('modern healers')-Part 1

2011-05-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

We just had an amazing visit with some friends from our Tallahassee church (Four Oaks). After months & weeks of waiting for them to come, the time had arrived and then...as time usually does...it busily vanished before our eyes in a blur of activity. We did so much in the eleven days together that I have to split the blog up (mostly so I can get more pictures in).

Our visitors, Doug & Lisa Jernigan and Buddy & Louie Doll, had quite the Ugandan adventure. It all started with a ride in a bush plane (thanks to MAF: a missionary flying service). I had told them to bring along medicines for nausea but I might have forgotten to tell them that north-eastern Uganda is one of the windiest places in world (so we've been told). The MAF pilots courageously fight the wind three days a week as they land at the airstrip in Kaabong on a regular basis. The airstrip is a sandy, flat area out in the wilderness some miles from Kaabong town.

I better keep this narrative moving or I'll have a book before I know it. We shared hugs of welcome all around, had a lunch of lentils and then drove up to Timu. It was still dry season when our visitors arrived. The rainy season was late but the weather pleasant. Everyone got settled in, our belongings put away, and then we trekked 100 yards for our first village visit. Our neighbors (Lojore & Esther) are kind enough to welcome our many visitors and expose them to Ik village life. Ik greetings were practiced and exposure was successful.

During our time together, we did a number of activities. First and foremost, we treated people. My clinic days are Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 9am-1pm. Lisa, Buddy & Louie assisted me in the clinic and helped to expand my knowledge of a good assessment and treatment of illnesses. I learned so much from just sitting beside them and watching. I learned what a healthy & unhealthy ear canal should look like. I learned how to hold a baby still enough to look into their ear. I learned not to put Calamine lotion (for the many cases of chicken pox) on a child under the age of two. I learned that large lymph nodes around the clavicle are a sign of a systemic problem. The list goes on. My friends generously poured their years of wisdom and knowledge into my life. Thank you, Lisa, Buddy & Louie, for this gift.

Meanwhile, Doug was sanding rust off our gates and painting. We were the lucky ones to be inside shelter on those hot days. Poor Doug was working under an African sun and believe me when I say, we European-descended were not created to work under an African sun. It was humble work but Doug did it without complaint. Thank you, Doug, for serving us so selflessly.

On our off days, we decided to explore the Timu mountains a bit and hold a mobile clinic. This is something Terrill & I had wanted to do for awhile since we meet many people from these far-off villages but have never visited them ourselves. I'll expand more on the mobile clinics in the next blog. The child below was a bystander at one of the locations we visited. Many Ik were interested in what we were doing and I'll bet that some of the young children had never seen white faces up close before.
The Ik have well-worn footpaths that they travel every day. As we trekked to a distant village, this man got stuck behind us on the path. He is carrying a dead tree, most likely to be used either for his house or his outer fence.
Some of the best times we had together were when we simply shared life. It was a blessing to have others in the kitchen with me to share the load of cooking and cleaning. I tried to do dishes several times but was consistently shooed away by others who wanted to bless me. Doing dishes was a good excuse to clean our fingernails.
Another project worked on was putting together a solar oven. I must say with some embarrassment that I napped while this oven was put together. But I think the concept was pretty simple. All we needed was a cardboard box, some heavy duty tinfoil and glue. Lisa did bring a special pan to place inside the box. The test was to put water into the pan and see how hot it would get. I believe it got up to 120 degrees F....but that was after only a few hours, not all day. We still have much to learn about this solar oven, but hopefully we can utilize it for cooking & baking some day soon.
Here's Doug neatly painting the fancy spikes on our outer gate.

And this...was me learning to suture on a chicken. Hey...we didn't have any pigs' feet! Buddy graciously killed and plucked this rooster clean. Then Lisa sat with me and patiently went through the steps. It didn't seem that hard at the time, but I think I will sweat more when my first patient comes who needs sutures. I had asked them to teach me this skill because quite a few Ik come to my gate with lacerations of one kind or another. Guess what happened next? We skewered my patient in a teriyaki sauce over an open flame.
It's after hours and almost time for dinner but we couldn't help but give this child (Jacob) attention. He had a painful thorn in his foot. Buddy is looking for the culprit.
And Louie...was flying kites with the kids. Who wouldn't love a woman who shows up with the first kite these kids have ever seen. It had a lizard on it which is a very familiar reptile to the Ik. The past few days we've been back in Timu, the kids have begged to play with that lizard and it's seen more air-time in a few days than most kites do in their lifetimes.
Flying his first kite.
We spent Easter Sunday in the new Pentecostal church. It's a beautiful structure and the first permanent building (besides our houses) to be built in this area. Although the pastor and many of the congregation were gone for the day (visiting another church), a group still gathered. A special part of Easter Sunday was being able to read the Easter story to the kids.
And then a highlight of the trip: Doug brought his ukelele and played for the kids. He gave a concert on Wednesday night and then again on Sunday afternoon. They listened attentively to this new instrument. It was the first time they'd seen a guitar of any sorts. They do have instruments that look like a hand-held harp....but nothing like a ukelele. I know I've pointed out a lot of firsts but I guess that is the nature of things when westerners move into third-world countries. We are often the ones who expose people to those things outside their worldviews. As it happens, the Ik children want to remember the ukelele. I hadn't heard a word from them about it, but just today I saw a piece of wood that had been shaped into a guitar form with strings attached to the front. It was proudly slung over a child's shoulder and they proudly played a tune for me. Only eleven days, but our visitors have left a legacy.

Peace Talks

2011-05-05T01:56:00.000-07:00

In March I had the privilege of attending a peace gathering between the Karamojong, Turkana, and Ik. I don't know much about it, but apparently these talks have been held at various times throughout history, perhaps when the inter-tribal raiding and killing reached an unbearable level. This particular gathering was organized by an NGO who invited members of all three tribes, plus government officials of all kinds. According to the Ik, it was clearly a big day, something to be anticipated and definitely not missed.

The context for the meeting was that the Kenyan government had formally asked the Ugandan government to let Turkana bring their livestock across the border in search of water and grass. If they can't come across, as they've done for years, many of the animals and some of the people would die. Normally they just come, without permission, toting their guns to protect their animals from the Karamojong. But since the Karamojong have been largely disarmed, the Ugandan government is requiring the Turkana to also leave their guns in Kenya.

The meeting basically went like this. Six hours past the official starting time, the formal introductions began. Then, an Ik elder was invited to speak. He said the Ik don't have guns and the Ik don't raid. He said the Ik want the Karamojong and Turkana to make peace. Then a Turkana warrior got up to speak. He said the Turkana have stopped raiding for some time, but the Karamojong keep coming down to Kenya to raid. Then a string of government and military officials gave speeches. The Karamojong bore the brunt of the accusations. All the people were sitting roughly according to tribe, and the Karamojong section was defiantly silent (did they know that during the actual meeting, a group of Karamojong warriors had descended the escarpment to raid the less-guarded Turkana cows?).

With all the formalities out of the way, the dances began, with the colorfully dressed Turkana women leading the festivities. Since it was late evening by then, we had to go and so missed the big meal at the end (which, I confess, was one of the reasons I wanted to go!) It was good to identify with my Ik companions, though. Normally, as a foreigner, I am offered special treatment, such as getting food first with all the 'big people'. This time, I sat with the Ik as one of them and didn't get any food, just as they didn't. We drove home hungry but happy.

Will there be peace? Sadly, I have little confidence in that. As I said, the Karamojong raided the Turkana during the peace meeting, and a couple weeks later, some Turkana shot an Ik boy on the trail. But hopefully, with more outside exposure and more government involvement, the cases of violence will decrease.

One government official gave an impassioned speech, saying the only way to have lasting peace is EDUCATION. I can think of a few examples where that is not true (Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, to mention a couple). No, peace cannot come about merely through a change of mind, but through a change of heart. And that is not something we as humans can effect on our own.

Worth their salt

2011-04-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago I heard that a group of ladies were digging in a neighbor's garden. I walked down to visit them and see what was going on. I've mentioned before how important agriculture is to the Ik society. Everyone has a garden and everyone has to dig in it, plant in it, weed it & then harvest it throughout the year. The Iks' agricultural year opened at the end of January and people have started to dig in their gardens ever since, preparing for the rains when they can plant. During dry season, grasses and weeds sprout up. The ground is hard and not so much fun to dig in. But these ladies have the right idea. As long as they have to do the mundane task of digging in undesirable conditions, they might as well do it together. Instead of one person only digging in their garden every day, they form groups to dig in different people's gardens every day. This way, one can gossip with their friends while battling weeds and a painful lower back. In exchange for the work, the lady whose garden is being dug will prepare the local brew (a fermented maize drink) for everyone. A few ladies will start digging at 8am and others will join the group as they are able. They dig until midday when they stop and relax under a shade tree while partaking of mes (the drink mentioned above). By the afternoon it's too hot to dig and everyone goes home to do chores.

I was too late the day I went to group work with my hoe. Everyone was already sitting, drinking mes & chatting. But I threw the hoe a few strokes anyway and listened to them laugh at me. [Side note: it's indispensable to be able to laugh at yourself with others when living in another culture...inevitably....they will laugh at you.] A few of the group kindly got up and showed me the 'proper' way to hoe the ground. And each of them had a different 'proper' way to do it. Eventually the hoe was taken away from me and was in use by someone else. For some reason, they don't like to see me doing manual labor. They want me to sit in the shade and let others do the work. I appreciate that kindness, although it probably comes from their view of my weakness. I have it in my mind to prove them wrong on this point.

Anyway, I did sit and chat with them. They asked when I wanted them to come and dig in my garden. Now, the small kitchen garden in our compound doesn't need a group of 25 ladies working in it but a neighbor had just offered to let us use some of his land to plant a wider variety of grains & veg this year. Thinking of this, I agreed that they should come the following Friday. But I didn't know how to make mes and I wanted to pay them in a different way. They came up with the payment immediately, which told me that they had put some thought into this whole issue before I even showed up at the garden. The Ik aren't stupid....they know how to formulate plans. They wanted salt and lots of it. I agreed.

Friday arrived and I was ready at 8am but no one else was there. I was told that they were still preparing breakfast for the children and doing morning chores. By 9am, two women had showed up and we walked down to my 'rented' garden plot. I say 'rented' because the neighbor who owns the garden is going to get to split everything that grows there with us. The neighbor pointed out the plot to us and then left, but sent his wife to join our group. And we started digging. Every 15 minutes it seemed, a few more women would find their way to us. By 11am, we had 24 women digging side by side. Sleeping babies were laid in the dirt and covered with blankets while mothers dug near-by. When one awoke, she/he would get fed and strapped to the back. They begged me to sit in the shade and supervise but I was stubbornly trying to show them that I could dig for hours just like them. My back and arms complained to me for two days after that.We dug for four hours and then called it quits. And yes, we did take frequent breaks between the swing of hoes. I tiredly trudged up the hill to our house with two hoes on my shoulder and a backpack strapped on. The first order of business was a bath as I was covered in dirt & ash. They burn the grasses in their gardens before digging and the ash sticks to everything. While I headed to the privacy of our bathroom, the other ladies headed to the borehole (public well) to bathe. Then they followed me up to our compound, all requesting some pain medicine for their aching bodies. And as I passed them Ibuprofen and cups of water, I knew that every one of them was worth their salt.

Ecstasy of Curiosity

2011-04-08T23:52:00.000-07:00

Zoos are cruel. Not only because they cage wild animals, but because those animals are subjected to intense scrutiny as they go about their mundane lives. It's not like you're going to see an exciting lion hunt in a zoo. No, most likely you'll be lucky to see the majestic beast yawn in sheer boredom. In the wild, such animals at least have the option of disappearing. But not in a cage.

We know a little of what it must be like to be one of the more intelligent animals in a zoo. On average, at least half of our day here in Timu is spent in a cage-like environment: our home compound. It's about 25 meters by 25 meters, with a chain-link fence and two gates.

A major pastime of the local children is coming to watch us through the fence. They swing by on the way to school for a quick morning look, like a visual bowl of cocoa puffs, hoping to catch a glimpse of us through an open window. After school, they come again for a longer, more satisfying gander, like an after-school high-protein snack. And like a lion in a zoo, we don't have to DO anything to be particularly interesting. Our mere existence is somehow inherently enthralling.

There is something almost obscene about having one's exit from one's house be an extremely noteworthy event. (Now I know why those snakes at the zoo never leave their little caves...) I build up my psychological courage and step outside the door to a chorus of whispered ntsuo 'a ke, ntsuo 'a ke! 'There he is, there he is!' I timidly shuffle to the shed or wherever it is I am going and return quickly to the house, like a spooked snow leopard, to a chorus of k'aa hok, k'aa hok! 'he's gone in the house, he's gone in the house!' Back to my cave I go.

I really can't blame the kids. Instead of mud houses, we have stone houses. Instead of a fence made of sticks and logs, ours is made of metal and wires. Instead of one's two feet or a cheap Chinese bicycle, we have a shiny (well, it used to be, before the graffiti...), fascinating automobile. Our skin and hair are different. We talk a funny language. We do weird things, like stay in the house during the day, fiddle with weird objects, and other inscrutable activities. We are interesting to see.

But, to be honest, it feels dehumanizing. To be the victim of 'an ecstasy of curiosity', as Burton puts it (British explorer of East Africa), is not pleasant, at least for my personality type. But even though it feels that way, it's really not. In our American culture, staring is quite rude, but we're told that in other societies, staring is a way of showing how much you care. Leaving aside the potentially exploitative nature of being 'cared for' in this way, the kids here really have the right perspective.

You see, all human beings might rightly be the objects of an ecstatic curiosity, not because we are strange and weird cross-culturally, but because we are the crown of creation. Every human being IS glorious for the simple reason of being made in God's image. If only we all, like these children, could maintain an attitude of marvel at our fellow human beings, then we would probably treat everyone with more love and respect. My challenge is to learn to see those children at the fence as inherently enthralling because God made each one of them to hold eternity in their minds and hearts, to embody the cosmos, to incarnate the Spirit of Christ once again in the world today. Then, when they come over for a good stare, I can say ntuo 'a ki, ntuo 'a ki! 'There they are, there they are!'

(Oh, and it always helps us to get OUT of the cage.)

Next time you go to the zoo, say 'hi' to the animal, nod your head respectfully, see as much as you can in a couple of seconds, then, please, move on to the next exhibit. Trust me, if they could, the animals would thank you for it.

A full quiver

2011-04-04T02:30:00.000-07:00

Although I don't have children yet, I have enough little Ik playmates to keep me busy all day long. Sometimes I almost feel like a full-time mom. Before school started we'd have children at our compound from morning till evening. But with school in session, the children are kept busy until early afternoon when they slowly find their way to us. They usually just stand at the fence and monitor our actions like a hawk. Apparently, we're the best show in town. At times, we feel like caged monkeys in a zoo. It can be a bit unsettling. But for the most part, we love these kids and want to pour good things into their lives.
This is Kusam making a funny face for the camera. He was helped out by a friend.
Nakiru, Nancy, Kuku & baby Jacob are sitting on our driveway and making beaded jewelry.
We have this huge beautiful pink flower that spreads wide when it blossoms. They're usually promptly picked and used as hats. Lina & Namongo are modeling for me.
This boy was taking a break from his long hike between villages. He's carrying kernels of dried maize home but wanted to see what was going on in our compound.
Terrill was doing some yard clean-up last Friday afternoon. Since we already had a group of children watching, we put them to work. Terrill used a wheelbarrow to fill in an old latrine with dirt. The childrens' job was to stomp the dirt down once it was poured into the hole. At one point there were about ten kids in the hole, singing and dancing as they stomped. These kids usually have a song at the ready for when an occasion calls for it.
We had some extra loose dirt that the kids were digging in. Terrill showed them how to bury each other as if it were sand at a beach. Thomas was a good sport about being buried but we had to monitor the other children as they tried to put dirt in the ears and mouth of the poor volunteer as well.
Towards the end of the work day the children began to tire. After several hours of playing, trying to talk with them, hugging & holding their hands....I was glad to send them back to their parents.

And so begins the change of seasons

2011-03-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

It started raining this week. We haven't seen a good downpour yet but we've had drizzly rains for the past few days. The temperature has also dropped into the 60's during the day...which is chilly for us considering the wind speeds on the top of our ridge.

The air is buzzing with excitement. It's planting time! Every time we see people now, they're either coming from or going to their gardens to plant. The only tools available are common hoes. The can buy the hoe head in Kaabong and then make a handle for it themselves. I know we've written about gardening before but it's just such a dominant activity here that I can't help but talk about it.

I honestly don't know if this is the 'real' beginning to rainy season. As we all know, the weather is unpredictable. Pastor Jacob made his own prediction today. He thinks this is a false start to rainy season which happens often. Regardless, the ground is currently soft and getting planted by everyone who can get their hands on seeds. The Ik are planting pumpkins, maize & beans. Terrill & I have started by planting some snow peas, bell peppers, watermelon & cilantro. Once we make some nursery beds, we'll also plant onions, carrots, tomatoes and red beets. I'm still not sure what grows best up here but we keep trying new things. We've been burying our compost (old food stuffs) in our garden all during dry season, so hopefully this will improve on the quality of veg that comes up.
The beginning of rainy season and just a few things growing in our small kitchen garden.
We planted these banana trees & the avocado last year. They didn't grow much during dry season but I have a feeling they'll shoot up in the next few months.
These onions were a little surprise that came up recently. They are the result of our onions seeding last year and dropping before we collected them.
This pumpkin plant came up as a result of our composting. I have a feeling that the ground is holding a few more surprises for us.
During rainy season, there is a fine mist that covers the mountain that we call gozho (Ik word). Actually, 'fine mist' is too delicate a name for the thick clouds that cover us. Sometimes they are so thick that we can't see very far in front of us. Tonight gozho has descended on us and will probably not lift until the sun returns.

The Bald Mountain

2011-03-11T06:40:00.000-08:00

At least that's what its Karamojong name, Morungole, means. It's a good enough name since the summit is above the tree-line. Three years ago, I tried to climb Morungole with a friend but failed. We started too late in the morning and didn't have enough food and water. The rapid ascent, dehydration, and weakness exacerbated what should've been only minor effects from the altitude: I started getting a headache and tunnel vision. Disappointed at not reaching the top, we had to turn around and head back down.

At approximately 9000 feet above sea level, Morungole is the highest mountain in our district. From its lofty vistas you can see well into three countries: Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda. The northern and western slopes of the mountain are claimed by Kidepo National Park, while the southern and eastern slops fall within a national forest. The Ik and Karamojong people who live on the mountain don't seem perturbed by this, though, and so far the government has let them stay. There they farm their potatoes, cabbages, corn, and beans, enjoying ample rainfall and bubbling brooks. Staying high on the mountain protects them from bush-dwelling marauders, though the distance between their villages and the foot of the mountain makes education for children and healthcare hard to get.

Where Morungole begins to rise from the valley floor, the land is covered in woodland forest. As the altitude increases, the ravines and gorges, carved out by streams over eons of time, are draped in rainforest, complete with towering hardwoods, vines, and moss-carpeted rocks.

On the upper slopes, the forest gives way to afro-alpine shrub-land, dotted with stands of Portuguese cypress clothed in moss and lichen.

With Amber gone to Kampala for a women's conference over the weekend, I took the chance to retry Morungole. I picked up an Ik friend and headed out to the village of Usake, at the foot of the mountain. A large group of people met us there, first to gawk at the foreigner speaking a few phrases in their language, and second to see what 'good things' they could get out of the foreigner.

Partway up the mountain, it started to rain through a shroud of cold mist. But since I was already soaked in sweat, I didn't mind at all. At each village we passed, we repeated the same act: greeting in Ik (met with stares and giggles of amazement), giving packets of salt as gifts, and trying to explain why I didn't want to take the night there (it was only mid-afternoon after all...but the people just don't understand what is so interesting about the top of a mountain). Our impromptu guide eventually lost the trail, or so he said, so we were forced to take the night in a village. The family we imposed upon was kind enough to offer us a hut all to ourselves, but all the same, the mice and rats made plenty sure I got no sleep.

Fortunately, high mountain air and adrenaline have a way of mitigating the effects of sleep deprivation. Following an old man and two young boys, we reached the summit of Morungole at 9:00 am that morning. At the rocky peak, if the 40-50 mph wind didn't do it, the view certainly could take your breath away.

Just below the peak, I thought to myself: "This is it. Today I am actually making it to the top!" It was a moment of personal victory and profound satisfaction. Now, whenever I glance over at that jagged-topped mountain from our home in Timu, I will remember the struggle and the victory. And that will be worth it all.

There are things we take for granted...

2011-03-03T08:42:00.001-08:00

...like water. I had just always thought it would be available. And then one day, the borehole (well) in our village broke. It was broken for nearly a month before the government engineers finally came up to fix it. We were actually lucky to have it fixed in that 'short' amount of time. Another borehole in a near-by village was broken for months on end. Don't get me wrong...I am SO thankful that someone came to fix the borehole...no matter the amount of time it took.
During the month of having a broken borehole, the girls of our village had their days filled up with finding ways to acquire water. Water truly is life. Everything stops without it. No cooking, eating, drinking, washing, brewing beer, mudding the walls of their houses...everything!

Terrill & I were blessed to have a half-full water tank at our house that provided us with water during that month. But I was interested in seeing what everyone else had to do. I walked with my young friends down to their water source one day.
We walked down a steep hill to a dry riverbed. The young children had fun sliding down the dusty hill on their backsides.
While waiting her turn to collect water, my friend Kuku showed me how to climb trees barefooted and in a skirt. Quite a skill.
The make-shift watering hole was dug several feet into the ground under a bed of large rocks. The girls would climb down into the hold where water was dripping off the roots of some plant. The hole was cramped and the water polluted.
The water dripped into a muddy puddle. The girls used an old laundry detergent bucket to pick up water and pour it into their jerry cans.
Another activity while awaiting their turn to collect water was to bathe. Alice is demonstrating how they scrape their skin with a rock to get it clean. It works much like a pumice...except they use the rock everywhere they have skin. I noticed that the skin was definitely clean but also dry and scaly by the time they were finished. Some girls had skin flaking off. They attribute this problem to illness but I may have to address the vigor with which they scrub themselves with rocks some day.
When the bathing and filling up water buckets is finished, the girls heave buckets onto their heads and start up the steep incline. The whole routine of going to fetch water and get it home takes at least two hours per trip.
And the result: a bucket of dirty water. But water is water and even this polluted source of water ensures the peoples' survival.
Please think twice the next time you turn on a faucet and clean water pours forth. You are truly blessed! Pray for those who spend their lives finding water to survive.

Lochiyo Gabriel (197?-2011): R.I.P.

2011-02-23T09:09:00.002-08:00

Last night a special Ik friend of ours, Lochiyo Gabriel (pictured on the right), died in the hospital from complications linked to HIV-AIDS. He left behind his Karamojong wife, Alice, and two young children.

Lochiyo was the second Ik person we ever met (the first for Amber) and the first we met in Karamoja (March 2008). While staying with our friends, Jacob & Georgia Reed, for five weeks in Kaabong, I linked up with Lochiyo to start researching the Ik language. Sometimes I met with Lochiyo at the Reeds' house, sometimes in town.

I particularly remember two occasions with him. The first was when we met in a dusty school classroom full of broken desks and pored over Ik words scrawled in rough linguistic notation. A couple of Karamojong boys stared through the open door at what must have been an odd sight: a white man and a Teuso (Ik) uttering unrecognizable syllables and writing them down. The second occasion I clearly remember was when we were doing our work on the back porch of the Reeds' house. Amber had picked up Lochiyo from town, bought three chapattis (like tortillas) at a local restaurant, and handed them to Lochiyo to carry on the way home. When I sat down with Lochiyo at the table, he pulled out the three chapattis, rolled them up together in a great wad, and took a big bite out of them. A bit shocked, I asked him if he knew those chapattis were for all three of us. He just shrugged his shoulders, gave a sly smile, and said---the now infamous line---"bad luck for you". That simple phrase was seared into our psyche and was a more than adequate introduction to the different social norms we were to encounter.

With Lochiyo's help, I collected 1700 Ik words which formed the basis for the Ik writing system. That system is now, after three years, nearing completion. I'm going to dedicate the alphabet to him.

After those early days working with Lochiyo, we rarely saw him except in passing. But when we did, he was always kind and gentle with us. We very much appreciated the way he related to us; his demeanor was not something we could take for granted. We will certainly miss seeing him from time to time in town, when he used to stop us for a quick greeting.

When Lochiyo was hired as the Chief for the Ik parishes within Kalapata Sub-County, he became the first Ik ever in history (to our knowledge) to hold a government post. As the Ik people's newly-formed sub-county takes shape over the next year or two, we should not forget the quiet but foundational contributions made by Lochiyo.

With his family we mourn the passing of Lochiyo. May he rest in peace in the Everlasting Arms.

Beauty from Ashes

2011-02-21T01:19:00.001-08:00

Every year the Ik burn the grass around their villages and gardens. The reasons they do this are two-fold: sometimes they are hunting small animals (cane rats or antelopes) and better able to catch them during a fire...but more likely than not, the Ik burn the grass because they think their crops will grow better if there is ash in the soil. Also, burning saves them the hard work of cutting down the grass manually which would take days.

At first I was a bit unsure about fires burning around our house as I have no idea about how to handle a fire if it got out of control. Thankfully, the Ik are masters of controlling fires. They may not go to school, but they've learned how to manipulate their environments in the school of life. If a fire is coming close to a village, the Ik will start another fire near the village to stop the first fire. I'm sad to say that this technique does not always work as planned. Three weeks ago, a fire got out of control near a village and couldn't be stopped. It started burning the village and when some people went back to salvage their belongings, five of them got caught in the fire and died.

It always makes me a little sad to see the fires burning. It symbolizes death & destruction in my mind. The hills of old, dead grass are suddenly gone...replaced by black nothingness and a soot that stays in the air for days. But the Ik don't mourn the change. They know that very soon a bright green will sprout forth from the ground. The dead grass is replaced by new life, only made possible through the fire. I feel a spiritual lesson coming on but I know it's one we've heard many times so I'll just leave these pictures as a reminder. Death is necessary for new life. After the burning rituals, it never fails to amaze me what beauty can rise up when least expected.

A little extra something

2011-02-05T05:54:00.000-08:00

Some people call it good luck, others call it good fortune. In the language of faith, we might call it blessings or grace. What I'm talking about is that 'little extra something', those little twists and turns of fate and providence that 'make our day', those quirks of life that are above and beyond what we need to merely survive. I think all people experience this thing I'm hinting at, but learning to recognize them and be thankful for them doesn't always come easily.

This week Amber and I have received 'a little extra something' in the area of transportation. We came down to Kampala on Monday to have a break, buy supplies, and pick up visitors. We decided to fly down instead of drive, so all week we've had to rely on either our legs or public transport to get around. Using public transport can be frustrating, tiring, and risky (not to mention expensive...), but this week our travel was touched with 'a little extra something' that made me pause, smile, and be thankful. I want to tell you about just three scenarios.

Coming back from Jinja, we were waiting for a 'taxi', a mini-van that carries 14 passengers, has no seat-belts, often speeds, and is generally uncomfortable and unsafe. Before we could board one, a small privately-owned car stopped and offered us a ride for the same price. The ride was comfortable, at a decent speed, and we arrived in Kampala safe and sound. That was the first scenario.

A day later we were walking out of our guesthouse to find a motorcycle taxi to take us to find a larger mini-van taxi to take us to Entebbe. Just as we stepped outside the guesthouse gate, the guesthouse manager was pulling in with his vehicle. He asked us if we needed a ride somewhere. We said 'yes', and he took us to the taxi stage, about a twenty-minutes' drive away. That was the second scenario.

Yesterday we needed to pick up some visitors from the bus station. They were supposed to arrive between 8:00-10:00 p.m. but got delayed until 3:00 a.m. I was planning to walk down the hill in the evening, hire one of the many taxis in the area, and go get them. But during the early hours of the morning, I knew taxis would be harder to find, and I didn't relish the idea of riding around on a motorcycle taxi, or walking on foot, looking for one. Then I called a guy whose number I had had in my phone since 2008. I knew he ran a taxi service. Even though he had just got back from a job at midnight, and with me calling him at 1:00 a.m....AND though he had a long trip to take today, he agreed to take us to pick up our visitors. That was the third scenario.

These examples of 'a little extra something' in our transportation ordeals may seem simple or silly, but they didn't escape my notice and I didn't want them to escape mention either.

What it takes to get a bride-Part 2

2011-01-24T06:28:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the story about the marriage negotiations back in December? This is Rose. She's lived next door to us for several weeks now and we're getting to know her. She has a quiet spirit and is very helpful around the house. She's been at the village next door ever since the men stole her away in December. So this is what happened after negotiations. A price was settled upon and the families drank mes (the local brew) together. The next day, her family returned home. At one point, she 'officially' walked through the door of her groom's brother's village and they sprinkled water on her from a calabash. Water sprinkling is meant as a blessing. Then it was over. Her husband started living with her and she is now pregnant.

Traditionally, there were many more rituals to a woman entering a man's household. She would have to put heavy beads around her neck, waist & head and wear an animal skin around her waist. She would visit the many villages of the man's relatives and serve them wherever she went. Mes would be prepared in massive amounts and a celebration would last for days. We would be able to hear singing and know they were dancing late into the night. It did not happen this way for Rose. When I asked why, I was told that the relatives were upset that the marriage negotiations weren't handled in the appropriate way to start with and so they did not follow through with all the marriage traditions. They are officially married in the eyes of their fellow Ik, although maybe not by the Ugandan government. But the last time I checked, the government wasn't too concerned with who has marriage certificates and who doesn't.

Daniel marries Kristin

2011-01-18T02:08:00.000-08:00

Our good friend and house helper, Kristin, got married last Saturday and I wanted to give you a glimpse of a Karamojong wedding. I call this a 'town' wedding because she got married in a church and it wasn't a 'village' celebration like some weddings are. Both she & her new husband, Daniel, are Christians who attend the Church of Uganda (Anglican) in Kaabong. I won't go over all the details of the wedding, but maybe bring up some interesting traditions. The day started at 4am for the cooks but 7am for me & Terrill. Above: Daniel is sitting on the left with a friend and having his breakfast before going to the church. Breakfast included hot, sweet tea and fresh chapatis (flat bread). The wedding party had a base of operations at a friend's house. Both bride & groom were there early, interacting and dressing. They don't have any superstitions about seeing each other before the ceremony. The bride was getting her hair curled and plastered to her head by a local hairdresser, and the groom was pacing restlessly most of the morning. As is typical in Africa, everything was running late. They planned to start the wedding at 10am but didn't leave for the church until 11:30am.
These flowers are borrowed and used by many a bride in Kaabong. I'm sure they were cleaned and hung on the line to dry.
Kristin was a beautiful, glowing bride. When dressed, Kristin sat quietly in a dark room until she was called out to the wedding cars. She had one attendant (bridesmaid) who was instructing her what to do and when to do it. I mentioned above that her hair was plastered to her head. What I meant by that is that the hairdresser applied finger nail polish to certain parts of her hair to make it sparkle and stay in place. I would not suggest this for a westerner's hair.
Being good friends, the couple requested that we allow them to use our vehicle to transport their wedding party to the church. There were two vehicles that got decorated with multi-colored ribbons and bows. During our first trip to the church, the vehicles were loaded with men only. We were asked to drive through town and pass all the government buildings, honking our horn constantly and waving to everyone we passed. It was quite a show. Next we took the women of the wedding party and did the same thing, going a bit slower so everyone could admire the bride. When we got to the church, people were inside and out, shouting and dancing. There must have been at least 300 people in attendance, spilling out of a small church. The wedding party lined up in pairs. There were nine flower girls, followed by the bride, followed by her attendant who faithfully held up her veil. The procession walked slowly and in rhythm. It took a good twenty minutes to get the bride to the front of the church.

The wedding coordinator instructed the girls on how to walk.

The church was decorated with streamers, ribbons & bows of all colors. People didn't want to sit down, even when instructed to because they wanted to see what was happening at the front. Relatives and honored guests were escorted to seats in the front to witness the ceremony. Terrill & I chose to sit in the back so as not to make a spectacle of ourselves. We were reprimanded later by the couple because they wanted us in the front as well. Although I was taking a few pictures, three other men also had video cameras, so I figured they'd get enough coverage. The vows themselves were concise and over quickly. When the microphone was handed to the couple for them to confirm what was being said, women broke out in the typical African ululation. The people cheered and ululated at every important moment of the ceremony. An elder of Kristin's family went forward to lift her veil over her face. Daniel was asked if this was really the woman he wanted to marry. He confirmed it was and more cheers were heard. (It reminded me of the Bible story retelling the events of Jacob's marriage to Leah instead of Rachel. I wonder if this practice is a safe-guard from that happening again?)

After an hour-long sermon, the couple stepped forward to sign their marriage certificate at a table in front of everyone. More cheering. Then it was time for gifts. A practice that I've seen more than once in Uganda is this: people get in a line and present their gifts to the couple while they are giving congratulations. I don't know why it's so important that the couple receives the gift directly from the hands of the giver, but it seems to be. I had forgotten my gift and it was the first thing I heard from Kristin after the ceremony. She was hoping for us to come forward as well.
We had to giggle to ourselves when seeing multiple goats and chickens presented to the couple at the alter. The mother of one young goat had to brought in as well because it was still nursing.
And then the ceremony came to an end. It was 3pm.
The lady on the left is wearing traditional Karamojong dress. It is considered appropriate and even desired to come to a wedding like this: your skirt must swish as you dance and your beads must be piled high in adorning your waist, neck, arms, ears and head.
The groom & bride both had one attendant each. They were beside the couple throughout the ceremony.
Just as they entered, they exited in procession. Walking very slowly and to a rhythm, no smiles were seen on these faces. All were solemn.
The new couple weren't allowed to smile yet....until they got into the wedding vehicles.

We drove back to the base of operations so the bride could change clothes for the reception. But first, yhey wanted to take a few pictures. One of the required photos was Daniel picking Kristin up while in her wedding dress.

When Kristin went inside to change, the sodas were brought out. Each child in the party received 1/2 a liter of soda (mostly fanta orange) to guzzle down before returning to the church, where the reception was held. I laughed when the wedding coordinator ordered the children to drink quickly so they could return to the church quickly. In my mind, drinking quickly meant that all 14 children would need the bathroom soon after and it would not make things go quickly.

Kristin re-emerged in a lovely blue evening gown and everyone piled into the vehicles to return to the reception. I'll admit it...I didn't go to the reception. It was already 3:30pm by reception time and I was tired. Since Terrill was driving the wedding party, he had to go but did it graciously. The procession walked slowly into the church once again and sat at the front while waiting for food. Since I don't know many details about this part, I'll stick with the basics. Food was brought out on platters and people rushed for it. Some didn't even use plates but grabbed handfuls. A cow had been slaughtered for the occasion and this was very special, something that happens rarely for people. There was also a cake, decorated with the words "Daniel marries Kristin". I heard that the couple cut a piece and fed it to each other. As Daniel & Kristin returned again to the base of operations to change again and head to their first honeymoon location, the party really got going. Daniel's relatives were said to go heavy on the homebrew and sing and dance until the following morning. That's celebration Karamojong style! They know how to party!

If you think this blog post is loooonnnggg, you should've been at this wedding!

When Strangers Become Friends

2011-01-05T23:53:00.001-08:00

As surprising as it may sound, we often receive visitors to our remote little corner of Uganda. Whether they are related to us and come out of strong familial ties or just believers who want to come and make a difference in the world, we usually have a wonderful time and end up blessed by our visitors. This happened once again this past December. Two nursing students from our home church in Tallahassee came over for three weeks to spend time with us & the Ik and get a taste of what life is like on the mission field. Jenna & Taylor came as strangers to us as we'd never met them before but by the end of our time together, they were dear friends.

They helped me to run the clinic, put on a garage sale for a bunch of coats/sweaters that was collected & sent over from our home church & measure about 160 children for school uniforms. On top of that, they washed countless dishes, played with countless children and were always available to lend a hand. I actually found that I had more energy & enthusiasm than usual while they were with us. God reminded me just how much I need friends & fellowship even in a remote part of the world, because when I have them I feel like a healthier individual. It reaffirms the notion that (wo)man was not made to live alone...we were created to be in fellowship...to love and be loved. I just want to take this opportunity to thank Jenna & Taylor for pouring into our lives this past Christmas. My dad used to say that he didn't know any strangers, just friends he hadn't met yet. Maybe there's something to that.

All-purpose nets

2011-01-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

Mosquito nets are like the quintessential charitable donation to the developing world. And that’s why the large donors like them. They are cheap. They are simple. They are light. The prevent malaria, one of the world’s deadliest diseases. They require little instruction and little follow-up. They are mosquito nets, for crying out loud. Who wouldn’t want to use them, and who wouldn’t know how to use them? And what looks better to the donors than a mass-distribution of pieces of white netting that instantly save thousands of lives?

Well, we have discovered that these mosquito nets are used a lot, just not always quite in the way the donors and distributors intended. That’s okay, right? With the help of others working in Karamoja (you know you who you are), we’ve compiled a little list of what these all-purpose nets, ahem, excuse me, mosquito nets are being used for throughout the region. Here goes:

-to catch minnows
-to catch white-ants
-to cover young livestock
-to protect young tree saplings
-to cover this year’s grain harvest
-to strain homebrew beer
-to make the seat in homemade chairs
-to pad the ground for sitting or sleeping
-to tie grass for thatching roofs (see photo)
-to use as the rope for a tree swing
-to make wedding decorations
-to make the bride’s wedding veil

Oh, and of course:

-to keep mosquitoes off the body at night

So, besides all the advantages of mosquito nets listed in the first paragraph, add that they are incredibly useful for a wide variety of challenges life throws one’s way.

And THAT, my friends, is why the ALL-PURPOSE NET is the quintessential charitable donation to the developing world.

Buddy (1999-2011)

2011-01-01T00:21:00.000-08:00

Early this New Year's morning, our beloved dog Buddy passed away. About six months ago he started showing signs of pain while eating. By three months ago, he was having a hard time keeping anything down. By last month, he couldn't keep anything down, even water, and was wasting away. He was finally diagnosed with a diaphragmatic hernia. Such a hernia is only correctible by surgery, but given the 50% survival rate and Buddy's age, the vet said it wouldn't be a good idea. Two days ago, Buddy's strength had waned to the point he couldn't move any more. Last night, on our back porch-that place he always tried to get to because it is closer to us-he gave up the struggle at last.

Missionaries brought Buddy, a brown mixed terrier, to Karamoja ten years ago, when he was a young dog. Since then, Buddy has been the loyal companion and vigilant watchdog for four different families. Buddy was there for all of us when we were discouraged; he would happily and noisily welcome us home and patiently listen if we bore our hearts to him. With the first clink of the gate's padlock, a chorus of barking would come from Buddy. At night, he would listen intently and bark at any strange noise, whether it was the toilet flushing or a warrior treading softly by outside the fence.

No one can tell how many times Buddy saved us and this property from robbery. On May 27th, 2008, Buddy certainly saved us from armed robbery. It was our third night alone in Karamoja. Three goats in the neighbor's yard attracted the attention of armed livestock thieves. They cut the fence, shot at our night guard twice, and stole the goats, all the time yelling drunken threats at us. Before they broke in, Buddy had been barking for two or three hours. The thieves gained access to all main areas of the larger compound, except for our inner yard where Buddy was patrolling.

Thank you, Buddy, for being such a wonderful dog. We, and all your previous masters, will miss you dearly. You have been a living symbol of the security and continuity offered by the Red Roof Inn (Baptist Mission) to wandering souls like ourselves. Rest in peace.

Buddy in the background, with Fujo, our strong young dog who will try to follow in Buddy's footsteps.

For a touching testimony about the kind of dog Buddy was, click here.

The Old Way (Part 3)

2010-12-16T10:29:00.000-08:00

Bush pigs! The young boys who had gone into the gorge to flush out game scrambled to get out of the way. Twice the pigs tried to run out of the high grass, but seeing hunters ready for them, turned back into cover. Then, a huge hog burst out of the grass right in front of me. The Ik to my left threw his spear, missing, and I did the same. The boar veered sharply back down into the gorge. About that time, a smaller pig took off up the hill on the opposite side. One hunter launched his spear and missed. A second hunter found his mark; the spear pierced the pig high and toward its hindquarters, coming out the other side. It kept running but then tumbled down another steep embankment out of my sight.

Once the small pig was ‘in the bag’, or as the Ik say, had ƙaa akak ‘gone into the mouth’, the other hunters shifted their attention to the two pigs that got away. Before I knew it, I was nearly the last man on the ridge. I took off after the others, huffing and puffing in the mountain air. As I crested the next ridge, the hunters had already begun surrounding a stretch of riverbed in a wide gorge. Apparently, the big boar had tried to hide himself in the overgrown riverbed. It took no more than five minutes for the dogs to find him.

By the time I reached the scene, the dogs had cornered the boar against the steep riverbank. Ik dogs are small, about the size of a beagle, so are not capable of bringing down a pig of this size. But they are brave! (When an Ik dog makes its first and second successful kill, it gets the tip of an ear sliced off as a badge of honor (see photo)).

In the midst of shouting, barking, squealing, yelping, and snorting, I tried to position myself to video the climax of the hunt. The old boar managed to flip a young dog on its back and was trying hard to disembowel it with its four-inch tusks. The dog was yelping bloody-murder, for good reason. A quick hunter threw his spear at such close range it never really left his hand. The spearhead punctured the skin just behind the shoulder, in the vitals. This weakened the ol’ hog but didn’t finish him. It took another spear, an arrow, and about ten whacks with the dull side of a machete for him to give up his ghost!

In all the drama and chaos, no one was quite sure which boar this was of the three we jumped, nor who was the first and second killer (the killers get the lion’s share of the meat, so it’s an important determination). What ensued was a five minute argument that was finally settle by someone up on the hill who had seen everything.

In the blink of an eye, the whole valley was vacated as most of the hunters took off after the ‘one that got away’. I was left with four Ik who immediately set about to butchering and quartering the boar.

An older Ik instructed the younger ones on how to properly divide the cuts among the killers, the elders (who always get the choicest parts), and the rest of us. Another Ik went to get bark from the milk-leaf tree to string up the meat cuts for the journey home (see photo).

We waited for over an hour as the larger group searched in vain for the third pig. They even left the first killed pig undressed for us. The four Ik with me made short work of it, without any complaints (see photo).

Exhausted, I lay down on the charred-grass ground. Somewhere in the distance, a turaco let out its eerie cry that sounds first like a human, then like an ape. Finally, after getting rained on, we heard many voices echoing through the hills as the hunting party approached. They hadn’t found the pig, but they did get a warthog (see photo).

On the way back we stopped at a rather stagnant waterhole, where dogs and men drank side by side (see photo). I bowed out of this opportunity, but the Ik have been getting water from places like this for centuries.

Tired and worried for my wife, who had expected me home five hours ago, I asked a hunter if we were going home. He said ‘no’. First we have to ɟues ‘roast’. Well, at least that will satisfy my hunger! About a half-an-hour’s walk from home, we plopped down our loads in a flat place between two boulders and began collecting firewood. Two bonfires were kindled, and meat of all shapes and sizes was thrown onto them (see photo).

After quite an amount of meat was consumed in a rather unofficial manner, the official procedure began. All the hunters divided themselves into four groups, according to their age-sets: young boys, young men, middle-aged men, older men, and well...me, that guy that didn’t fit any category because of being a foreigner. By the same token, I was offered honored morsels reserved for elderly men only. Most of what I ate was good, though a bit of salt would have really improved it: liver, spleen, heart, skin with fat on it, ribs, etc. The last piece, a bit of undercooked liver with a very strange taste, nearly made me retch. After chewing and spitting out a thick, pinkish-purplish stream of liquified underdone liver, I decided to call it a day.

By then most of the others were satisfied, we packed up one last time and made the hike up the hill to our ridgetop manyattas. As we rounded the last bend in the trail, I asked the hunters to file past me so I could film their triumphant procession. They happily obliged. I too was happy. Happy because I had witnessed what few people witness today: The Old Way. The way humankind eked out their survival before they had knowledge of domesticating plants and animals, before being a carnivor became unfashionable. As far as I can tell, the Ik are excellent hunters: quick, unified, effective. They create solidarity among the men and provide protein for their families at home. But as the modern world encroaches more and more on this land, the Ik will need to adapt to changing times. The advent of the gun has nearly wiped out the once teeming wildlife of this area. It used to be that the Ik could hunt and trap to their hearts’ content without any appreciable impact on the wildlife. But today, this is less true. Eventually laws will need to be put in place to protect the dwindling animals from extinction. And then, a very old way of life will be over.

Blood and blade, tooth and nail...this is The Old Way.

Don’t forget. Animals still die so we can eat meat.

The Old Way (Part 2)

2010-12-14T22:29:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday morning I was outside talking to someone when I noticed men and boys coming from all directions carrying spears, machetes, bows & arrows. Their dogs were trailing eagerly behind them. Since I didn’t have any concrete plans for the morning, I thought I should join these guys on a hunt! I ran home to get Amber’s approval (which she gave, if a bit reluctantly), my hat, some water and a snack, a camera, my spear and machete. Then we were off scurrying down mountain paths toward the valley below. Excitement was in the air.

About thirty hunters in all, the Ik moved into formation once they reached the forested flatland below our ridgetop homes. They split into a V or U-formation with the open end forward and the closed end behind. This way they moved up and down dry riverbeds, looking to flush prey out into the open. Not ten minutes into this march, a small antelope called a duiker rushed out ahead of us at lightning speed. The dogs took off after it but to no avail. It easily escaped. Hunters reprimanded each other for letting one get away. Soon thereafter, a second duiker escaped, this time to the rear. However, also somewhere in the rear, a bit farther back, some teenage boys caught and killed a large rodent called a cane rat (see photo).

Not long after this first, rather meager kill, we heard commotion way back in the rear. I ran toward the sound hoping to catch a bit of action on video. By the time I reached the scene the animal, a reedbuck, had been dispatched. It had been caught in a snare and was finished off when the hunters discovered it. Right then and there, at 10:00 am, they butchered, quartered, and roasted the reedbuck over an open fire, keeping the bulk of the meat for the owner of the snare and enjoying the rest as a meaty brunch. I partook of liver, heart, and some other unrecognizable parts (see photo).

Others enjoyed sucking raw marrow and drinking hot blood right out of the opened chest cavity! (see photos)

Just when we were getting ready to head off again, I spotted a bushbuck bounded by our camp no more than fifty feet away. I yelled “bushbuck!”, but the hunters, still licking their fingers, responded too slowly, and the animal escaped. A bit annoyed that a third antelope had escaped, the group packed up and took off again in a loose, somewhat lopsided formation. Five mintues into it, a third duiker eluded their speartips. By now it was reaching midday and getting hot. We trudged along for an hour or two through the burnt grasslands without seeing anything.

Then, before I really knew what was happening, we reach a rivergorge full of thick brush. The Ik surrounded it, shouting out order to each other. An Ik man and I were covering a small patch of ground on the north end of the gorge. The usual procedure is for the dogs and young boys to enter the brush and flush game out. For reasons unknown to me at the time, neither the dogs nor the boys wanted to go in. Minutes passed. Men shouted at the boys, and finally two of them moved slowly into the underbrush from opposite ends of the gorge. After a couple minutes of suspence, the brush erupted in commotion! Three animals scattered, only visible by the way they pushed up the grass in tunnels as they ran. Spears held ready over shoulders, arrows pulled back on taut strings, shouts!, barking!...

To be continued in the Old Way (Part 3)...

The Old Way (Part 1)

2010-12-12T23:35:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas wrote a book called The Old Way about the Ju/wasi people of the Nyae Nyae region that straddles the modern day border between Namibia and Botswana. She called the book The Old Way because the Ju/wasi are supposed to have been living at the time (1950s) the way humans had lived long before both agriculture and pastoralism. That is, they hunted and gathered. That was the Old Way.

In the sparse literature about the Ik, opinion is divided over whether the Ik are hunter-gatherers or, well, something else. Some sources say the Ik used to be nomadic hunter-gatherers who circulated over a large land area, following seasonal game, fruits, nuts, roots, and water sources. Then they came to lose this lifestyle when their best hunting ground, Kidepo Valley, was made a national park. That is perhaps the most romantic view. Other sources say the Ik have always been farmers as well, and even kept livestock before the Karamojong and Turkana tribes made that activity nearly suicidal.

Today it is a fact that the Ik are both farmers and hunter-gatherers. Much of the year is occupied with digging, planting, weeding, scare-crowing, harvesting, and processing a wide variety of crops. The Ik have a rich and old (i.e. not borrowed from Karamojong) vocabulary dealing with farming topics. They also collect wild honey and white ants to supplement their diet. These two foods figure prominently in their cultural identity. (They also have old vocabulary dealing with livestock, but they still keep nothing larger than a chicken; this is for self-preservation. We follow their example!)

Nevertheless, the Ik also hunt and gather. They have a rich knowledge of the plants that grow in their environment and use them for medicine (with greater or lesser degrees of success), building materials, and, of course, food. Just this past week we were driving through the bushland when an Ik man got excited because a certain kind of large thorntree was putting out new green leaves. He said they boil and eat those leaves in dry season. He said he would mobilize the womenfolk to come there on a gathering foray.

What I’m really getting at, though, is that the Ik hunt. I mean, they hunt hunt. They are hunters, with spears, snares, traps, bows & arrows. I had the amazing privilege of joining a group of thirty Ik men and boys last week for a nine-hour hunt. In The Old Way (Part 2), I will tell the story. Stay tuned!

What it takes to get a bride

2010-12-09T04:50:00.001-08:00

Terrill mentioned in a post on Facebook last night that we were listening to negotiations for a bride price at our neighbor's village. We got quite a few interested responses to this and a friend asked us to blog about it so I'll try to expand on the story a bit.

The brother of our close neighbor & friend is negotiating for a wife. This brother found the girl he wants at a village a couple of hours walk to the west. Well, one custom of the men here is to 'steal' a woman from her village. It's actually a Karamojong custom that the Ik are starting to pick up and practice. So a few days ago, a group of men went to this village to 'steal' away this girl. Supposedly, her brothers came after her (her parents weren't home at the time) and when they got close to Timu (where our neighbor lives and the girl was taken), one of the brother's family members called the army to go after those men. The brothers were beaten and not happy about the situation.

Side note: we have an army garrison stationed in Timu and a few soldiers are usually around to keep the peace. More than once, an Ik has called upon the soldiers for help by falsely accusing other people and getting others in trouble until the truth comes out.

So the girl has been staying in Timu and waiting for her family to come for negotiations. Her name is Rose and she's very sweet.

Rose's family arrived yesterday afternoon. They went straight to our neighbor's village and the negotiations started. There was yelling, threats, sticks being waved around, drinking & speeches. The family was not happy because they said negotiations weren't traditionally carried out this way. A man was supposed to start talking to a woman's family years in advance. He would let them know of his intention and would start negotiating a price and saving up. I honestly don't know what all went on between the two families in advance or what understanding they had. I did hear someone speculate that they think the Ik men stole the girl away because another man was also negotiating for her hand in marriage. Taking her would give them the upper hand. After blowing off a lot of steam, the girl's family named a price of 600,000 Ugandan shillings (currently about $261). Then they 'fined' the family another 200,000 shillings ($87) because the brothers had been beaten by the soldiers for no reason. At the end of the night, peace was made and Lojore was responsible for feeding & housing the girl's family.

We heard the discussion peeking from behind some boulders. We didn't want to make much of a scene because white skin equals money here and because we're our neighbor's 'adopted' clan members, the girl's family might have placed an expectation upon us as well.

What's next? I'm not sure, but stay tuned in to the Ik Love Connection.

How I became a linguist

2010-12-04T02:52:00.000-08:00

Of course there is a sense in which my previous post explains how I became a linguist as well as why. But in this post I just want to outline the more technical training I received over the last ten years, in case some of you are thinking about studying linguistics as well. I got most of my training 2000-2007 at the various SIL schools around the US: SIL at the University of North Dakota, Oregon SIL in Eugene, Oregon, and the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics in Dallas, Texas.

Here below I’ll list the courses I took as a way of familiarizing you with some of what ‘linguistics’ includes:

Articulatory Phonetics (the study of how sounds are physically made and perceived, and how they are written in a special alphabet called the International Phonetic Alphabet)

Morphology & Syntax (the study of how words and sentences, respectively, are formed)

Second Language & Culture Acquisition (as they name implies, a course teaching methods and strategies for learning a foreign language and culture more quickly)

Sociolinguistics (the sociological study of language, i.e. how languages are used in society)

Anthropological Linguistics (the study of language from an anthropological perspective, i.e. the study of language as part of what it means to be human, rather than just language as a system)

Phonology (the study of the psychological or mental side of how speakers produce and perceive the sounds of their language, and how to analyze the system)

Cultural Anthropology (the study of worldviews, cultures, and methods for investigating them)

Historical-Comparative Linguistics (the study of how languages change over time and how languages are ‘genetically’ related)

Language Survey Methods (the study of how to conduct sociolinguistic research to determine what languages and dialects are spoken in a region, and what language development needs they may have)

Field Methods (a course that teaches how to conduct practical field research in linguistics)

Orality & Storytelling (a course teaching about orality, as opposed to literacy, and how oral cultures use stories to communicate)

Discourse Analysis (the study of how words, phrases, and sentences get put together to form larger chunks of language, like paragraphs and whole texts)

Advanced Phonology (a course looking at difficult phonological questions from a theoretical point of view)

Culture, Language & Mind (a course in ‘cognitive anthropology’, i.e. the study of the role of the mind and brain in producing language and culture)

Advanced Grammar (a course in how to analyze syntax (word order/sentence formation) from a certain theoretical perspective)

Semantics & Pragmatics (the study of meaning in language, which includes instruction on how to make a dictionary with good definitions)

Translation (a course introducing Bible translation philosophy and methods)

So much for how I became a linguist. How I became a ‘Bible translator’ further involved courses in Greek, Hebrew, exegesis, and Biblical background studies.

If anybody would like to know more about where to take these kinds of courses, don’t hesitate to contact me. A world of fascinating intellectual adventures awaits you, a world where ‘colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ and where ‘verbing weirds languages’!

Why I became a linguist

2010-12-02T03:17:00.000-08:00

Someone asked on the blog recently if I could comment on why and how I became a linguist. Since one rarely gets an invitation to talk about oneself, I thought I wouldn’t miss this opportunity! You’re a captive audience only if you choose to be! So, here goes the ‘why’ answer:

I became a linguist because a nearly life-long exposure to more than one language gave me an interest in All Things Linguistic. My maternal grandparents spoke Pennsylvania Dutch as their mother tongue, and I remember in early childhood being taught phrases like kansht du deitch shvetsa ‘can you speak Dutch’ and nay, ich kann net ‘no, I cannot’. When I was seven years old, my parents moved us to northwestern Tanzania where my father taught at a college. At first I was shy about going outside in big, scary Africa, but with a little encouragement I went. I remember stepping out on our back porch to play with a group of boys speaking Swahili. And then, I remember being able to speak Swahili. Among the intertribal student population at that college, I also learned basic greetings in the Jita and Dholuo languages.

Fast forward eight years, and our family was back in Tanzania, this time among a predominantly Kiroba community. Now a teenager, it took about three months for my Swahili to ‘come back’. Most of my friends spoke Kiroba as their first language, so by the end of two years I could understand quite a bit of simple conversation in that language. During those two years, my interest in languages fairly exploded. While studying French as part of my home-school curriculum, I also dove into German and Greek for fun. At daily ‘chai time’ mid-morning, I used to haul a massive Hebrew Bible to the table and gaze hungrily over the commentary written in Latin, French, and German. By the end of those years in Tanzania, which was nearly the end of my high-school education, I was starting to think I wanted a career that involved languages and cultures.

Oddly enough, my first two years of college involved no special training in languages, apart from the normal requirements of English writing and literature. Because I wasn’t sure what major to pursue in college, and because I was itching to travel again, I took a year off to participate in a Christian young-adult program that included spiritual training and a trip to a foreign country. Our team of four young folks was assigned to Kazakhstan. Our mission: share the love of Jesus Christ in the context of friendships, language learning (Kazakh and Russian), and language teaching (English). In Aktau, a city located on the shores of the Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan and whose name means ‘white mountain’ (funny, since there were no mountains, let alone white mountains, anywhere to be seen), I lived with a Muslim Kazakh family. For five months I did my best to learn Kazakh mostly and a bit of Russian on the side. We had to leave the country earlier than planned, so to complete our time, we stayed in northern France for a month. These experiences with kind and fascinating people left me burning with a desire to learn more Russian and French. As a result, I went back to the university, majored in French, and minored in Russian (and no, there’s not a lot of Russian or French spoken in northeast Uganda...).

The summer before I went to Kazakhstan, I attended a six-week course in linguistics hosted by SIL at the University of North Dakota. Those four years in Africa had prepared me well for those courses in that I had examples of what they were teaching in my head from real-life experience. The time there was actually quite exhilarating for me, and I believe I walked away from there reasonably sure that I wanted a career with SIL.

That was in the summer of 2000 and is in some ways only half the story, but it does point out why I became a linguist. If you read between the lines, you may discern a few themes. One, I became a linguist because people I loved spoke languages I couldn’t understand. To love them better, I wanted to know those languages. Two, I became a linguist because each of the roughly 7000 languages in the world is a unique way to speak of and understand the world we live in. When I hear a foreign language spoken, its mystery and beauty beckon me to it so that I too can see the world in its light and speak with those who share that light. Three, I became a linguist because I just love the different sounds and systems of other languages; each language has a unique nature that somehow fits the people who speak it and the environment it’s spoken in. Finally, I became a linguist because I wanted a vocation that combined what I enjoy (language) with what God is doing somewhere in the world (spirit development, which is occasionally helped along by language development).

Thanks for asking!

Watch your tone (Part 3)

2010-11-28T11:12:00.000-08:00

Two reasons compelled me to take six whole weeks to investigate Ik tone (and it wasn’t long enough!). First, for science and posterity, I wanted to give the language the descriptive attention it deserves. That includes the long delayed description of tone. Second, for language development, I needed to understand the tone system to know if or how to write tone in the writing system.

Although quite a bit of linguistic work on Ik had already been done before we arrived on the scene, the tone system itself had been largely neglected. In 2009 we created a ‘trial alphabet’ despite the fact that we hadn’t gotten to the bottom of the tone question. Uneasy about that, I jumped at the opportunity to attend a workshop led by an expert in African tone systems, Keith Snider. At this point after the workshop, I have a pile of data, much of which is still not analyzed. Hopefully in the next few months I’ll be able to take a close look at the data and write up the results. Then, the following statement I wrote in a paper almost two years ago will no longer be true!

Ik is a tonal language, but because the tone system has yet to be adequately analyzed, it will not be dealt with here.

With my current level of understanding, I don’t think we’ll need to indicate tones in the writing system, at least not extensively. Ik nouns and verbs can take a few suffixes and can get quite long, thus providing enough information to let the reader know what the word is (and knowing the word, the reader will know the tone as well). Also, though tones are involved in the grammar, no grammatical meanings rely solely on tone changes. Instead, the rely on tone plus word order, or tone plus an affix. So the word order or affix may be enough to signal the reader as to which tone is called for. All this needs to be tested with real live readers!

An ongoing project over the next how many years will be the Ik dictionary. In the dictionary, I’d like to indicate the tones of each word to help non-native speakers know how to pronounce the words. Otherwise we’d be lost!

At any point we decide to write tone, I expect we’ll mark High tone with an accent aigu (á) and leave Low tone unmarked (a).

Watch your tone (Part 2)

2010-11-27T03:12:00.001-08:00

So, what did we find out about the Ik tone system? First, we discovered that Ik has four basic tone 'melodies': High (H), Low (L), High-Low (HL), and Low-High (LH). Whether an Ik word has one, two, or three syllables (or more), these same four melodies are used. They just look a bit different depending on how many syllables a word has. Here's what they look like on nouns with two syllables:

H ƙálítsʼ ‘jaw’
L tsòrìt ‘vein’
HL kúràk ‘crow’
LH dèréƙ ‘wasp’

Second, we discovered that Ik has what linguists call depressor consonants. Depressor consonants are sounds that affect the tones around them. In Ik, the consonants /b/, /d/, /g/, and sometimes /h/ have this effect. For example, in the following data, the possessive pronoun ntsí ‘his/her’ usually gives the noun following it a High tone, as in:

ntsí ‘his/her’ + kòp ‘vulture’ = ntsí kóp ‘his vulture’

In other words, while kòp has a Low tone melody assigned to it, in this grammatical construction it comes out with a High tone: kóp. But now compare with the following example:

ntsí ‘his/her’ + dì ‘sitting place’ = ntsí dì ‘his sitting place’

Both kòp and dì have the same underlying Low tone melody, but the /d/ in dì is blocking the High tone that we would normally expect to appear.

This ‘his/her_____’ construction brings up a third thing we can say about the tone system: it has replacive grammatical tone. This means that certain grammatical constructions simply replace the underlying tones of some of the words involved.

Fourth, Ik has automatic downstep. Conditions for automatic downstep are fulfilled when two things happen in a language:

1) A Low tone following a High tone drops to a lower ‘register’ (if you’re a musician you can think of it being the same key but an octave lower)
2) Any High tones after the lowered Low tone will also be lowered (so that a ‘downstepped’ High is lower than any Highs before it)

This should be clearer once illustrated. Consider the following example:

béɗá róƙóà dé ‘he wants that tamarind‘ ⟶ béɗá róƙóȁ dē

On the left, you see the underlying tones of the words in this example. On the right, you see how the tones actually get pronounced. The symbol over the /ȁ/ means ‘extra low’, and the symbol over the /e/ in /dē/ means ‘mid’. Here ‘extra low’ is a downstepped Low, while ‘mid’ is a downstepped High.

A lot more about Ik tone is left to be figured out, but we’re off to a good start! Stay tuned for Part 3 where I talk about how to mark tone in the Ik writing system.

Watch your tone (Part 1)

2010-11-23T22:28:00.000-08:00

It’s time to break my ‘blog silence’ after our six-week stay in Nairobi, Kenya. We had gone there mainly to participate in a linguistic workshop on ‘tone’. Tone is one of the aspects of the world’s languages that many people (namely speakers of non-tonal languages like English) find mysterious. People often think tone is exotic, and students of language often say they are ‘tone deaf’. Both perceptions are myths. In fact, as many as 60-70% of the languages in the world are tonal. That means that non-tonal languages like American English are more exotic, if by ‘exotic’ we mean unusual. Moreover, if we were ‘deaf’ to ‘tone’ we wouldn’t be able to speak or understand English very well! Take the following example:

“You are going.”
“Me?”

“Who is going?”
“Me.” (or “Me!”)

In spoken language, the difference in the meaning of the two ‘me’s is made solely on the basis of tone, whereas in written language we indicate the meaning difference with our punctuation. Though this example shows that we aren’t deaf to tone, it doesn’t mean that English is a ‘tonal language’. Instead, linguists call languages like English ‘intonational’ languages. In the first instance of ‘me’ above, the word receives a rising interrogative pitch; in the second, it receives a low (or high) declarative pitch. The crucial point is that in both cases the word ‘me’ still means ‘me’. Though in this example, the intonation patterns of English apply to only one word (‘me’), they can also apply to longer strings of words.

The difference between an intonational language like English and tonal language like Ik is that English marks the nature or purpose of a whole sentence or phrase with pitch contrasts (like questions, statements, surprise, etc.), while Ik marks the meanings of individual words with contrast in voice pitch. For example, in Ik we find pairs like the following:

sé ‘white stone’
sè ‘blood’

búdes ‘hide oneself’
budés ‘hide something’

Because the consonants and vowels are basically the same for each member of these pairs, the only way an Ik speaker can know what is meant is to listen to the tone contrast. So, unlike English, where consonants and vowels make up the sounds necessary for meaningful contrasts between individual words (e.g. between me and be), Ik uses consonants, vowels, and pitch (tone) to make meaningful contrasts. It’s as simple (and complicated) as that! We need to study the tone system of Ik because otherwise we’re only familiarizing ourselves with 66% of the sound system!

Kazuri Beads

2010-10-29T04:05:00.001-07:00

On Thursday I had the opportunity to tour a bead factory just south of Nairobi near where we're staying. The factory is called Kazuri Beads and they're a fair trade organization. They sell many beads to America through stores like 10,000 Villages. Kazuri means 'small and beautiful' in Swahili. It all started in 1975 when a British woman (Lady Susan Wood) wanted to help more single mothers to get jobs and be able to support their families. She started with two women back then but the company now employs a large workforce skilled in the manufacture of hand-made jewelry, many of them single mothers. A benefit they provide is free health care to the families of employees. Take a tour with me.

Clay is brought in from the mountains of Kenya but must be broken down and separated from the rocks.

Then it's put into machines that press it down & form it into bricks.

These bricks are taken into the factory where the women transform the clay into shapes. The clay feels like putty at this point.

Each woman has a molding tray and they make different sizes according to the orders for the day. Our guide informed us that the women go to a 3-month training where they learn to do many tasks in the factory so that they're not doing the same thing every day. They get rotated between several jobs.

These women are all molding today.

Other women poke holes through the clay to make it ready to be stringed into a necklace, bracelet or earrings. After this phase, they heat the 'beads' in a kiln to bake them and make them hard.

Next the beads are transferred to a bigger room for painting. Each woman has a bowl of beads and a design that she's assigned to paint for the day.

Then the beads are hung on racks to dry a bit.

At the end of the day, the beads are transferred from the racks into these kilns where they're baked a second time. The kilns run during the night because they get so hot; up to 1000 degrees.

In the kiln, the beads are placed between hot bricks and do not touch each other.

After cooling, the beads are sent to the jewelry-making table. This lady is putting together a necklace. Each lady has a different assignment.

Any extra beads are stored in this room until the next time they're needed. This is my friend, Juanita, who took the tour with me.

One of the most fascinating things to see in the factory was this lady. She is specialized in weaving & making beaded wall-hangings. No two creations are the same. It takes her three weeks to complete one wall hanging and the one we saw in the gift shop was being sold for $1,125.

In another part of the factory, pottery was being made. This man was transforming the clay into animal body parts that would later be formed into a completed animal.

Another man was on a wheel forming bowls.

Other pottery was made by pouring liquid clay into molds.

This lady was smoothing the new creations to perfection.

We left one shop and entered another where the pottery was being painted. This lady was putting spots on a giraffe.

Our guide showed us the oven where the pottery is heated. He was saying something important about pressure in the oven and not opening the door when I zoned out. Not the best time for zoning.

This is a before & after picture. The pottery is light before going into the ovens but it comes out glossy & vibrantly-colored.

And this is the on-site gift shop where many of Kazuri's products get sold.

The pottery section of the store.

I thank God for places like Kazuri who empower the less-fortunate and make a difference in their communities.

A Closer Look at Giraffes

2010-10-28T03:19:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we went to a giraffe park where people can get a closer look at these intriguing animals. We went up the stairs to a raised platform where the giraffes could lean over the rail and eat pellets out of our hands. Some daring individuals even put pellets between their lips and let the giraffes lick them off. Ugh! Not exactly my cup of tea and I didn't let Terrill do it either. He had to choose between me & the giraffe. ;)

They have long purplish tongues that can reach 18 inches as an adult. The tongues are made of tough skin in order that they can eat thorns in the wild and be able to digest them properly. Giraffes are herbivores. To properly digest the leaves they usually eat, they swallow once, regurgitate, chew some more then swallow a second time.

Our Ik friend, Philip, has been close to many other wild animals but never a giraffe before.

The giraffes were domestic enough to eat out of our hands but they didn't like to be petted.

There are three types of giraffes in Kenya and they're differentiated by their different markings and colorings. The types are Masai, Reticulated & Rothschild.

They are currently the tallest animals in the world; usually between 16-18 ft. tall. Males weigh about 3000 lbs and females weigh around 2500 lbs. Not an enemy you want to make.

Having fun in Nairobi!

Back to School

2010-10-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

On October 9th, we started our journey from Kampala to Nairobi, Kenya. Terrill is attending a six-week tone workshop led by Keith Snider, an SIL expert in the field. We brought our Ik language helper, Longoli Philip, along to help Terrill analyze the tone system. They're collecting words and whistling the tones to find patterns. Eventually, they hope to incorporate tone into the Ik writing system.

The journey from Kampala to Nairobi took about 12 hours of driving. We thank God for the well-maintained tarmac roads that made traveling a pleasure (for a change). The highlight of the journey was seeing the Kenya tea plantations around a place called Kericho. Bright green leaves are picked from the top of the plants and stuffed into sacks. Then the sacks are hauled off to the factory on a near-by hill where the tea is packaged.

We're staying just south of Nairobi in a suburb known as Karen. Our SIL friends, Tom & Juanita Matthews, live here and have graciously allowed us to stay with them for the coming weeks. Already they've blessed us with hospitality and 'old school' missionary wisdom. Every day, we head to the NEGST campus where the workshop is being held.

One thing I've come to love about Karen are the tree-lined roads. Flowers are blooming and emitting sweet smells, a light wind is blowing and a feeling of serenity surrounds me as I walk from the Matthew's house to campus. I get my morning exercise by walking to school...about 5 kilometers. Terrill gets his afternoon exercise by walking home while I take the car.

The workshop starts at 8:15 am and Terrill attends class in the morning. By the afternoon, it's time for eliciting words from Philip and studying the tone. This is the building where they're meeting.

I couldn't leave out the cafeteria because we spend a good deal of time here. At morning break, we enjoy mandazis (doughnuts) or samosas (meat filled pastries) and tea. For lunch, we enjoy the beans, rice, cabbage, chipatis & hot dogs. The cafeteria also helps our social life by providing opportunity to mingle with other students.

We'll be in Karen until November 20th. It's nice to have a break in our routine and be back on a campus. It's provides renewed perspective.

The Gift of Experiences

2010-10-11T03:55:00.001-07:00

I want to thank all of you who have wished me a happy birthday over the past week. Sometimes you forget how many friends & loved ones you have until you've heard from many of them on special days. Some people have asked how we celebrated and I want to share a tradition we've instituted in our marriage. If you've known us for awhile, you may already know this about us.
...Terrill & I don't often spend money on holiday gifts....instead we spend money on the gift of experiences. Being transient missionaries makes it difficult to accumulate 'stuff'. If we buy it, I know we'll have to eventually pack it up and take it with us. Do I really want to be carrying around a lot of 'stuff'? We decided early in our marriage that we'd rather travel to new places, taste new foods & make memories instead of buying gifts. This year was no exception and Terrill made it quite special. The day of my birthday was fun and out of the ordinary for us. I had chocolate cake & cappuccino for breakfast, we went to see a movie in a theater and we had lunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant. That was that. Celebration complete...or so I thought.

But both Terrill & I turned 30 this year and he wanted to do something a little extra special. On the trip to Nairobi, we stopped for a night in Jinja (close to Kampala). Jinja sits on Lake Victoria and is where the Nile enters Uganda. Terrill's surprise was to take me horseback riding on trails near the Nile. I haven't ridden in years but my family had horses when I was a child and they make me nostalgic of my growing up years. We had a wonderful ride, even with a light rain falling and villagers staring at us. There's nothing like the smell of tropical plants and wet horse hide. ;)

For the night, we were booked into a lodge called the Nile Porch. The river rushed below the escarpment our little guest house was perched upon. As we sat and had our tea while enjoying the surrounding greenery, I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of contentment. Later on that night, I learned why Terrill really wanted to stay at the Nile Porch. They were famed for having some of the best ribs around. So, after some meager & meatless meals, my husband had a proper dinner. I won't tell you how much he ate. The next morning we had our breakfast outside and watched two parrots fly between trees. These are the kind of birthdays I'll never forget. I can't lose these memories and they won't get worn out over the years.

We're all beggars

2010-10-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

Being rich among the very poor puts one in the odd position of being like God, in this way: as God has MORE than all of us, we have MORE than the very poor. Those who have LESS go to those who have MORE, so that they can get MORE of whatever is it they want or need. I wouldn't want to presume to know what God 'feels' like when billions of people ask him for 'goods' or 'services' each day. But, to the degree that I am godlike (made in God's image), a person blessed with abundant resources, is it possible I know a little what God feels like when dozens of people ask me for goods and services each day?

The Ik word wáán means 'beg'. It also means 'pray'. Hmm... Pray tell, what do begging and praying have to do with each other? Do you beg when you pray? Do I? The Ik word for 'visitor' is wáánam, which means 'begging person'. Hmm... Do you beg when you go visiting? The Ik do. Maybe you don't 'beg', but maybe when you visit someone, you are looking for something. Maybe it's just a listening ear.

When the Ik hear of our impending trip to this or that place for a certain amount of time, the letters and lists start coming. As the days dwindle before our departure, the little stack of requests grows. Here's a list like the kind we get:

Please sir, remember for me the following:

-shoes
-jacket (rainproof)
-watch
-box
-trousers
-pens
-money, for the children

Thank you sir for your assistance...

By the end of our stay in Ikland, I'm usually not in much of a mood to consider these lists. I mean, why would I bring you all these things when I barely even know you? You hear I'm going to 'Kampala' or 'my country' and you appear with a list? I don't even have a relationship with you. List goes in the trash bin. Sorry.

The other day I was in the spare bedroom praying my list of requests to God. A nice list, covering most areas of my life, certainly all the points of anxiety. Then it hit me: does God want my list, or does he want my relationship?

A few Ik come by just to greet us or spend a bit of time with us. Another precious few will occasionally confide in us about their problems without asking for anything more than a listening ear. I love that.

I decided that I would try something: instead of reading off my list of requests to God, I would just talk to God about my issues. If he wants to do anything about them, then great! If not, he's free! I know how free I feel when someone shares their concerns with me without asking for a solution or even hinting that I should provide one. Then I am free to offer help as I feel led.

There are many ways to pray, and I am certainly not saying I found the answer to prayer. I only wanted to share the perspective I've gained in recent months on the issue of wáán 'praying/begging'. If our personhood is like God's Personhood, then maybe God prefers our confidence and time to our lists, letters, and enumerations. I pray thee to consider!

A prayer for the mill

2010-09-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

In the past few months, we've been working on getting a grinding mill building built and a grinding mill installed for this community. A college group had donated some money for the Ik and the community requested it be used for one of two things: either a grinding mill or a maternity ward. We chose the first. The man in the picture below is named Isa and came all the way from Kampala to build for us. He stayed with us for two weeks and worked on several projects. He did a splendid job on the building and we were able to install the mill a couple of weeks later.

The way a grinding mill works is this: they put dried corn into an open end (where the two men are standing), it goes through a grinder, and it comes out as flour from the green funnel-looking thing. I'm a bit simple-minded when it comes to these type of machines, but that's the way I understand the process.

This is actually a tractor engine that is used in grinding machines. It's hooked up to the grinder via belts.

We actually had to bolt the machine to the cement floor because the machine shakes so badly when it's running.

The flour comes out this end into a waiting bag. Everyone near-by gets dusted.

This is how the corn looks before grinding. The people pick it fresh during the harvest and hang it up in their houses to dry before grinding it.

The grinding mill officially opened it's doors last week. People couldn't wait to try it out. We put the operation of the mill in the hands of the community. They established a committee who chose a manager to take care of the money and employees and they also chose two men to do the grinding. These men feed the corn into the open end and the recipient of the flour waits on the other end with a bag.

Now for the sad news...after only one day, the mill stopped working. We could easily call someone to come up and help us fix the problem but we would really like the community to take ownership of the mill and get it fixed themselves. Please pray with us that they are motivated to do so and will have the machine running again in no time. Having a mill in our area will free up the women from having to grind corn by hand. The flour produced is a staple of their diet; they make it into a porridge and a dish like cornmeal mush.

'Nyakwach-for-work' program

2010-09-19T07:22:00.001-07:00

In Karamoja, the NGO's (Non-Governmental Organizations) sometimes administrate programs called 'Cash for Work or Food for Work'. It works just the way it sounds. They hire locals to build a road or a dam...and then they pay them with either money or food. The programs are always short-term but a way for people to earn a little something.

Now to my story. Terrill & I went to visit the garden of our friend, Bilah Charles. The old man wanted to show us around and proudly point out his produce. During the course of the tour, he lamented that he no longer has children to pick his beans when they're ready for harvest. The beans are called K-20 and they look like kidney beans. Many plants were ready for harvest and some beans were even rotting, from pestilence or mold. I felt sorry for the man and offered to help him pick beans the following day. He was happy with that and said he'd come pick me up in the morning. He never showed up, so I asked a young girl (12 years old) to take me to Charles's garden. Alice led the way and I trailed her. As is common to my days, five children trailed behind me. We found the garden and walked in among the corn stalks. Charles had planted quite sporadically and beans were everywhere...under pumpkin leaves or beside tomato plants. We started picking beans and within minutes I realized that my plastic bag wasn't going to be big enough. I took off my jacket and we made it into a storage container for the bean pods. The children worked beside me for an hour before getting restless. Our bag was full anyway so we decided to head home. At our compound, the children showed me how to separate the bean from the pods and get the chaff out of the bean mixture. At the end of our 'harvesting session' I asked the children what they wanted for payment. The answer was unanimous. They wanted something called nyakwach....otherwise known as safety pins. Who knew I could get such an ample return on my safety pins? I have dubbed the event my 'nyakwach for work program'.

On the way back from harvesting beans that afternoon, I was handed this child by her sister, Siti. Kunume is 1.5 years old but is small for her age. Everyone thought it was quite funny that Kunume fit in my purse. Now that's what I call a multi-purpose bag.

Slow, fat, white & hairy

2010-09-14T03:11:00.001-07:00

I was told yesterday that I'm a slow, fat, hairy, white & 100% woman (whatever that means). If anyone on the other side of the Atlantic had said these things, I probably wouldn't have been flattered but the context is everything. My friend, Esther, told me I'm slow because I'm not picking up the language as quickly as Terrill is. Okay...he's a linguist, I'll let that comment slide. Her daughter, Siti, told me I'm fat (which means healthy in their minds). I was supposed to be flattered. They were comparing our ankles and mine were definitely twice the size of theirs. Sit's cousin, Lucy, told me I'm hairy. She was examining my arm hair closely. This was all new to them because they have very little hair on their entire bodies. They love touching the hair on my head and brushing it out of my face. People with bangs, beware. Then last night, we were sitting beside the fire and my legs were glowing in the darkness of night. Someone shouted out, you're too white. Hey...can't do much about that unless I want to put myself at risk for skin cancer. At the end of the night, our friend Lojore walked us back to our compound. We were discussing the possibility of walking to Kaabong one day. It would be an 8-hour walk through the bush for us. Lojore said that he didn't think Terrill would have any problem but that he wondered if I'd make it. I asked why I couldn't do it...always up for a challenge. He said that I'm all woman and they have more trouble then men when walking long distances. I wonder what it means to be 1/2 woman....

Welcome

2010-09-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

I thought it was about time to give you a glimpse of our Timu home. I got the idea from our friends, Travis & Andrea Williamson, who are currently living with the Gumuz people in Ethiopia. I appreciated knowing where they spend their time and I thought our friends & family might appreciate the same. We started building this house in May of last year and started living in it by October. Now we're spending a majority of our time in Timu and have appreciated the security and perks of our little compound. I feel like I'm 'nesting' a bit among the Ik. We'll blog another day about the guest house/office and other structures on the compound. Today, I'll cover inside our house. Our house is about four and a half feet under ground level. We duck to go inside and then go down these steps. This was for added security and privacy. My kitchen is to the left of the steps and our living room is to the right. We have solar panels that give us light and charge our computer and cell phones. That's about all we use it for. We have a water tank outside from which we collect rain water. When the rains stop, we hire girls to carry water on their heads to our tank. Recently, we've also been carrying water from the well in our vehicle (in jerry cans) because it's faster and the kids love to ride in the vehicle. I sympathize with the girls who have to carry water. I've tried it on several occasions now and it's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do physically. The well is in the valley and we have to walk uphill (about a half mile) with 20 liters of water on our heads. Not my idea of fun.

This is my kitchen. Although there is a blue pipe running into the house from the outside, I don't have water yet. We're working on it....I fill jerry cans of water and use basins to do washing. The plastic white container sitting on our cupboard is a water filter. The water we get from the well is yellow when it comes to us.

This is our living room. We do most of our work from these chairs. We wanted to make it simple enough so the Ik would feel comfortable when coming in to visit us. As it is, our place is pretty ritzy for them. The bottom of the window frame is at ground level.

When we walk to the right of the couch, we go through this little curtain to get to our bedroom & bathroom. I had to include the bamboo curtain in this blog because it was a Goodwill find and Terrill just couldn't live without it. ;) The white canvas hanging beside the curtain is a shoe holder but we use it for a lot else.

This is the foot end of our bedroom where our solar system is stored and where we charge all the cell phones from this area. There's not much room for anything else in the bedroom but a bed.

This is the head. Terrill's been great with helping me to get shelves up on the wall for storage space. When you live in a small space, you have to utilize the walls more.

From our bedroom, we go up three steps to ground level again where our bathroom is located. I've already shown you my shower in a previous blog but wanted to include a picture of the toilet. It's a 15-ft. long-drop latrine. We figure with only two people using it, it will take awhile to fill up.

So that's it. Welcome to my home.

Something useful

2010-09-03T04:11:00.000-07:00

I just have to take a moment to rave about my new drying rack. It's supposed to be for plastic bags and such but I've found it useful for a lot more. This was an early Christmas present from my grandma and it's now one of my most indispensable possessions. There's this great store out of Kidron, Ohio called Lehman's. They produce & sell a lot of goods to the Amish. Things like this rack make life easier. I know it seems like a small thing but let me explain. When we decided to move to Africa, I had to sell/give away most of my 'stuff'. I couldn't bring much with me and had to stick to essentials in the kitchen. And living among the Ik, it would be imprudent of us to have a lot of 'things' that are just dust collectors. We invite them into our house from time to time and they want to look at and touch everything. Because of this, I've brought only those things that are functional to our village home. The Ik are going to ask questions and will want to know why we might have something that we can't use. Now I can proudly point to my bag dryer and tell them of all it's uses.

Saturday

2010-08-23T23:49:00.000-07:00

This week has been considerably more busy than last week. We've been overwhelmed by seeing many more Ik than we usually see. Ik from all over the Timu mountains have been footing (walking) to Kamion (another Ik center) in order to get a bag of maize flour from a free distribution. Unfortunately, they walk past our house and beg for things on the way. I've helped some and hid from others.

Besides seeing a lot of people this week, we also have a fundi (swahili word for builder) staying with us. He is working on several building projects. Firstly, he is going to finish making a brick grinding mill house for the grinding mill we had brought up to Timu several months ago. Secondly, he is going to make us a proper shed (as opposed to the temporary one we currently have). If we have the time, we also want him to construct a visitor's banda (outdoor sitting area) for us to receive people in.

Saturday was a big day for us. We needed to hire a lorry (big truck usually with multiple problems) to bring sand, bricks & cement up to Timu. We had originally planned to do this last Thursday but the lorry we hired never showed up and the driver & owner turned their phones off. So we started off early from Timu; the drive would be 1.5 hours each way. A neighbor of ours, Nachem, sent a man over with a bag of maize to be ground into flour in Kaabong. She also sent her daughter to tell us that she would be accompanying us to grind the maize. Terrill told the girl (Siti) 'no' because neither the mother or father had asked ahead of time. Siti proceeded to walk home and change into her best clothes in preparation for the trip. She was back within five minutes and ready to go. As it turned out, nobody else wanted a ride down to Kaabong so we ended up taking Siti and her maize. What I found funny about Siti the whole day is that she wanted to sit in the front with us, practically in my lap. Even when the back seat was empty; especially when the back seat was empty. She said it was too lonely back there for her. This highlights a cultural value in being with people all the time. Many don't like to be alone.

This is Siti with her youngest sister, Kunume.

Thank the Lord, we found a truck. We loaded 1000 bricks, 12 bags of cement, and a small pile of sand. The sand required that we go to the river with several men and shovels. They hand-filled the sand into and out of the truck. Then we were on our way back to Timu.

Now is the time when I should mention that it hadn't rained for two weeks. We didn't think the rain would magically appear on the day we hired a lorry to drive to Timu. We were wrong. We'd even called our friends in Timu just an hour before driving up there and were told that there was no rain. We bounced along as rain clouds grew in front of us. Rain is a problem when hiring a truck because the road to Timu isn't that good in dry season. In rainy season, it can be impassable. The truck made it to the last hill before our driveway. By that time the rain was pouring down and the road too slippery for the truck to make it. Our six loaders (young men looking to make money for school fees) jumped off the back of the truck and headed to our house. For the next hour we waited inside, sipping chai. I even had a chance to paint Siti's nails pink. As soon as the rain dissipated, the driver went back to work. The progress up the hill was slow. Ten men with shovels and hoes worked on the road until it was passable. An hour later, we were unloading bricks & sand near our house. The only harm done was to the environment in the form of a cloud of black smoke coming from the exhaust of the truck (and that was nothing new).

I have to admit that this was one of the most stressful days of our year. What I didn't mention in this narrative was how drunk people assailed us for rides in Kaabong. I didn't mention all the greetings and begging along the way, which delayed us going to the next appointments. I didn't mention that we lost Siti in Kaabong because a mischievous relative told her that we left her and she walked around town looking for us. And what about the rain that started while the loaders were shoveling sand into the truck. It gave them an excuse to leave early and only load us a small pile of sand. I won't expand on these because we don't want to remember these irritants ourselves. I'll just say that we're thankful for getting the truck up to Timu and we're thankful that Saturday has passed. Don't hear that very often, do we?

Happiness found in second-hand clothes

2010-08-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Ik love when we have visitors. Greetings go around. Husbands are looked for if a lady is single. Roasted maize is shared in the gardens. They also love what happens when the visitors leave (not that they love for visitors to leave). We usually ask that our visitors come with some clothes to leave behind when they go. This is just because it's so difficult & expensive for the Ik to try and get clothing. Many wear rags for months on end. Many get cold and don't have a coat. Very few have good shoes.

This was no different when Laura left us two weeks ago. She left behind some very nice clothes and the Ik have been the proud benefactors. At one point, I was asking people to buy clothing from me for a cheap price (10-25 cents) but these days I have many friends who give me gifts and like to receive clothing in return.

Below are two old ladies who received sweaters. Not only did we get a 'thank you' from them, they blessed us and our little hut for about fifteen minutes. It was almost a drama, where one lady would start dialoguing and the other would join her and build on the enthusiasm. Arms were raised, we were blessed with spittle and then came the next request...for a skirt too. ;)
These young girls all received new shirts. They are my next door neighbors, water carriers and frisbee buddies. {Jennifer, Lemu, Betty, Nancy, Namoi & Alice} It doesn't matter that the shirts are too big; from their point of view, it just means they can grow into them.
This is my good friend, Cecilia, who is married to our language helper, Philip. We've been spending a lot of time with her lately and have begun to appreciate her more and more. She visits our house almost every day, tries to help us learn the language, and even guides us to other villages for talks with Ik neighbors. She was thrilled to get a new dress and wore it during a game of frisbee. Laura, these Ik women say 'Ilakasuk'otiak!'....which means...'I am happy!'

Some good advice

2010-08-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

Before Terrill & I left for Uganda back in 2007, a friend of mine gave me some good advice. She was a former missionary herself and knew the uncertainties that I was going through. So many unknowns in my future. We had talked long and hard about how I could develop a sustainable life in Africa. Her advice was this: figure out what you need to survive over there and make sure you have it. She once had a friend who thought she needed her piano in order to survive overseas...so her husband shipped her piano over and she was a happy camper. I thought on this...what do I need? It came down to two things. I need to get a good night's sleep on a comfortable bed (to avoid crankiness & stress) and I need to feel clean once in a while (something that I took for granted before coming to Uganda). The next step was to inform my husband of my needs and see if he could assist me in meeting these requirements. For the first two years, our house in Kaabong provided both a nice bed and hot bucket showers. When we started building our compound in Timu, we had to reconsider how to meet these needs. The bed was no problem; you can find them anywhere. The shower/bath was more of a challenge. First of all, it's chilly in Timu and sometimes difficult to stay warm (esp. at night). I think everyone would agree that a bath taken in the cold air is not pleasant. If I were to bathe during the heat of the day, I'd have several pairs of dark eyes watching me from the fence. Not my idea of fun. When we first moved to Timu, we were bathing out of a large basin. I also had trouble washing my hair by myself. I could never seem to get all the soap out. I became frustrated....until recently. Terrill has figured out a way to rig up a bucket shower in our bathroom. Now I can squat under the bucket and have a glorious 3-minute shower that warms me and gets the soap out of my hair. Yes, I've mastered the 3-minute shower. I'm sure my father is surprised because I used to enjoy 20-minute showers (although he would argue they were longer). Anyway, the point is that Terrill has helped me to meet some basic needs in Timu that will keep me healthier and happier. Thanks for the advice, Kay!

Below I have some contrasting pictures, just for fun. I went on a home visit to see a sick girl (12 yr old) who was having bad back pain. Usually, the Ik sleep on hard dirt floors in their huts unless they can afford a mattress. We're letting Nangoli Lucy borrow a mattress until her situation improves. In contrast, this is where we sleep in Timu. Not too shabby...I can't complain. The only thing to pester us at night are the occasional daddy-long legs.
This is a young girl bathing at the borehole (well) from water that splashes out while people are filling their jerry cans to take back to the village. I found it interesting that she was scrubbing herself with a rock. Definitely got those dead skins cells off. Too bad though, that you'd have to bathe in front of other people. Let's just say that some parts get washed more often than others. ;)
And this is my new shower! Thank the Lord for these small provisions.

Our cup overfloweth

2010-08-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

It hasn't stopped. All week we've been receiving gifts of food from our friends and neighbors. I've eaten pumpkin every day. This once again confirms in our minds that they give when they have. An old woman came to see me this evening with yet another gift of pumpkin. She was thanking me for giving her some medicine for her grandchild. She told me that she'd only had one pumpkin this year and she wanted me to have it. Guilty feelings nudged into my mind. I want them to have good health. I don't want to steal their blessings...and yet it seems to be their joy to give. So, Terrill & I are receiving their gifts in the hopes that we can return the favor when dry season rolls around and there is no food in the Ik gardens. I think we've officially become part of the community. Pumpkin, greens & wild meat for dinner.
Whenever we go on walks and stop to talk to people who are working in their gardens, we usually receive a snack of roasted maize, fresh from the fire. This is our neighbor, Nacem, who was on her way home but prepared a snack for us first.
My new friend, Kuku, was bringing yet another pumpkin. Her father had heard that we liked pumpkin and had Kuku run to the garden to pick one for us.
Akoro, the midwife, stopped as we were passing her on the road and divided up her maize in order to give us half.
We walked through the garden of a man who had just trapped a duiker (small deer) that afternoon. His wife was preparing the meat and he insisted we take some. This was a special treat as the Ik don't get meat often.

Tomatoes, maize, beans, pumpkin, wild meat, cassava...and whatever else they have...they share. Maybe we could learn from them. May we remember the Iks' generosity when times get hard, and we're the only ones with enough to eat.

Schwesterbesuch

2010-08-13T11:26:00.001-07:00

"Sister Visit" (sorry, a little too much time in the German book on Ik grammar today...) For three weeks last month we had the privilege of having my (Terrill) sister Laura visit us here in Uganda. We had a good time! Our first major adventure on the way to Ikland was a short safari in Murchison Falls National Park. Murchison Falls is where the entire volume of the Nile River passes through a 14 foot wide gap in the rocks. It's a pretty amazing thing to see. The park is also home to many of the classic East African wildlife species like elephant, hippo, buffalo, crocodiles, lions, etc.

This first photo shows Laura and me on our riverboat cruise of the Nile, at a point where they let you get off and have a photo op with the falls in the distant background.
The trip from Murchison to Kaabong was long and grueling, but Laura tolerated it well like the veteran of African road hardships that she is! We were kind enough to leave her a space in the middle seat roughly the size and shape of her self with a few inches to spare.
Another adventure we had in Ikland was hiking to the edge of the escarpment overlooking Turkanaland in Kenya below.
What fun we had reliving our childhood Africa experiences, this time as adults. We know the wildlife enjoyed Laura's being here (the geckos, slugs...and daddy-long-legs? No, the latter are GLAD she's gone), but so did the Ik. To this day people are asking where yeyo "your sister" has gone. K'a na ngo kij'ak "She has gone to our country", I tell them. This is met with understanding nods and reassurances of her imminent return. So, Laura, I guess you better start saving your money! We miss the good talks, episodes of LOST, nature walks...and maya waak (sorry, inside joke) Hurry back!

Birthdays & Bonding

2010-08-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Terrill's 30th birthday. We spent it with the Ik. There is probably no place else he would have preferred to be...although he might have liked a steak for dinner. But, he settled for pumpkin soup and peanut butter cookies and was a content guy in the midst of a pretty regular day. This is something I really appreciate about my husband. No matter what life hands him, he chooses contentment. So even though we had a busy morning with lots of visitors, even though he made countless cups of tea for people, even though there was no nice restaurant for his birthday dinner...he was happy.

Living in a remote area, we have to prepare for special days in advance. Whenever we're in Kampala, I ask Terrill what he'd like for the next holiday. He's usually full of ideas...being a visionary as he is. This year, he wanted a dart board...in order that he might find some male bonding moments with the Ik. Saying that the dart board has been a success would be an understatement. Since we put it up, we've had men come almost every day requesting to play. It's not a foreign thing to them. Several have seen a dart board in a hoteli (restaurant/bar/hotel) somewhere or other. We're going to have to be strategic about when to let people play and for how long or else our compound will resemble a hoteli. We also don't want to encourage idleness in the men of Timu. Playing darts would give them an excuse to neglect their duties and leave more work to the women. One of the first games was played with Pastor Jacob (of the Pentecostal Church here) and his associate, Vincent.

Jacob is in red and Vincent in the green fleece. They concocted a plan to have a tournament on Sunday afternoons. We decided it would be fun to have a prize for the winner. For this game, Vincent was the very first person to get a bull's eye and we prized him with a bottle of coke. They couldn't wipe the grins off their faces.

What's next....Terrill's dreaming of tetherball...or soccer...or volleyball games with the Ik. As long as we're bonding, I guess it doesn't really matter what we play with them.

Peas talks

2010-08-07T11:03:00.001-07:00

I'm not really a gardener...not even an amateur. I dabble in growing fruits and vegetables. Most of the time this involves buying seeds and asking people how to plant them. The Karamojong & Ik have shared many different techniques with me about how to grow things. There are some things, however, that they've never grown before. This is when the confusion starts. I bought a packet of Burpees Sweet Peas in Florida and brought them all the way to Uganda to see if I could grow peas from Timu. My friend, Lojore, and I read the instructions on how to plant them. I showed him the packet so he would know how they were supposed to look. During rainy season, they started growing nicely. The pods were getting bigger when I left Timu for our break over the summer. I thought Lojore would know to pick the peas when they reached full size. Instead, upon returning, I found all the plants dead and the peas harvested....but not eaten. Lojore had allowed the peas to dry out and had saved every last pea for me. It was thoughtful. In his mind, this plant looked like a bean they call K20. For the K20 plant, you let the pods get dry, then you harvest the beans and boil them for a tasty dinner. Even though I had showed him what the peas would look like at harvest, he acted from experience and did what he's always done with his bean plants. It wasn't a waste. From that one Burpees packet, I now have x20 as many seeds to plant during the next rainy season. Hopefully I'll be around for their harvest and I can show the Ik when to harvest peas and how to cook them. Lojore realizes that our small compound is not big enough for a nice garden so he's decided to offer us some of his land in order that we might plant more next year. He's also hinted that we should bring a tractor up to Timu for planting and maybe...just maybe let other people benefit from it's use as well. ;)

A gift of maize

2010-08-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

Take a good look at this man. On Sunday afternoon, we passed through his garden on our hike to another part of the escarpment. He decided to come with us and be our guide. But before we walked any further, he wanted us to sit down and have roasted maize with him. His wife had a small fire going and had five ears of maize ready to be eaten. I was shocked. This was the first time an Ik had offered me food. I didn't even know this man's name. I hadn't seen him very often and he hadn't come for frequent visits to our house...but he offered me food. Who says there's no kindness and sharing among the Ik? Colin Turnbull, who wrote The Mountain People and described the Ik during a famine...obviously had never encountered the Ik during a harvest. We discovered that they share if they have something to share. Since Sunday, several more Ik have stopped by my house to drop off gifts of maize...the first fruits of their harvest. What a blessing to see this side of their culture. If you think of it, please thank the Lord for this man & his family today. Pray God's best for their lives. They've shown us a kindness. They shared maize and we shared beef jerky. They said it tasted very 'sweet'.
After our snack, our guide and another good friend, Lojore Philip took us on a trail that lead to a marvelous view of the Rift Valley and the border of Uganda & Kenya. Lojore sat with Terrill and explained the names of the multiple ridges that lay between our escarpment and Kenya. He could probably tell a story about each ridge and how they got their names. The Ik amaze me with their memory of dates and names.
And this was the goal of our walk: to view the the Rift Valley from yet another angle. Is this part of God's world gorgeous or what?

A house full of visitors

2010-08-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy summer for us so you'll have to forgive the lack of blogging. First we traveled for several weeks to attend a wedding. Then we headed to the Kenyan coast for a week to attend a SIL conference with colleagues. Upon returning to Uganda in mid-July, we found Terrill's sister, Laura, waiting for us. More about Laura later. We just spent a wonderful three weeks with her. Time with family is precious and cannot be taken for granted. With Laura loaded into our Patrol, we headed northeast to Kaabong and showed her a good portion of the country. We arrived 'home' on the 19th of July and prepared for six more visitors the following day. Most of them were expected. :) Our good friends, Jacob & Georgia Reed, came over for a visit and brought a friend of theirs, Chris. Mutual friends, Tom & Jean Reed, showed up later in the afternoon with their new teammate, Ryan. We spent a week together at the Baptist mission. There was a constant flow of chatting and plans. We laughed, we cried, we envisioned a future together. Some of those who were visiting are planning on returning to Kaabong full-time to work as missionaries among the Karamojong. You can pray for their preparation and quick return. The Lord knows that we're excited to have other missionaries nearby. It was such a huge blessing to spend so much time with like-minded people. Below is how the kitchen looked most of the time. Hey...with nine people utilizing it...what would you expect. :) Our visitors were so gracious to help us with dishes each and every day. Jean, Georgia, Laura & I were the women of the Baptist mission for this week in history. It was also a treat to take the visitors up to Timu where we're currently working & living. They helped us open up our houses after a month and clean out the spiders.
Ryan, Tom, Jean, Georgia, Jacob & Chris. All good-hearted people who love Kaabong & the Karamojong. Can't wait for a reunion!

Lost in translation

2010-07-20T23:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, on our way back to Kaabong, we stopped in at a restaurant to have tea. We sat down at a table and waited for the waitress. After she came and greeted us, we put in our order:

“Two milk teas, and one black tea,” I said.

She replied, “One milk tea and two black teas?”

“No,” I said, “One black tea and two milk teas.”

Ten minutes later she returned with what? One milk tea and two black teas. After straightening out that misunderstanding, we got on to drinking our tea. That’s when my sister Laura and I noticed that our milk tea didn’t look very brown (from tea). In fact it looked quite white, like milk. We tasted it and confirmed that there was no tea in our so-called milk tea. It was actually hot milk. Not bad in and of itself, but we didn’t want hot milk. We wanted milk tea.

“Can you bring us some tea bags?”, I asked the waitress.

Five minutes later she returned with cocoa powder and instant coffee. She informed us that they didn’t have any tea bags. So I asked her how they made the milk tea without tea bags, and she said ‘yes’. In the meantime, my sister Laura had informed her that we had an extra cup that we didn’t need, implying she could take it away. Instead, a couple minutes later she came back with another extra cup. Fortunately, those extra cups came in handy and we mixed up an assortment of hot chocolate, mocha, and other partly ‘tead’ hot beverages.

Although we got a chuckle out of this, the joke’s really on us. As guests in the waitress’s town, the capital of the Acholi-speaking people, at a local restaurant, the best thing would have been for us to stumble through ordering in Acholi (though we don’t know any), putting us in the uncomfortable position of having to operate in a language we are unfamiliar with.

An interesting cultural difference shows up through this episode. Notice how the waitress tried several strategies to avoid having to give us milk tea (since she knew they didn’t have any tea; the black tea was made with some kind of flavored tea, which is also unusual). Finally, when there was no way around giving us milk tea, she went ahead and just gave us hot milk instead of telling us there was no tea. Relationships are more important than a strict attention to facts, details, and whether one is drinking milk tea or ‘milk tea’. I think we can all learn something from that.