Zarya, almost 5 months old

We have this interesting contraption at our house that is a combination swing and high chair kind of thing.  Because Zarya is prone to suddenly keeling over forwards when sitting up, I like to attach the tray to the swingy-seat and put her toys on it.  Since she thinks the main point of toys is to chew on them, it makes sense to put them on a tray for her.  Apparently zebra legs are tasty stuff, as are book pages.  She can't quite sit up all by herself yet, but she loves trying and this chair offers enough support that she stays upright even when she lurches around.  She's almost five months old and seems to want to grow up quickly - she gets very frustrated that she can't sit, stand, or crawl and tries very hard to master these big girl skills.  For my part, I wouldn't mind if she stayed a little baby for a wee bit longer!

Once a pastor, always a pastor

Pastor Magesa and his wife

Andrew and I recently visited Pastor Magesa and his family at their home.  Magesa is one of the Bible translators for the Jita language; you might recognize him from pictures from the time when I was the adviser for the Jita team.  This was the first time I'd met his wife and although I'd seen some of his kids before, I'd never interacted with them until this visit.  He has a really nice family, and a very pretty wife!

During the course of our visit, Andrew asked him if he was still considered a pastor, even though he is no longer teaching regularly at a particular church.  Magesa replied that he still preaches sometimes, filling in when the regular pastor can't be there, and that his extended family still comes to him regularly in a pastoral role, when they need advice or a mediator or something.

Also, he said friends and neighbors sometimes treat him like he's their pastor.  He told us how one acquaintance came to him for help when the teenage daughter of one of his relatives needed prayer.  She had an evil spirit trying to kill her.  It would throw her into the lake trying to drown her, or take her out to the main road and attempt to get her run over by a passing motorcycle.  Magesa said he prayed for her and she is much better now.

He told us this story as a short example, rather off-handedly.  It took him all of three sentences to relate how this high school student was being attacked by a demon, and then he moved on to talking about how he's the guest speaker at a church this coming Sunday.  Even after six years in Tanzania, I still think stories like this sound like they are straight out of the gospels.  It's not that I don't believe there are currently evil spirits out and about, but Americans don't tend to casually chat about them.  But they are a reality and I appreciate people like Pastor Magesa who calmly and capably deals with the evil that comes his way in a Godly manner.

Almost-homonyms in Ikizu

nɨkʉʉbaha - "I was afraid"

nɨkʉbaha - "I will give them"

Those two words occur in back-to-back verses in Genesis 26, the chapter the Ikizu translators and I were reviewing yesterday.  Seeing that the only difference between the two was vowel length, we double-checked  to make sure both were correct, which they were.  Usually when we're doing our final read through of a chapter to make sure every little detail is as it should be, we find quite a few mistakes.  Upon seeing these two words so close together, we assumed one of the two must be wrong.  When realized that they were right, we were rather encouraged after a long day of spell-checking!

A little interesting tidbit (okay, interesting for linguists, boring for the rest of the world) is that these words have totally different roots (-ʉbaha versus -ha) and prefixes (nɨ- is on both, then one has ka- and the other has kʉ- and ba-), but the arrangement of them happens to make them look quite alike.

nɨ + ka + ʉbaha = nɨkʉʉbaha

nɨ + kʉ + ba + ha = nɨkʉbaha

Storing bananas

The Wycliffe Cookbook

My jar and bananas (this is the short variety of banana)

The great experiment is underway

 While looking for tips on roasting peanuts, I happened upon the page above in my trusty Wycliffe cookbook.  It's a cookbook written by many different Wycliffe Bible Translators missionaries from around the world and is designed for international cooking.  It is a good source of info on food substitutions and tropics-friendly, from-scratch recipes.

On the page pictured above, this item caught my attention: "To store bananas: Fresh, peeled bananas may be put in a glass jar with a tight lid and kept this way for a week or more.  No refrigeration necessary."

Seriously?!  You can peel bananas, put them in a jar, and expect them to stay fresh for a week or more?!  That seems utterly ridiculous to me and I can't believe they wouldn't turn into a brown, mushy mess.  Being an adventurous missionary, I have taken the plunge and am trying it out.  This afternoon I peeled two bananas and put them in my tightest-sealing jar.  I only put in two from my bunch, because I'm not only adventurous, but also cautious and doubtful and don't want to lose all of my bananas in case this doesn't work!

If they are still edible-looking, I plan to eat one banana after three days and another on Saturday, to give it the full week-long trial.  I will report back here about how my little banana experiment goes.

On the back

In this picture Zarya looks a little unsure of how she feels about being carried the Tanzanian way, but it might have had more to do with the fact she was hungry and me taking her picture instead of feeding her was a little irksome to her rumbling belly.  She quite likes Rose, the woman carrying her, and always gives her giant smiles when she comes to our house.  Rose is determined that Zarya will grow up speaking good Swahili and makes a point of talking to her a lot in Swahili.  I'm all for that plan, as I wish someone had taught me Swahili when I was four months old, as mine might be a bit better now if that had happened.

Zarya, 4 months old

Zarya is now four months old and loves to try to sit and stand!  She can't do either yet and is quite a ways from the latter, but she thinks it's great fun to give it a go.