A girl!

Just in case you have not seen the news on Facebook... it's a girl!  We had an ultrasound that confirmed not only that our baby is female, but that she looks healthy and like she's developing well.  Little Zarya Jill Sandeen has been very wiggly lately and seems to be enjoying swimming around in her little womb-world.  She's not due to make an appearance until October 31, but we'll see when she's ready to leave her wee swimming pool.

A week off

This is where we've been living this week - "The Intrepid".  It's docked in Winchester Bay, OR, and we're enjoying a week off.  We tried to take a little time off right before leaving Tanzania, but that didn't work so well.  Somehow it's tricky to take time off when there is lots of work to be done that we know we could and should be doing.  But this week we're far away from the office in Musoma and from everyone we know, and  it's suddenly not so hard to fill a day with activities like taking a nap, going for a long walk on the beach, reading a novel, and eating a lot, and not feeling guilty that we haven't been more productive.  Our job this week has been to rest and recover, so napping is suddenly on the to-do list for productivity!  We're both now fully over jet lag and feeling a bit more ready to enjoy life in North America for the next six months.

Getting ready to go

We are on our final week here in Musoma for this term and it's both happy and sad to anticipate our soon-upcoming departure.

For those who are interested, our travel itinerary is as follows:
July 8: travel from Musoma to Nairobi, Kenya
July 9 and 10: do a little shopping and get medical check-ups in Nairobi (find out if we've contracted any parasites, etc., during the last few years here, and for me, I'll also have all the required pregnancy blood work done at this time)
July 10: depart East Africa - our flight leaves Nairobi close to midnight
July 11: arrive in London, hang out in the airport on a nine-hour layover, fly to Seattle (due to the time zone difference, this will be a very, very long day for us - we leave London at 3:10pm and arrive in Seattle at 4:40pm, and manage to have an eight- or nine-hour-long flight in that space of time)

I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have in the near future, so this might be my last post for a little while.  When we've landed in the good ol' US of A and I have a fast internet connection again, I'll start blogging once more!

Pictures from the Ikizu-Sizaki survey

My job during the survey was to work with small groups and ask them about a list of 200 Swahili words.  I recorded what they thought the Ikizu word or phrase was for each and compared results between villages.

A typical Ikizu home

Traffic!

Two of the villages to which we went had no road to them, so things got a bit bumpy, to say the least...

Rukia, one of the Ikizu translators, taught each group how to read with the seven Ikizu vowels

The first part of our work in each village comprised of a big group interview, during which we asked  people about their language use and gathered their opinions about their people group

Gimme!

Kambubu adults who participated in the survey research

Kambubu kids and adults, one with an Ikizu calendar

I (Misha) recently went on a language survey with a team of three others.  All in all, it was a great trip.  In fact, I have only good memories of our work and interactions with people, with the exception of some of the folks in Kambubu village.  So while I usually like to write blog posts about cheerful things and positive encounters, I thought that since what happened in Kambubu isn't terribly uncommon, I should write a bit about it to give you all a picture of what sort of thing sometimes happens here.

We were coming from working at another village and the timing was such that we were a bit early, so we parked under the shade of a tree.  Very quickly, a group of about twenty kids assembled and stood no more than five feet away from our vehicle.  They stared at us, whispering among themselves, for over 45 minutes.  The bolder ones frequently called out to us, "White people, give me money!  Give me candy!"  No less than three times various adults from the village came by and yelled at the kids to disperse, one of them going so far as to throw sticks at them, but every time they came back within minutes.

When 2:00 finally arrived, we got out of the vehicle and happened to meet up with a group of young people who were walking by just then.  They looked to be in their 20s and all were fairly well-dressed, like they were coming or going from some meeting.  I smiled at them and greeted the group.  They did not answer my greeting or even acknowledge it, but the four walking in front simultaneously stuck out their hands and demanded, "Give us money, white lady!  Give us cell phones!"

An elderly man with a cane came up to me just then and led me away from the group of young people to walk with me to where we were meeting the survey participants.  At first I was grateful for him arriving, but then he proceeded to say, "I see that you have Ikizu calendars for sale.  Please give me one.  I can't afford to buy one, but I really want one."  I gently explained why I couldn't simply give calendars away, trying to be respectful but still firm.  Finally, seeing that I was not going to give in, he sighed and pulled the money for purchasing a calendar from his pocket and bought one.

The survey participants, a group of twenty adults, had been told ahead of time that the only tangible item they would be given for their help was a bottle of soda as a little afternoon refreshment, but that their work would help further language development and Bible translation in Ikizu.  Nevertheless, that did not stop them from spending the first ten minutes of our meeting demanding that we pay them for their time.  When it became clear that we would not be paying any money, they settled down and cheerfully helped with no hard feelings.  It was like they reasoned that the worst that could happen was that we'd say, "No, we are not paying anything," and they wouldn't be any worse off than before, so had nothing to lose by asking.  Of course, after the meeting as we were saying our good-byes and thank-yous, at least four people drew me aside to request phones, money, or free books.  Maybe they thought that although we couldn't help the whole group, maybe there was something available for just one person!

Interactions like this are very tiring for me, as well as very frustrating.  I don't like people begging me for stuff, and even worse is people demanding stuff.  However, the people of Kambubu village were all kind and helpful in the survey work and nobody got offended when I turned them down.  They were all smiling when we left and gave us friendly waves good-bye.  I had to remind myself that although their behavior seemed rude to me, that perhaps it was okay in their culture and that I needed to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Cross-cultural interactions are always tricky!

It's time to go to America!

I think it is time Andrew and I went on a trip.  You see, that little chocolate chip in the picture is all by itself because it was the very last piece of chocolate in the house.  Yes, you read that right: when this picture was taken, we were down to our very, very last chocolate chip, and there was no baking cocoa, no chocolate bars, no chocolate bunnies, nothing else chocolate in the entire house!  And then after taking this picture I promptly ate that little chip so it wouldn't be sad and lonely any longer, so now we're officially out of all chocolate products.  Mind you, we don't even have hot cocoa mix in the cupboard!

Some people time their trips to their home countries by more complex methods, but we just go by when we run out of chocolate...(just kidding... sort of).  We leave East Africa on July 10, so we just have to make it a few more weeks!

It's all in the details

Sometimes I (Misha) feel like my job is one of constant nit-picking details.  Fortunately, my brain tends to naturally tend towards details - "Forest?  What forest?  All I can see is lots of bark and leaves - I think there must be some trees over there!"  Occasionally I find a major exegetical error in a translation draft and we have a lively discussion about what the verse means, but most of my work focuses on finer points.

A few minutes ago I came across a great example in the initial draft of Ikizu Genesis 9 (the chapter where God makes the covenant with Noah about not flooding the earth again).  The NIV says: "Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood."  The Ikizu draft said something like, "Never again will I kill an animal by way of the waters of a flood."  Now, the exegetical part comes in with comparing how the Ikizu have made it explicit that God is killing animals, versus stating that "life will be cut off" without really saying who is cutting it off.  The mistake in the verse (well, 1/3 of a verse - I've trimmed a bit out of Genesis 9:11 here) is more subtle: "all life" versus "an animal".  I'm pretty sure a few animals have died in floods over the years, so the Ikizu doesn't seem quite right!  Changing a singular to plural quite dramatically affects the meaning of God's covenant here.  In Ikizu, it is "ikityɨnyi" for one animal and "ibityɨnyi" for more than one.  When a 'k' accidentally becomes a 'b', the accuracy of a verse can be ruined.

So in case you're wondering what do I really do all day, here's your summary: I examine the patterns in leaves and bark and hope that once in a while I recognize that there is actually a forest.  Or, in more literal terms, I check to make sure no 'k's have turned into 'b's and try to remember that we're actually working on the Word of God and not just proofreading some document!

P.S. I love details, spell-checking, and proofreading, so I'm not complaining here, just explaining.  :-)