tiny fufu dabii

Further to my last post, I thought I would share that Eve's new nickname is "fufu dabii", due to her unpredictable but determined path around the house, and her tendancy to pick up small objects on her way and drop them randomly several metres further on...

Apologies for the slight fuzziness, she often moves too fast for the camera to focus!

wandering wind

One of the tell-tale signs of hot season are dust devils, kind of like mini-whirlwinds (there is an interesting article on wikipedia if you want more details on what they are!). Most of them we see are under a metre wide and just a few metres high, but occasionally a larger one whips through our property sending dust flying (we run round trying to shut all windows if we can!).

In Monkolé they are called "fufu dabii" (= wandering wind) and people are wary of them. Some people try to throw stones at them to make them go away, and there is a belief that firing a gun into them will "kill" them.

We saw this bigger one a few weeks ago:

on being try-lingual... (part 2)

More answers to questions I was asked by my friend's students:

Your personal perspective:

Which language do you feel is more useful/ important to you?

It depends on the situation! I can't imagine not speaking my mother tongue to my children. But because I met and got to know my husband in France speaking French, I like speaking French with him, and it reminds me of our “roots”, especially since we are no longer in France. For my Bible translation work, Hebrew, Monkolé and French are essential, and English is extremely useful.

Which do you feel you can express yourself best in? Do you ‘think’ in all of them?

I don't feel handicapped in French compared to English. I know that some people say that when they are angry or upset they can only express themselves effectively in their mother tongue, but I don't find that. Monkolé is a lot more difficult, partly because I have been learning it for a shorter time (4 years), and partly because there is a whole very different mentality and culture behind it. But that makes it all the more fascinating to learn! Sometimes someone says something, and even though you understand all the individual words you don't understand what they mean put together, or the point of what they are saying.

I definitely think in both English and French, depending on the situation and the people I'm with. I assume I must think in Monkolé when I'm speaking it, as I don't translate from another language to speak it.

For example, once when our consultant was with us, and we were working in French, I looked up and from our office window I saw some people arriving at our house. Without thinking I exclaimed in Monkolé, “Oh, it's the X family! They said they'd be calling in today, and I completely forgot...” then suddenly switched to French to say to our consultant, “Oops, sorry!” as he doesn't speak Monkolé. My other two colleagues with whom I do speak Monkolé were present, and I can only assume that somehow my brain “tuned in” to them, or else to the environment of our office, which is usually a totally Monkolé-speaking zone to me!

birds

After my photos of flowers, here are a couple of the birds we've seen recently in our compound. Firstly a red-billed hornbill:

Brown(?) babblers:

(Thanks to Marc for the photos and my parents for the identification!)

travelling

Car journeys – and to a far less frequent extent flights – are part of our life as missionaries. We tend to reckon that we end up travelling at least to Parakou, where the mission has its headquarters, every six weeks to two months. This is easier than it was in the past – since the road was mended it takes 3 hours instead of 4 ½ to 5 hours. If we need to get all the way to Cotonou for our papers it is more like 10 hours driving (we split it into two days) and it is a long haul!!

Practice makes perfect when it comes to packing. Things you forgot once, you are less likely to forget another time, though with small children their needs change all the time, so our packing list has to evolve with them.

I don't know that we ever really get used to driving here, though. It is just not all that safe, and every journey we find ourselves seeing things which make us go, "What...?!" By the grace of God we have been protected until now – the worst accident we had was when our exhaust pipe suddenly dropped off, which was impressive but did no harm to anyone except the car – but I know that Marc, who does nearly all the driving, gets stressed for about 24 hours before every journey.

It bothers me for my translation team that I am absent so frequently, as it makes it difficult to make good progress. But when we are actually somewhere else, I do enjoy catching up with missionary colleagues and Beninese friends, and the shopping is usually more interesting than Kandi!

What also bothers me is the way that travelling upsets our routines. Before we go away I have to spend afternoon time getting everything ready, and therefore have less time for the children, and when we get back I'm always busy unpacking and catching up on things which couldn't get done when we weren't here (usually baking).

Do our kids mind? They don't know any different of course, and they too see other friends when we travel. Eve is the one who seems least happy to be elsewhere, and most happy to get back home again, but perhaps that will change as she gets older.

Nights are also difficult when travelling at the moment. Eve wakes a couple of times a night at the best of times, but travelling makes her sleep very restless. The fact that the whole family is sharing a room just makes it worse for the rest of us! We survive, but we get home exhausted!

Some photos from our last journey to Cotonou. Firstly the auberge in Dassa where we often stop to have a drink and stretch our legs. We can also buy sandwichs to go, which we then eat later on in our journey, in the middle of nowhere! Finally, a photo as we crossed Porto-Novo, in case you got the impression we were the only ones on the road! Notice the bunch of bananas on the lap of the motorbike passenger in front of us!

Ajouter une légende

bilingual family questions part 1

Do you have any examples of miscommunication / communication breakdowns between family / compound members?

There are surprisingly few, though maybe we're used to negotiating understanding. Sometimes a Monkolé speaker will say a word, I'll say I don't understand, and they'll say it again, looking at me as if I'm mad. Eventually they'll explain that it is a French word, just pronounced in a Monkolé way. For example “essence” (petrol) becomes “sãsi”, and a Bic biro is “biki”.

Another thing which is confusing is that in Monkolé if you want to turn an affirmation into a question, instead of raising the intonation at the end as you would in English or French (“He's here?”) you drop it. Which means that, though it now comes more naturally to us, earlier in our language learning we found ourselves confusing people by raising our intonation and making them think we are affirming something when we actually wanted to ask if it were true. (Try asking this kind of question and dropping your voice to see how weird it feels at first!)

When you code-switch (= switch from one language to another), how conscious is it?

Not very conscious, in that I feel I automatically have one language “attached to” each person, so I don't think about it. I suddenly become very conscious of it if I make a mistake and use the wrong language, but that doesn't happen often. I also notice sometimes if I'm addressing several people at once and have to decide which language to use, for example if I'm saying something to the rest of the family. (Usually in that case I would use English, but occasionally French.)

Does confusion between the languages not arise and end up with languages being muddled to a degree?

This morning I was in a three-way conversation with one of my Monkolé colleagues and one of my sons. Each pair in the triangle usually uses a different language. I found myself switching between Monkolé and English depending on who I was speaking to, but then using French when it was for both.

But it never feels like languages are muddled … although perhaps to someone listening in who didn't understand all the languages it might seem that way!

Within our family we do mix languages to some extent, which I would distinguish from “muddling” them, as the latter seems to suggest to me that it is a problem or makes things confusing. There are words we always say in one language or another, but we just slot them in (with their original accent) to whichever language we are speaking. This happens most often with proper nouns, eg. “Did you go to La Franchise ?”, “Tu as fini ton Annual Review?”

Our three small try-linguals: