Written November 5th ...

... only posted now due to terrible internet connection!

Sorry for my silence over the last month! The month went extremely quickly – our annual SIM Benin-Togo conference took place from October 14^th to 18^th, and since I was involved with the organisation that took up quite a lot of my thinking time! I am grateful to God for a smooth and non-stressful conference, with thought-provoking Bible messages and some lovely times of fellowship with other missionaries.

Then I just had one week at home to get myself sorted to come to the mission hospital, since it had wisely been suggested that I move on-site at 38 weeks. I didn't at all expect to give birth so early (having given birth at 39+6 and 41+3 in the past) but I would have found it a bit stressful to be at home at that stage. Travelling is not recommended at night (due to bandits and badly-lit fast-moving other trafic) and trying to get the whole family in the car in a rush in the middle of the night did not appeal!

Last week I was here on my own, as Marc and the boys brought me down, stayed a night and then went back home for the rest of the week. That way our short-termer Matthieu could teach Simon for another week and Marc could get work done which he can do more easily at home … plus oversee the installation of a new water tank. But since Saturday they have been here with me – Marc is teaching Simon again and getting with other work in the afternoons. I'm glad, as I didn't really want to give birth without Marc being here!

We have a very comfortable house to stay in, and it is quite a luxury to have reliable power and water, not to mention people who come on-site to sell vegetables and chickens. It is quite a novelty to have a man turn up with chickens tied to his bicycle, to choose the one I want and have it killed, plucked and cleaned outside the house. It ends up in the fridge looking as if I bought it at the supermarket … but of course fresher!!

There are several other missionaries working in the hospital or on-site at the moment, and they looked after me very well last week, inviting me over for meals so that I wouldn't miss my family too much!

So now we are playing the waiting game, though since I'm not 40 weeks until Friday, I don't want to think of it as waiting until then!! If this one is as late as Benjy was, I still have another two weeks to go … and as I said, it's very nice being here, and I'm able to get on well with translation work, so what's the rush? I suppose I could be impatient to see my baby, but I remember last time thinking that babies are far less work on the inside than the outside, so perhaps I should just enjoy the (relative) peace and quiet while I can!

of gods and chance

We came up against two interesting translation challenges while working on I Samuel recently. The first is a problem we have frequently, and this was just a new variation. For the Monkolé people, and indeed most people groups in this part of West Africa, there is one supreme God, but there are also spirits who are worshipped and sacrificed to through idols (often represented by a tree or a rock or another natural object). This makes it difficult to translate when the Bible talks of « other gods » … not that the Bible is not mono-theistic, but it recognizes that other peoples worship their own idea of a god (or gods). It is not possible, grammatically speaking, to put « god » in plural in Monkolé, or to talk of « their God », because that supposes the existence of others. So when it comes to saying « the God of the Israelites », we tend to translate it with « God, the Lord of the Israelites ».

In I Samuel 4, the Israelites are fighting against the Philistines, and are losing. So they send for the ark of the LORD. When the Philistines hear that the ark has come into the Israelite camp, they say something along the lines of, “God has come into their camp … who shall rescue us from these powerful gods?” (In the Hebrew “god” is first singular then plural.) For people like the Monkolé, who believe in one supreme God, this makes it sound as if the Philistines are saying that this one supreme God is on the side of their enemies (and “gods” must be translated as a singular “God”).

In chapter 5, the Philistines have captured the ark of the LORD in battle, and taken it back to their own country where they place it in the temple of their god Dagon. The first night it is there, the statue of Dagon falls on the floor in front of the ark. The second night not only does it fall, but its head and hands fall off. Then the people of the city are plagued with tumours, and they realise that keeping the ark in their city is perhaps not such a good idea. So they say, “The God of Israel did this. He is the one causing trouble for us and for our god Dagon.” Even when the translators choose (as they do in many English versions) to write the first occurrence of “God” with a capital “G” and the second with a lowercase “g”, it seems clear that for the Philistines these two gods were beings of the same nature … which didn't seem at all the case in our Monkolé translation which said “God, the Lord of the Israelites, did this. He is the one causing trouble for us and for our idol Dagon.”

We discussed this as a team, but couldn't find a satisfactory solution. However, when I talked with a missionary colleague who is a translator in another Beninese language, she asked whether it wasn't possible to use the word for “Lord” for both. So instead of “God, the Lord of the Israelites”, simply “the Lord of the Israelites”, and then instead of “our idol Dagon”, “our Lord Dagon”. I went back with this proposition to my translators, to find out whether that was acceptable in Monkolé, and as we looked through the different passages we were able to work it in. Of course, we'll have to wait and see what our translation consultant thinks of it, but I think we may have found a fairly good way to translate so that we remain true to the mindset of the original readers while expressing it in a reasonable natural form of the Monkolé language.

The second question I had when looking at the text before working with the team, was in I Samuel 6:9. Here the Philistines say that if a certain thing happens they'll know that it is the God (or Lord!) of the Israelites who is sending the plague upon them, but that if it doesn't happen they'll know that the plague has come upon them by chance. Chance is not something which exists in the Monkolé worldview. There must always be a reason for everything, so I wondered how this would be translated. Looking at the translation, I found that it said, « otherwise we will know that this has come upon us from somewhere [else] », a translation supported by a translators' manual which is on my computer. My translators said that anyway, Christians don't believe in chance ... yet I don't feel that Western Christians see things quite the same way as Monkolé Christians ...

Nasty internet but a good month

I do apologise for my absence, but we have been wrestling with our internet connection since the end of August. We have no idea why it has got so much worse, but it does make things difficult when it comes to keeping up communication! This month we have welcomed Marc's brother, Sam, and sister-in-law, Rolande, who have been visiting for a few weeks - our first family visit! A few photos... first of all, harvesting fresh peanuts to boil for our evening meal, then playing new games with S&R:

The last two were taken last Sunday, when we went to the Monkolé church in Kandi-Fô ... it might look empty, but by the time the service got going it was packed!

a week with a difference

This week we hosted a training seminar for 2 Bible translation teams (Monkolé and Fulfuldé) and a literature translator (Baatonu) on our mission station here in Pèdè. We were taught by Dr Pierre Barassounon, who is our translation consultant. The week went very well, and it was particularly good to see the newer translators growing in confidence and understanding new concepts. A few photos:

We had torrential rain - an assault on our ears thanks to our metal roof - for about 3 hours on Tuesday morning. For those three hours it felt as if we were living under a waterfall … and when the rain slackened it looked as if we were living on an island!

It is rare that it rains so hard for so long. On the positive side, we did collect plenty of lovely clean water for washing our clothes (nicer than our orange well water) but on the negative side the ground is taking its time to soak up all that water, and we even have water rising up into our new bedroom floor - eek!

shopping

On Saturday as I drove into our nearest town, Kandi, to do our weekly shop, I remembered how Marc, baby Simon and I used to do our weekly shop on Saturday mornings at Tesco when we were at Bible College. Saturday morning may still be my shopping time, but what a different trip it is!

So I thought that for this post I would describe a typical Saturday shopping trip these days. I drive to Kandi through open countryside with trees and a few round huts dotted about. At this time of year it is all very green, and crops are growing fast. After less than ten minutes I arrive in Kandi, and drive through it on the main road, dodging motorbikes, bikes, pedestrians, sheep, goats and so on as I go … there is no pavement so we all share the not-particularly-wide road! Not-particularly-wide but pretty busy as it is the main North-South road in Benin.

I stop first at the shop which looks most like a shop in the West – it has swing doors and a TV constantly playing. The shelves are all fairly temporary-looking though, and although they do sometimes sell some things you can't find anywhere else in Kandi – Pringles, fruit juices and even Heinz salad cream – the prices of these things are such that I would rarely buy them. Instead I tend to buy cheap biscuits (for our boys and their friends), yoghurts, mayonnaise, peanuts and occasionally sausages (just the industrial sort) or butter. The person at the till is usually a youngish guy who somehow managed to work out that Marc and I belong together despite us never having been to the shop at the same time! If he isn't there it is an older woman who I think may be the proprietor. As a general rule, everyone who is running a business is friendly … though not necessarily everyone selling anything – I've had younger girls going round the streets with produce trays on their heads who were obviously selling for someone else and seemed quite sullen!

I may then go on to the pharmacy. Some of the pharmacies in Parakou look very like the bright, modern ones you find in Europe. This one however looks more like the slightly shabby ones you also sometimes find in Europe! They don't have a huge range of medicines, but are happy to order them in, and I think they are the only place I've seen shampoo for non-African hair in Kandi.

From there I drive back into town and turn off the main road into what feels like the market, though in reality there is a brand-new market standing empty (something to do with places not having been attributed yet, or not enough places to go around...) and the market sprawls all over the streets of the centre of Kandi. I can usually park in front of the small shop owned by the man who sells me flour … I say shop, but it looks more like a large alcove. He has things out on the concrete in front of it – mattresses, plastic chairs, hosepipe, lino – and inside he has sheets of corrugated iron, suitcases, oil lamps, insect spray and a host of other assorted goods. I greet him, and chat for a while, and order my weekly 5kg of flour if he has it … and if he doesn't then often his eldest son (who must be about 14) will usually run off and get it from someone else.

I leave my car there, and cross the road to find the vegetable-selling lady who brings cabbage and/or carrots and/or potatoes up from Parakou most weeks. She tends to greet me with, "Bonjour, Pèdè!", calling me by the name of the village we live in.

I then go on to greet the lady I buy onions from, and to buy onions if I need them. There are no loyalty schemes as such here, but if you build up a good client-seller relationship you usually find that prices are decreased and you get a "present" (ie. a couple of extra onions) added on. We bumped into my onion lady at a wedding in our village, which meant she got to meet Marc and the boys, and so she is even warmer towards me now than she was before! I sometimes buy spinach or "leaves" from another lady sitting next to her.

Then I go on to my tomato lady, who speaks very little French but is always equally happy to see me, and also gives me extra tomatoes every time. If any of them don't see me for a week or two they always ask if I've been away somewhere.

Last Saturday I then remembered I needed batteries too, so went back to my flour supplier. He had disappeared so I asked his son if they had batteries. They didn't, but he went running off and found some elsewhere, came back to ask me how many, went away again to get them, came back to take my money, and then did another trip to get my change for me! I would feel bad, except that I didn't ask him to!

After all that I go back to the car and drive round two corners (again dodging what- or whoever is in the road) to Rosine's shop. It looks like a very small warehouse with a front terrace. She has a fridge and a freezer and I usually buy things like sugar, rice, couscous and pasta from her, and tinned goods like evaporated milk, sardines or corned beef. Rosine is always very welcoming and, having met our boys before, sometimes sends presents of packets of biscuits home with me. And when our car got a flat tyre a few weeks ago and Marc was having it repaired just round the corner from Rosine's shop, I took the boys and we went and sat with her while we waited for it to be mended.

Last Saturday I was surprised to see a pile of three brand new fridges on her terrace. I said, "Rosine, are those yours, or are you selling them?" "Oh, I'm selling them," she replied, "Why, are you interested?" "No, what I could be interested in is a washing machine," I said, and she said, "Oh well, I can see whether I can get one if you like!" She told me that the fridge suppliers have their own lorry and so deliver directly to her, so I said that if the washing machine suppliers could deliver all the way to our house I might well be interested!

After leaving Rosine I drop into the Post Office on my way home. The main part isn't open on Saturdays, but the small room with the post office boxes is, and so I check ours. It always makes me very happy if I find post there!

And off home I go. It probably takes about as long as it used to take us to do our Tesco shop, and it's less convenient but also less expensive, and there is definitely more personal contact with the people I meet.

family fun day

While we spend most of our time living in the village of Pèdè, where our nearest missionary neighbours are 50 minutes' drive away, we do enjoy the times when missionaries get together for fun and fellowship. The mission TWR has an annual "Family Fun Day" in July or August, and we very much enjoyed the last one. They have a large property - they need it as they have a very tall radio tower - with a lake and mango grove, and 40 or 50 of us met up for some barbecuing, swimming, zip-wiring, water-fighting fun! (Fortunately none of these activities were mandatory!) Our boys spent a lot of time by the side of the river or on the rope bridge above it, and their parents spent a lot of time chatting to friends! We also enjoyed the food.

The way up to the zip wire (would this pass European safety standards?!)