Scenes from our travels

A few things we saw on our most recent travels. Firstly, a lorry which had broken down completely blocking the road! Apparently he knew he was running out of diesel, thought he'd turn around and go back to Parakou ... and ran out entirely while turning round! Here he is:

The taxi which stopped in front of us opened its boot to give the sheep some air:

This is a bus we saw as we left Parakou the next day, which presumably doesn't belong to a French football team any more...

This is the kind of thing we see far too much of:

You can carry anything on the back of a motorbike (though presumably it was empty!):

And this is what we actually see during most of our journey down the country. Frankly not all that interesting!

double wedding

We attended a double wedding in the village last Saturday. Here is the first bridegroom, waiting for his bride ... the veiled woman in the chair next to him is an older lady who is just teasing him!

The second couple after the brides had arrived. I mentioned once before that such a solemn occasion means that couples don't smile during the ceremony - very strange for us!

A "where's Wally?" moment - see if you can spot the missionaries in the crowd:

A big thank-you to the Director of SIM France, Jean Salmeron, who was visiting us and took these photos.

why?

I am sometimes asked, respectfully, whether it is really necessary to translate the Bible into local languages when "most people" speak French. After all, if sermons can be translated on-the-spot, couldn't the same be done with the Bible?

My first answer to this is actually a question. Do you understand everything you read in the Bible when you read it in your mother tongue? I suspect the answer to this will be no, or else you are avoiding the bits you don't like! And if the answer is no, then why add a layer of difficulty for Bible readers by demanding that they read it in their second language?

My second, and similar, answer comes from my experience as a member of a Bible translation team. I have a lot of respect for my colleagues on the team, and if you spoke with them in French you would find them competent speakers. But that is very different from understanding the nuances, rhetoric and irony of a literary text in another language. Some of the drafts we've worked on (and it may have been previous translators who originally translated them) read like they've been translated by a computer. The vocabulary seems about right, but the meaning is garbled.

So that is why I think it is important that people have the Bible in their own language. If nothing else, if they don't understand the text, it is important that they know that it is the text itself which is difficult to understand. If they suspect that it is their own lack of fluency in their second language which is a preventing them from understanding God's word, it discourages them from even trying.

As an example of mis-use of a second language, the youth of our church, who are educated in French, recently made themselves a T-shirt exhorting others to "Sois un modèle à égard." Not only is this a misquote of the Bible (probably based on I Tim. 4:12 or Titus 2:6-7) it is bad French which you would have thought someone would have noticed before getting however many tens of T-shirts printed. It does make you wonder whether they actually understand the sentence, or at least more than the first three words. Often when reading in another language, we are convinced we understand, but our understanding is based on assumptions and expectations rather than the actual words (this happens too of course, though to a lesser extent, in our first language).

And a quotation which has another take on the question:

The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner. —William Cameron Townsend

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!)