Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for October, 2008

Well… Friday I drove into town only to notice that the A/C had quit working.  The fan worked but out came only muggy air.  That’s not a good thing for a six-days-total journey to Nairobi.  Especially with an 8-month-old.  So, I took it to the garage first thing this morning.  They pulled it up on a ramp:

We were waiting on the A/C guy to come diagnose the problem when one of the mechanics discovered a bigger problem.  The left front 4WD axle was broken.  They worked up a quote… Tsh. 2,700,000.  That’s the equivalent of USD$2,150.00.  Ouch.  Gladly, we don’t have to have it fixed yet.  We just don’t have 4WD until we do.

The A/C problem was due to a hairline fracture in one of the little pipes… allowed all the gas to leak out.  They sealed it with super glue and some kind of metal cement, refilled me with A/C gas and I was ready to go… or so I thought.  As they were finishing me up under the car, the mechanic saw a nail sticking out of my left rear tire.  That’s never a good thing unless you collect those.  Even then, not a wise way to go about it.  I had to go home to eat a late lunch first (yes, I’d been there that long already) only to return in the afternoon to have it patched and pay the bill of Tsh. 224,400 or USD$179.00.

Not my best day but hey, I finished editing chapter one of JONAH in Kinga while I was waiting.  That’s a good thing!

I’m uploading a new photo gallery Dana put together from our 5-day Kinga recording journey.  By the time you read this, it should be ready for viewing.

P.S. Most of the pictures have been geo-tagged, meaning you can see on a map where they were taken.

These books have been available for months in written form, I have just recently finished recording them.  Last week, I traveled with a small team out to Usangu (in Swahili, to say the area of a certain language group, you put a U- on the beginning).  Their purpose was to distribute 2009 mother tongue calendars and to hold a Scripture Use seminar.  My goal was to record seven missing words out of my JONAH recording and to get some Sangu music for intro and outro on the cassettes.  Here are the drums they used for the music I recorded:

After Katherine finished her SU seminar, I took that opportunity to test the recordings on local pastors in attendance.  The response was nothing but encouraging words and high anticipation for their cassettes to arrive.  Here they are listening to the audio from my computer played through a PA system:

Now that I’ve gotten final approval, I’m entering the duplication and distribution stage.  That should happen next week.

Here is Asher exploring our room with Mommy:

Makete is becoming my favorite place here.  You can see why…

Recording is going absolutely wonderful.  As a matter of fact, I’m sitting here about to finish the last three songs.  RUTH was finished yesterday and JONAH the day before.  Six days of work has only taken three and a half!  I’ll give you some Kinga samples later.

Kinga Audio Books

My hoped-for 3-hour drive up here ended up being 6 hours.  Oh, how we did some four-wheelin’!!!!  I even got some good ol mud splashes up on the hood and windshield.  I’m very happy with our vehicle purchase.  It serves us very well.

Well, we’re up here to record RUTH and JONAH in the Kinga language.  I’ve got four days scheduled for that.  Also, I hope to get two days in of recording songs in their mother tongue as well.

The guest house we’re staying in is nice.  Very well built but unfortunately the voltage here is low so the widow-maker (on-shower head electric water heater) doesn’t have enough juice to operate.  That means we get our hot water in a 5-gallon bucket when we need it.  Asher got the first bath of all of us.  He was a dirty baby after our long journey.

Online by my cell phone via bluetooth but the network is must be very old cause the speed is creepy crawly.  But, I’ll keep posting as much as I can while here so you know how the recording is going.

Here is the audio from Jonah 1:15-16 in Kisangu.  In English, the verses say:
So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped raging.
The men feared the Lord greatly, and earnestly vowed to offer lavish sacrifices to the Lord.

Jonah 1:15-16 in Kisangu

You mean more to me today than ever before.  On this day four years ago, I thought the same thing.

I love you.

Happy Anniversary.

His name is Wiliadi Mwasembe (wee-lee-AH-dee  mwah-SAY-mbay) and he is the Kisangu translation team leader.  Back in June, he and I sat in the Scripture Use office and poured over the recently-prepared Ruth and Jonah scripts to check their accuracy.  Upon completion of that task, we set the tentative recording date to be sometime in September.  There are way too many extraneous factors to have planned it any further out than that.  (Currently all of my other scheduled recordings after Kikinga this month are tentative.)

Time passed as I continued to plan and prepare for my transition into the recording phase of my work.  As September approached, I learned that Mwasembe and a number of other members of the team would be attending a 3-week discourse workshop in town.  In addition to them, we also have two other native Sangu speakers who work in the office.  I only needed a total of six people to speak the dramatized scripts, so before me was a great opportunity… record them while they’re here.

I spoke to Mwasembe, met with him to iron out the details and solidified recording dates of September 29 – October 2.  He and I both thought the workshop ended on Friday, September 26.  That would give them a weekend break before recording.  But, we discovered the workshop ended on that Thursday instead.  Time to shift the schedule.  We decided to record Fri, Sat, Mon & Tue as the entire team expressed the desire to return home as soon as possible.

That Friday (this past one) came and we started late.  Also, Mwasembe had to get two replacement speakers from Utengule (his home; less than 2 hours away) because two people suddenly had to leave Thursday afternoon.  I wanted to be upset but I am learning that’s the way of life here.  Backing out at the last minute is a preferred treatment instead of saying, “No.” right then and there.  The latter would be inexplicably rude to do to someone.  Whereas, the prior would be that way for those of us from the West.  God provided two excellent speakers to fill those roles and I even got an invite, “Welcome home.” from one of them as he was leaving.  He saw it as an honor to me to try to use his limited English to invite me to visit his home.  I understood his meaning and replied that I hope to visit soon.

Saturday was just me and Mwasembe as he had the most lines of all.  He spoke the narration for both books and a number of smaller parts, too.  The biggest challenge that day was discovering and eliminating an electrical pop somewhere in the system.  Never did figure out why it was there but starting a new recording session on the computer solved the problem.

Monday posed more electrical issues.  The power in the building fluctuated like I’ve hardly ever seen it before.  Drop to 200V.  Shoot up to 250V.  Not good.  So I fired up my trusty little Honda generator I brought from the States and we rolled on.  Then came different electrical pops.  I tried and tried to get rid of them but I never could.  Gladly, we were well ahead of schedule and were able to record enough takes to put together a decent sound.

Mwasembe and I proofed the recordings Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning before he signed off on my master scripts that what I had captured was indeed accurate.  Those two periods were probably my most favorite of all the time in the studio.  Many times Mwasembe caused me to look up from my script and stop the playing over the speakers because he was smiling and laughing so much.  It wasn’t an irreverent laugh that came from him.  It was a laugh of engagement and enjoyment because he was sitting there listening to his work, his translation, his mother tongue.  It was only the rough draft of a final product.  Just all the character pieces fitted together on the time line so we could proof the recordings straight from beginning to end.  But, even through the miscues, a few time gaps and clicks and pops I watched in amazement at how the story reached Mwasembe.  And this was the translation team leader!  Someone who labored over every one of those words for months already.  This wasn’t his first encounter with Ruth and Jonah, but may have been his first time experiencing the stories.

As I have more time and opportunity to work with the people of these oral language groups, the realization of the significance of my role in Bible translation continues to grow more and more.  I love my job.