power points

Those of you familiar with Microsoft Office programs may think this blog will be about some sort of slide show…however, a ”power point” in Commonwealth English is what I would call an electrical outlet.  Aside from the different voltage and shape of the prongs on plugs, there is one really big difference in power points here from what I am used to in the States—an on/off switch. This switch is really handy in that it allows you to leave something plugged in and yet have no electricity flowing through the circuit.  I usually like to have the switch turned “off” when I plug in my computer because otherwise it tends to make a rather loud crack when I plug it in…which makes me rather nervous.  However, the problem with this is that I also usually then forget to actually turn the switch on.  I can’t tell you how many times I have plugged in my computer and worked away, assuming that I was running off the electricity, when all of a sudden I get a “low battery” message on my computer and I realize that I had never actually turned the power point switch to “on”!!

plants I never expected to see in the tropics

I’ve always thought of these as desert plants, but surprisingly, there are a number of healthy looking cactus and yucca plants around.  I even saw some aloe vera being sold in the market last week!

Cooking

So how DO you cook for 40 people at a month long course—three meals a day-seven days a week?

Well here are photos of our “stovetop” and “oven.” Both are fire driven. We have a duty roster which schedules the men to take turns chopping firewood each day.

We have three ladies that do our cooking for us and they are wonderful! They arrive at 5:30 each morning to get the fire going to heat water for coffee and tea for breakfast—and they stick around all day (with short lull between breakfast & lunch and lunch & dinner) until dinner is cleaned up.

I have made up a menu of what I would like cooked for each meal, I just try to make sure that we have all the ingredients (all that are available this week at least!) and the cooks do an excellent job of handling all the actual cooking. This is really great for me, as they have SOO much more experience cooking over fires and inside a wood oven that I wouldn’t be much help anyways. In fact I just learned last week that because the oven gets so smoky when there is an actual fire under it, they have to start early and get a good fire going so that they will have only coals before cooking inside or the food will taste smoky. This makes sense, but I don’t think I would have thought of it on my own!

We have been trying a few new recipes this course (potato soup, chili, tuna & egg salad sandwiches, coffee cake, brownies) and they have been so excited for the opportunity to test new things! I am so thankful for these three women!!

daily

This course/module has been a bit different than normal. The seven language groups finished translating the book of Mark in the February module and took copies back to their villages for checking between modules. They returned in June with a list of corrections that needed to be made to create a nearly final copy that will be checked by a trained consultant hopefully in the next few months.

Our fearless leader

So this module has been spent making those final corrections, double checking spelling and key terms and finishing up a “back translation” (translation done from the language into English by someone that didn’t work on the original translation—this is a tool used by the consultants to make sure that meaning is being correctly conveyed).

The Taupota language team working with their mentor on corrections

In addition to the above work, this module has also been a time for the participants to learn/polish typing skills. We have a number of small AlphaSmart Neos. They are small word processor-type computers that have a full keyboard and a small screen, about 4 lines long, and they run off 3 AA batteries. These allow the participants to do their own typing of stories and songs on their own time to increase the volume of language resources. These can then be used for storybooks in schools, songs for church songbooks, and more information about the language--which is helpful for analysis of the language, an important step in a good translation.

Members from the Maiadom and Kakabai language teams doing typing practice

We have also taken some time to work on expanding dictionaries. We have acquired two really nice posters on the flora and fauna of PNG. It is so helpful to a match PNG language name to its English name using the pictures on these posters! I have spent some time working with the Kakabai (Kah-kuh-bye) language team on the dictionary work and realize that it is a bit of a handicap for me to not be familiar with the plants animals in this area of the world! I just haven’t seen enough Cassowaries to know what to properly call, in English, the name of the pokey things that they have that are not called “feathers”—pictures and descriptive books really are an asset (by the way…we decided on quill/spine)!

Members and mentor from the Ghayavi language team looking at posters for words to add to their dictionary

Catching up...

Ok, sorry I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth!  I haven’t forgotten about blogging, but somehow it just didn’t get done. So, a quick catch up:

 

April -> flew to Madang (north coast of PNG) for a short vacation with friends. We took an Open Water Diving course, so now I’m certified to dive to 18 Meters!  It was really fun—there are so many colorful things to see underwater here, as well as some WWII wrecks (which as an “Open Water” diver I can only view from the outside, but still really cool)!

 

April to mid-May -> Back to Ukarumpa (in the “highlands” middle of PNG).  There I worked on some formatting projects on the computer; basically typesetting a grammar paper for publishing.  I also trained a new gal on how to do the job—she was really fun to work with, but I felt a little odd to be training someone on something I’d only done once before myself (I worked on a different grammar paper typesetting job last December and really enjoyed it).

 

mid-May -> returned to Alotau (southeastern tip of PNG) to do some prep work for the multi language project I helped with back in February: re-designing the Access database of course information (participants, publications, training, etc.), gathering information and creating a songbook to print for the course participants, a week of computer training with our national staff mentors from the basics to some more advanced programs; my more experienced teammate did the advanced training, but then I was also able to learn more about those programs myself!

 

June -> our June course for the multi-language project started, and we are now about halfway through the course!  Wow!  This course I am once again the “buyer,” and thus responsible for purchasing all the supplies, managing the cooks and making sure everyone is fed.  I have added a few new recipes to the menu this module (chili, potato soup, tuna and egg salad sandwiches, oatmeal) which everyone seems to be enjoying—at least the staff enjoyed the oatmeal J—so that make me happy too!  I also am available to help out one of the language groups with their typing work that has to be done in English (even if you can speak it well, you have to admit that some of those English spellings trip you up!), and will begin to do some printing of the literacy books that are being produced next week.