Attending a Tanzanian Wedding

Last weekend I went to my first ever wedding here in Tanzania. I had no idea what to expect but was really looking forward to experiencing whatever I would experience. The assistant operations manager for our office (a Tanzanian man named Eliud) married his childhood sweetheart to whom he had been secretly engaged for 10 years. And no, this is not your typical Tanzanian engagement story. They were secretly engaged as teenagers but waited ten years to get married, until Eliud had a job and money to provide well for her.

The wedding was supposed to begin around 3pm but typically began when everyone arrived. The four bridesmaids danced their way up the aisle in pink satin followed by the bride and her maid of honour, both in white, although the bride's dress was much fancier, similar to a North American style wedding gown. The ceremony wasn't as long as I thought it might be and included songs from a very enthusiastic, dancing choir, a man with some type of animal tail that he waved around constantly, a sermon from one of my colleagues, and lots of liturgy as they were married in a Lutheran church.

The reception was held at a hotel nearby. Two things that stood out to me about the reception were its interactive nature and the dancing. When I have attended wedding receptions in Canada, I usually found my seat and stay seated during the program if I was a guest. However at this reception the guests were repeatedly called up out of our seats. First we had to toast with the bride and groom which meant everyone in a line filing past the wedding party with their drink in hand. Then there was the gift giving which began with all the different family members being called up, one group at a time, to give their gift. First his parents, then his sisters, then his brothers, then his aunts, then his uncles and you get the picture. Next came her family and then us as his co-workers and the rest of the guests.

Throughout this whole time, no one walked up front to give their gift or toast the bride and groom. Everyone danced. Every time any group was called to the front music was played and everyone danced their way up front. Sometimes other people joined in just for fun.

Finally at 11 at night, the food was served, and then the real party began.

Although definitely different from any other wedding I've attended, it was a lot of fun and a real privilege to be a part of Eliud's wedding.

Graves and caves

If you had walked into our translation office this morning, you would have found yourself in the middle of an intense discussion about graves. I know, I know, not your usual Tuesday morning conversation but when it comes to translation, everything's fair game.

It all began with a lesson on how to translate unknown ideas. Currently the translators are working on translating Luke 22-24 and one of the unknown ideas in those chapters is the tomb where Jesus was laid. Out here when someone dies, a grave is dug and that person is buried in the ground. However Luke specifically says that no one had been buried in the tomb where they put Jesus (Luke 23:53). From the perspective of the people out here this doesn't make any sense. Who reuses graves?

Thus began the discussion on how to explain what Luke meant. What kind of phrase could describe a tomb? The idea of using the word for 'cave' instead of 'grave' was suggested to help portray this idea. Most translators agreed with this but then the question came up, was Jesus buried in the cave? Did they dig a grave in there or did they carve the stone? What word should be used to describe this process? What words are available in their languages?

Although they didn't all agree on exactly how it should be translated, this discussion was a good learning process for dealing with unknown ideas.

Because He Lives

A couple weeks before Easter I was listening to some worship songs when the hymn 'Because He Lives' started playing. The line 'because He lives, I can face tomorrow' really hit home with me. It was a busy week and some mornings I just wasn't sure I could get out of bed and face the day. But listening to those words I realized that I could face each day because of Christ. He is alive and with me so nothing is impossible.

Again this last weekend over Easter the words of that hymn came back to me and reminded me about the power of the resurrection. Although we celebrate Easter specifically at this time of year it's because of what Christ did on the cross, his death and resurrection that I do what I do each day, all year. It's because He lives that I can live each day in that power of the resurrection. It's because He lives that I walk each day with Jesus, who is alive. It's because of his incredible sacrifice that I am here in Tanzania, part of a project to translate the Bible.

Another meaningful part of Easter for me this year was being able to participate in communion Easter morning as part of a small English service we held. I rarely have the opportunity to take communion and so it was really special to be able to participate in it Easter morning. I was encouraged and refreshed and renewed in my purpose for being here.

So this week, although it's not exactly exciting being back at work after a nice long weekend, I can face each day because I have a living Saviour who is with me every minute. Together there is nothing that can stop us.

The Language of the Home

While I was out in the village of Bwitenge with the Ikoma translators doing a community check, I saw how important the mother tongue is to these people. I was eating lunch at the home of one of the participants (from the community testing) with the translators I work with. Now keep in mind that these translators speak Swahili fluently. We use it at work all the time, they spoke it in school growing up and use it in town all the time. However now, we were in the area that the translators called home, a place where everyone speaks Ikoma. So back to this lunch. . . While we were sitting and talking, the one translator, Muya, kept speaking Ikoma. The other translator would tell him to speak Swahili, because I couldn’t understand Ikoma. So Muya would switch to Swahili and then two minutes later, he would be back in Ikoma. This went on for a bit until he just gave up and spoke Ikoma.

At first I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for him to speak Swahili. I thought that once he switched to Swahili he would continue speaking it but he repeatedly returned to Ikoma. After a while I realized that this place was home, this is where he always spoke Ikoma and it probably felt awkward to speak Swahili, especially when everyone else spoke Ikoma. It didn’t matter how fluent he was in Swahili, there was a very strong pull to speak Ikoma in his home village.

That was when I realized how true it must be for the Scriptures too. The Swahili Bible definitely has its place but how can it enter into those homes where only Ikoma is spoken? How can it penetrate that world where only Ikoma is the lanaguage used? How can it reach people’s hearts in the privacy of their own homes? The answer is that it can’t and that’s why we are doing what we are doing. That’s why the Ikoma people we met were so thrilled to hear even two chapters of Luke in their own language. That’s why they patiently answered all our questions all day long, because the verses they heard touched a place that Swahili has never touched.

I have never fully understood what it's like to speak a language only at home, but that day I caught a glimpse. And I realized that people are most fully themselves at home. Home is where they feel relaxed, where they are open, where their passion lies and home is where the Word of God needs to enter in the language spoken there.

One Verse at a Time

"How can you make that sentence a bit shorter and less confusing?" "Who is Abijah and how do we make that clear in your translation?" "What does it mean to return someone to God?" These are just a few examples of the many questions I asked the Ikoma translators as we began checking their translation draft of Luke 1 last Friday.

Before we began working together, I had looked at their translation and compared it to various Swahili and English versions and of course the original Greek as well. As I compared their translation, I wrote down any questions or issues that I saw, from sentences that weren't very clear to words that seemed to mean something different from the Greek. Since I am not fluent in Ikoma, the translators had translated Luke 1 back into Swahili, word for word so I could understand the Ikoma translation.

Then we sat down together and went over my questions, verse by verse, coming up with ways to solve the issues. Sometimes it meant changing a sentence around, or using a different word in the sentence. Sometimes it meant deciding to add a picture of the temple into the translation when it's published or adding another phrase to explain that Abijah was a person, not a place.

The work was slow and I thought it might be tedious but in truth it was one of the most fun times I've had at work! I loved helping make God's word more clear, more accurate and hopefully easier for people to understand. There was a sense of satisfaction when we wrestled through an issue. For example, how we can we translate the metaphor 'throne of David' in a language and culture that has no idea of what a throne is or what it represents? There weren't always easy solutions and we'll definitely be looking at some of these issues again, but it was so rewarding to know we had made a verse more clear and accurate.

God's hand was definitely on us that day. It wasn't my insight or wisdom or that of the translator's that caused us to see these issues and how to solve them, but it was God's. I know, because I was sick and tired and was not bursting with ideas. But as we got underway the ideas came, the Swahili words I needed were there and my energy level increased. The only explanation is God.

This is just one step of many to come before we will publish Luke 1 & 2 but it has been a very encouraging and fun step to be a part of.

Missionaries Don't Wear High Heels

I had a funny moment at work last week caused by my shoes. I was wearing a pair of white shoes that have a bit of a heel on them, maybe a couple of inches. I was walking past one of the translators and he stopped me to ask a question. "Are you going to fall?" he questioned me curiously. I just looked at him blankly, completely confused. He must have understood my look because he went on to explain that I was wearing heels and since westerners don't wear heels, only Tanzanians do, I must not know how to walk in heels. The logical conclusion was that I would probably fall since I couldn't walk in heels.

Of course this just made me even more confused, having no idea where his conclusions came from. I asked him why he thought Westerners didn't wear heels. He looked around at all the other Westerners in the room and said that he never saw them wearing heels, only sandals. Therefore it seemed obvious to him that Westerners in general don't wear high heels.

Suddenly it all made sense. His experience with Westerners has been mostly missionaries who often prefer to wear sandals due to the heat and dirt. It is a little more tricky to wear heels when walking on dirt roads and so we often gravitate towards sandals. However Tanzanian women love shoes with high heels and wear them quite often. I laughed and tried to explain to him that back home where I come from, lots of people wear high heels. He looked slightly skeptical and I'm not sure if he believed me.

As amusing at this incident was, it made me think about how easy it is to judge people based on only a little bit of information. From the example of a few missionaries this Tanzanian made some sweeping judgments about millions of people in the Western world. Yet I know I am guilty of doing this same thing. It's easy to see two or three people do something and then judge every Tanzanian to be the same way. Not all assumptions are bad or wrong, but too often they can hurt relationships or stop us from really getting to know people because we've already labeled them.

I was labeled as being unable to walk in high heels and although it was funny, it also wasn't exactly flattering to be considered incompetent in this area. I won't forget this example and I hope it will always remind me to be careful in my judgments and assumptions.

Stories, Stories and More Stories

Currently I'm in my second week of what we are calling a discourse workshop. Basically for each of the nine languages, we had people who speak those languages tell stories, record them, write them down and then we charted them. So for the language I'm working with, which is called Ngoreme, I studied these stories and then divided up them up into sections such as subject, object, verb etc. These stories also are translated into Swahili, word for word so that I can understand them as I don't speak Ngoreme.

Now because I have put specific parts of speech in specific columns in the chart, I can look at one column and see all the verbs or all the objects and this is helpful in many ways. For example, we wanted to see what type of verbs come before the climax of the story. We looked at the verb column and found that sometimes the same verb is repeated leading up to the climax of the story. Later we will take these things that we've learned and apply them to our translations.

It has been interesting to learn how Ngoreme stories work and what makes an Ngoreme story good. However beyond that, it has been really fun just to read these stories and see all the differences between them and some of the folk tales that I know.

One difference that really confused me was the relationship between girls and gourds. Gourds are the dried shell of a vegetable, similar to a squash that can be used for many different purposes, a common one being to hold water or another liquid (see the picture above for an example). In Ngoreme folk tales and some folk tales from other languages, girls often go in and out of gourds and hide in gourds when they are running away from someone. I just didn't understand this at all so one day I asked one of the translators to explain this to me. His answer was very enlightening. He said that the narrow spout of the gourd allowed the girl to get in and then she could sit in the fat part of the gourd. But her pursuers could not get her out, much the same way you can drop a stick in the gourd but then if the stick turned sideways, you could not retrieve it again. He also said she would be stuck in the gourd. Explained that way, the whole gourd phenomena made sense to me, especially since gourds are very common around here.