What happens there?
well I'm not sure until I'm there, but hiking, swimming, learning, camping, village living, bug fighting, malaria dodging, ant killing. The typical PNG stuff.
We're packing to go, and today I thought would be a nice quiet work day.. but one of the translators wanted to bring in his translation assistants to learn some computers, specifically our HF email solution.
More pictures
I think the most interesting part about this pic is that it sort of shows you my size in relation to most people here.
The grey haired gentleman is Peter. He is Dutch (a dutch colony in Indonesia) and has been here working on a translation for many years. He is going semi-retired. For some time he has been training the other two men (left=Tobias, right = Fidelis) to do the translation work and then send their progress to him for review.
A lot of the translation projects focus around training one or two individuals who understand the language, so that they can be your liason to the culture and language. Sometimes they work so well that the translator in the final years of his project, can move out of the village and take on more of the finalizing tasks of the translation. This is a relationship that works to the benefit of both parties as it educates and provides a job for the nationals as well as helping speed the progress of the translation work.
There is a down side to it, in that the translator often plays host to men from a different culture and sometimes doing this takes more work than not, training takes time and money, but once they work together for some time, they get a good system down and the traveling can be reduced. The aim is for translator assistants to be dedicated to the task and committed for many years to working on it.
Names are interesting here, a PNG national can have 3 or more names and the one they give you is usually their "work" or their "for the whiteskins" name. They rarely give out their actual birth name. So it isn't surprising when a man tells me his name is "Fidelis". Because i know the odds are, he wasn't born with that name, he jsut chose it, and sometimes it can tell you a bit about the person as to what name they chose.
The discovery of this was an interesting process. Our Haus Meri was talking to me (mind you it's in Tok Pisin so I'm only 80% sure I'm understanding her):
-"You know Noah"
me - "I do?"
-"Noah, he says you are his boss."
me - "I'm nobody's boss."
-"He says you are a good guy, he works with you in CTS"
me "I know everyone at work, no one named noah."
-"are you sure? He says he knows you, he is my cousin."
me "can you describe him?"
-...describes something that would match any human being in existence.... generic
me "oh you mean Bosaka."
So later that day, I found Bosaka whom I known for sometime and said "Hi Noah" He stopped "where did you hear that name?" He asked as he smiled. Then he told me about his names... he can tell who knows him and how they know him by what name they call him.
Which suddenly explained why when I shouted his name across the road the other day when he was with friends, that he didn't smile his normal smile and wave back.
We leave for POC on monday and I do not know how often I will be able to blog or email.
Please pray for health and safety. For endurance.
There are a lot of things out there that want to make us sick, please pray against it.
