Since moving to Musoma I have had the opportunity of going on three village trips.
One of the projects we are working on in the Literacy department is a calendar for the language communities that we are currently working with. These calendars have the days of the week, month names in both the Swahili and the local language. These calendars also have a scripture verse as well as captions to pictures in the local language. For some of the languages it was quite difficult to find the original names for months and weekdays, but we have them now.
For one of the languages, while preparing the calendars for 2011 the names couldn't be found, so that calendar was not done. After the calendars were printed and being distributed, a man from that language community arrived at the office, upset that his language didn't have a calendar. He proceeded to provide the month names and weekdays in his language to ensure that the next year, they too would have a calendar...and this year, thanks to him, they do. We are now in the process of printing calendars in 9 of the local languages we are working in.
Each of the calendars features pictures taken in the area where that particular language is spoken. The pictures were chosen by speakers of that language, with the idea of representing their culture and/or their land. For three of the calendars, I got to play photographer! The first trip I took was to Zanaki-land and many of their pictures were featured in my post I am in Musoma! The pictures featured today, are from Ikizu-land.
One of the very cool experiences I had there was that I got to witness half a day of a workshop for the Scripture Use department. This was the classroom, before about 20 local pastors and language committee members arrived. |
So, tune in next time for some pictures of my other trips to villages!!
I love the picture of the road! It's beautiful. What is also amazing to me Shannon is the incredibly technical work your doing to help spread the gospel! Your getting to use your unique skill set to bring the bible to people who otherwise would have it. It blows me away!! Love you!
ReplyDeleteWow Shannon. I LOVE reading about all of this. It warms my street-linguist heart, and makes me so proud to be your sister.
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