I'm in Alotau again!

I'm back in Alotau to help with the translation workshop again. I'm enjoying being in the warmer climate and also not having any hayfever. Although I like the heat, it really takes a lot out of you, especially at first when you are acclimatising and I have been finding the need for a short afternoon nap. Soon I will have adjusted and probably won't need a nap.

We arrived in Alotau on Monday and this week we have been preparing for the workshop. I had the job of preparing name tags and another job was collating a booklet with all the handouts of translation information in it for all the participants.

We are going to Hagita tomorrow, where the workshop is run, and I will be in charge of getting keys for the rooms to people, organising our store room and handing out name tags mattresses, welcome packs and mosquito nets. Tomorrow I'll be getting those things ready, but the participants don't arrive until Sunday morning, so I'll be handing them out when they arrive, except of course the staff will be getting their keys on Saturday!

The language group that I will be helping for this translation workshop is called Anuki.

Canoe Festival

On my last weekend in Alotau, there was a canoe festival. I didn't spend a lot of time at it, but there was canoe races, cultural dances and lots of little stalls selling or promoting things. Here are some pictures…

Things that move

At both Alotau and Hagita, I have encountered various things that move. Creepy crawlies isn't quite the right term and I can't think of a general term that covers rats, frogs, ants and crabs.

We saw a rat in the toilet block on our first night at Hagita and screamed because of the sudden movement of it running fast. We haven't seen a rat there since though. Maybe we scared it away too with our scream! Nearly every night, there are frogs there too, but fortunately they have kept out of the toilet stalls and not scared us too much.

We don't have frogs or rats at the Alotau Centre, but I have seen little crabs, very small ones, but I don't like them running around inside. They look a bit like spiders.

I am also fighting an ant war at both places!! There were ants on my toothbrush, inside my toothbrush holder, so now I am keeping it in a zip-lock bag. I had ants among the cereal and milk powder that I left at the Alotau Centre for eating when I am there on the weekends. Ants are always hard to keep on top of everywhere. When I'm in Ukarumpa, I have the occasional ant crawling in and out of my computer, which is a bit of a worry!

My current situation

During the week, for the translation workshop, I am at some facilities a bit out of Alotau, at a place called Hagita, and I go to our Centre in Alotau on the weekends. At Hagita we have cold water for the showers. so I am enjoying being at Alotau where we have nice hot showers.

I have access to broadband internet on the weekends when I'm in Alotau, so that has been good, however, next weekend I am going to visit a village, so I'll be out of internet contact for two weeks. I have set up some blog posts to go up automatically to keep you entertained until I get back to the internet. I'm sure I'll have some interesting story to tell you about my village visit, but you'll have to wait two weeks to hear it.

Mashed or solid food?

Well I'm at Alotau now, helping a language group at a translation workshop and over the past couple of days we have been working on translating an information booklet about HIV/AIDS. My group came across something that could possibly be misunderstood if translated poorly. It was talking about taking babies off breast milk and starting them on solid food. 'Solid' was the word in question. One of the translators pointed out that we should really say 'mashed' food because people would think it meant that they should give babies something truly solid, like peanuts! Imagine the trouble we would be in if a translation that we endorsed resulted in a baby choking because they had been fed solid food and not mashed food. So you can see that it's really important to translate well and literal word for word replacements don't usually work well.

And here are some photos that are completely unrelated to this blog post, except that they were taken in Alotau: