Teop sunrise

I’m not usually up early enough to catch the sunrise, but fortunately one morning Emily got up early and took these sunrise photos looking towards Teop Island.

Teop market with Mum and Dad

Mum and I walking along the aisle, looking at what’s available:

Some smoked fish:

Mum and I choosing some choko shoots to buy:

Teop market with Emily

The Teop market is our small local market which happens on Thursday and Saturday mornings. Here are some photos of the Teop market from Emily’s perspective…

The overall view of the market area:

Smoked swordfish:

Smoked shark – this is one of my favourites! I always have to buy it if it’s for sale at market.

Buai (betelnut), spring onions, snake beans, long beans and aibika:

Making 'gogii' with a giant mortar and pestle

One of the traditional Teop dishes is called 'gogii'. They can make it with cassava or other root crops, but when we were there, they made it with cooking bananas (not sweet bananas). Firstly they peeled and boiled the bananas, then they put them into something which is like a massive mortar and pestle, and they smash the banana up. I guess you could probably do the same thing in a pot with a potato masher. Here's a picture of me having a go at it:


This is what it looks like inside the big mortar type thing:


After you have smashed the bananas, you twist the stick (or pestle) around and hope that the mashed bananas will stick to it. That didn't always happen even for the local girls. Here is a girl who managed to do it successfully:


You take the stick with the banana on it to a man, and you get the rest of the banana out of the thing with your hands and take it to him, and he rolls it into balls. It is traditional custom for the man to do this part of the preparation, but women can do it if there is no man around.


Then the man puts balls together into banana leaves and they put coconut cream in with the banana balls.


Then they fold the banana leaves to wrap it all up, and they cook it overnight. In the morning it is ready to eat, and this is what it looked like:


It tasted good too, especially the coconut cream taste that went through it all. We didn't try a cassava version of gogii, but I think that I'd probably like it better than the banana version. Cooking bananas aren't all that exciting.

Preparing to go to Bougainville

It's less than a week now till we go to Bougainville! Rebekah and I have been doing a bit of research on the Teop language. We found some wordlists in both Teop and the neighbouring language (Tinputz) and its dialects. It has been useful to have a look at those lists and compare the words to see similarities and differences.

One of the things we want to do when we visit the Teop area is to try to understand the dialect situation a bit more, so that we (or other potential teams) can know what is needed in terms of translation. For example, would a translation in the main coastal dialect be acceptable and useful for people who speak the dialects in the mountains, or would they need a separate translation?

We are hoping to visit several villages and dialects and we plan to write down lists of words in each place and compare them later. We will also ask questions about the language – its use, and how much people can understand the other dialects.

Travel to and from Teop

In order to get to Teop from Buka, first you have to cross the Buka Passage, the water between Buka Island and Bougainville Island. As you can see from the photo, it is a pretty narrow passage, so it is just a couple of minutes on a little motor boat to get there.
 
After that, there is a two hour or longer trip on the back of a truck to get to the Teop area, and there was no shelters over the top on the trucks we travelled on, so we were exposed to the sun the whole time.
 
It's a bumpy two hour trip on dirt roads, sitting on hard wooden planks, squashed between two other people and with cargo at your feet. But it's not too bad and there are some nice mountain views. There were also some river crossings, some had good bridges, while at others, the truck just drove through them (the water wasn't high).
 
In the photos above, you will see me on the truck on the way to Teop, and a photo that I took of how packed in we were on our return trip. I think I counted about 42-44 people on the back of the truck.

TTC graduation and Teop visit

I arrived at Buka in time for the graduation from the Translation Training Course. Eight language groups attended this course and learnt about Biblical background, Hebrew, language, and translation. They also did some translation and will be taking it back to their villages for checking with the people.
 
The picture at the top shows all the students singing a song at the graduation. It was really amazing - they sang the song 10 times, in a different language each time - Tok Pisin, English and the eight languages of the students.
 
Tomorrow (Tuesday) I am going to visit the Teop language group and stay with them for a few days (I will have someone accompanying me too). I have met the people that will be looking after me as they were at the TTC, and they are lovely people and very excited about me coming to visit. I'm sure I'll have lots to tell you about the trip after I get back on the weekend.