Translation workshop

There are about 11 language groups that have come to the facilities at Hagita to participate in this translation workshop. Each language sends three people to the workshop – two of them to do translation work, and one to do literacy work. Each language has a mentor who advises and assists them.

I am working with the Taupota language. They live on the coast and can access Alotau by road. Most of the other language groups came to the workshop by boat.

During this 'module' the groups are translating Exodus 15-17, making adjustments to an information booklet about HIV-AIDS that they translated previously, and writing a fairly literal translation back into English of their Genesis translation.

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:

Holidays

I haven't written much on my blog over the past few weeks, because I have been on holidays. Well, my holiday is nearly over and in a few days I will be leaving. I have had a good time here and I feel like I just slotted back into life here really easily as though I had never left.

I have enjoyed eating some foods that I can't get or are too expensive in PNG, such as crisps, fancy cheese, salami, and my Scottish delicacies – square sausage, haggis and Irn Bru (a soft drink).

I enjoyed a few days away at Kyneton near the start of my holiday and the rest of the time I have been spending around our local area. I have been to Box Hill for lunch, shopping at Brand Smart and Savers, been out for a birthday dinner with friends, spent time with friends and family, visited a gerbera and alpaca farm in Healesville, visited Marysville (very few remains of burnt houses, just empty blocks) and went to the movies.

I am looking forward to watching the Grand Final live tomorrow – much better than getting quarter by quarter scores via SMS in PNG. It is also my birthday tomorrow, so my team (Geelong) winning the Grand Final would be a good birthday present!

I leave Melbourne on Sunday evening, stay a night in Brisbane, then fly to Port Moresby, stay one night there, then fly to Alotau, where I will be for approximately five weeks to help with a translation workshop. My email connection there will be dial up and I think that most of the time I will only be able to access it on weekends, and I will probably have to blog via email again rather than on the internet. If it all works, I'll tell you more about what I'm doing in Alotau in future blogs.

On our way back from Kyneton, we drove through the Kinglake area that was affected by the February bushfires. The regrowth on the trees was amazing, it looked like a creeping vine on the trees, but it wasn't, it was just new growth coming out of the trunk and branches. Here are some photos that I took:





(Well, Dad took the above photo, not me!)

PNG braided hair

When I was at Buka, one of the cooks braided my hairs in corn rows. It took about 2 hours and she did a really good job of it, pulling it in quite tight. I kept it in till I came to Australia and I took it out the morning after I arrived since after 2½ weeks it was getting a bit loose and messy. Anyway, here are two pictures of my hair after it was just braided.

Cold toilets!!

I am back in Melbourne now and the big shock was how cold the toilet seats are! Wow!! They are so cold! I haven't felt that in over a year and it was a surprise to me how cold they are.

Anyway, yesterday I went to the Geelong vs Western Bulldogs final in the AFL yesterday with Dad and was happy to see Geelong win. This afternoon I am going away on holiday with my Mum and Dad to Kyneton (in Victoria) for a few days. I'll be back at the end of the week.

Here's a picture of me and Dad at the football:

Hakö visit

I visited the Hakö area on the weekend, staying there on Saturday and Sunday nights. It was nice, the people were very friendly and the language was definitely strong and being used a lot. Two very cute kids are pictured in a couple of the photos above.

I stayed in a modern style house which was wired for electricity but not connected. You can see it in one of the photos above. I was sharing it with the men who were working on the mobile phone tower. I had two local teenage girls sleeping in the room with me as security, and the rooms had doors with locks in the handles, so the girls locked the door when we went to sleep.

The toilet was really nice. It was the best village toilet I've been to in PNG so far and better than some public toilets in Australia. It was in a little hut that you would probably describe as a shack, not very flash looking, but inside there was a regular toilet seat with water in it. It didn't have a cistern for flushing, so we had to get a bucket of water and pour it down to flush it. It was very nice and didn't have a toilet smell to it at all.

On our first night we had mud crab for dinner, which was very nice. They gave us a crab each, you can see the size of them in one of the photos above. The one I ate was a little bit smaller than the one in the picture. I'm sure these would be very expensive to buy in Australia, so it was a real treat and although my mouth enjoyed the crab, it seems that my stomach didn't, as I had stomach pain during the night and the next day, and also diarrhoea. That was a shame. Next time I'll have to only eat a little bit of crab and not a whole big one.

The main mobile phone company is building a new tower in the village that we were staying in. It is nearly finished and will be active in a week or two. There's a picture of it in one of the photos above. These towers are popping up everywhere. There are also devices available which enable you to access the Internet using the mobile service, so if I end up working in a village with mobile reception, I will be able to access email and Internet in the village. I think that would be wonderful!

Well, there you go, that's my trip to the Hakö language area in a nutshell.