Decorating for Christmas

A few weeks ago, I went to a friend's house with a few other people and helped her decorate her Christmas tree. It is a different Christmas tree – it is made up of bamboo!! Here's a photo of the tree after we decorated it.

I have very minimal Christmas decorations at my house because I don't want to acquire too much "stuff", so I cut up some of last year's Christmas cards and blu-tacked them on the walls in nice arrangements. It is very basic, but at least it gives the house some Christmas atmosphere. Here are some photos.

Craft fair

Today the annual craft fair was on at Ukarumpa. Think of the local craft markets in Australia - it was a bit like them, with craft items and people selling food. It was all indoors in a building called the Teen Centre, which has two storeys.

Upstairs there was all the food stalls. People were selling Korean noodles, steak sandwiches, pretzels, sausages and cheesecakes. I spent about 2 hours at the craft fair, near the beginning I had a plate of Korean noodles, which were very nice, and not long before I left, I had a slice of an amazing chocolate caramel cheesecake. It was so yummy!!

Downstairs there was lots of stall with people selling their craft items. Both expats and Papua New Guineans were selling things. Some of the things for sale were: bilums (string bags), jewellery, coloured candles, hand carved wooden items, cards, fudge and pottery. I wandered around all the stalls about 10 times!! I bought some jewellery, cards and a bamboo flute.

Here are some pictures...

The bamboo flute, which is my new toy, I am having lots of fun playing with it. Yes, I can get it to make a noise!

A necklace with pointy shells. I really love this!



Some PNG style Christmas pictures...

The three wise men on their way to see Jesus:



The angels announcing Jesus' birth to the shepherds:



The three wise men and their dog on their way to see Jesus. I thought it was really funny that they put a dog in there!

Socialising and working

My social life has been quite full the past eight days, from Monday to Monday (yesterday). One of my meals on each of those eight days, I ate with company. I had an American Thanksgiving lunch on Saturday with a group of friends and then leftovers with a smaller group for lunch on Sunday.

Work-wise, I've been doing a few different things: reading books about linguistics and about culture, checking linguistic papers before they go on the Internet, spending time with Rebekah and writing reports on the Teop language in Bougainville. One of those reports is about my visit there and what I observed, and the other report is a 'People Profile', which is just information about aspects of their lives and culture. You can see People Profiles for other language groups online at: www.pngbta.com/nav/projects.htm

Continuing the nomadic lifestyle

I have moved house again. I like the new house, I have a big bedroom and my own office area, plus there is a microwave, which I had in the last house too, but it is always a bonus to have a microwave.

Here's a photo of the house. It is actually attached to another house, so I guess it is really a unit.

The house is located at an outer part of the Centre, but it is not too isolated. There are lots of houses behind mine, but not many in front, so I have a great view of the hills as you can see in this photo below.

I never really felt interested in ministering to nomadic peoples, the lifestyle didn't really appeal to me, but it's funny how although I'm not going to be working with nomads, I have been living a very nomadic lifestyle this year. I was in three houses in Ukarumpa from January to May, and then in May and June I stayed in three houses in the Sepik. Back to Ukarumpa for a month after that and then the following locations: Goroka, Kokopo, Buka, Port Moresby, Melbourne, Kyneton, Melbourne, Brisbane, Port Moresby, Alotau and then back to Ukarumpa. I went back to the house I have been in since February, but then moved out this weekend to the new house.

Overall, the number of times I have moved from one place to another this year is: 38!! That includes every move, including overnight stopovers. I have gone to sleep in 25 different beds this year. I'm glad that I can sleep okay in beds that I am not used to!

I don’t think that even traditional nomads move 38 times in a year.

Kamano Grammar Update

In February I wrote on my blog that I was working on the Kamano Grammar Sketch, tidying it up for web publication. Well, the Kamano Grammar Sketch is now online and you can see it here: http://www.sil.org/pacific/png/pubs/51803/Kamano_Grammar.pdf If you're not a linguist, most of it won't mean much to you though!

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…

Back translation

We did a lot of "back translation" during this translation workshop. It is a translation back into English of the local language translation and it should reflect how the language worded the sentence, but also make sense in English. It is used by consultants to check the accuracy of the translation and since they don't know every language in PNG, back translations have to be made, so that they can see in English, what the local language version says.

Here's an example from part of Exodus 15:25 in Taupota:

The Taupota version says:
Ma maranai i ahare hopunei au waira yana wairana i vira po umana i ahi.

A word for word, literal version of this is:
And when he throw it-out in water then that-water it became so drink it good.
The version above doesn't make much sense in English, but you can see what it is supposed to say. We want it to make a bit more sense for the consultant, so we write a version that sounds better in English and this is called a back translation.

Here's a back translation for this passage:
And when he threw it out into the water, then that water became so that it was good to drink.

My NIV Bible says: He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

Now here's some photos:

Doing some work with Rex from Taupota:

Participants performing a song and dance:

Nice sunset: