Cornishmaninafrica

Yesterday, the village chief came and gave me £15 as part of the village’s contribution to the borehole. Only £3 to go and the villagers can start drawing water!

A number of people from the village of Lama Nyikpeyo live and work in Lomé, the capital city. They tend to be better off than those who have remained in the village, and still feel a strong sense of solidarity with them.

Every July, they returned to the village to participate in the traditional wrestling ceremonies. This year there was great excitement when they arrived home and saw the new borehole. But why the padlock? Emmanuel explained that it was because the village had not yet been able to honour its agreement to contribute £130 pounds.

At this, the Lomé residents clubbed together and contributed £64. So now the village only needs to find another £19 and we can unlock the borehole and start to use it.

In Kabiye culture, children and teenagers are taught to have total respect for elders and authority. To merely come when you are called is not sufficient. You have to drop what ever you are doing and come running. Yesterday, I called Essotchelinam to come and help me with something. He arrived dripping wet and wrapped in a towel. I told him he could finish his shower first.

On the very day I arrived back in the village, amongst piles of half-opened suitcases and cardboard boxes, I cut my hand on a kitchen knife. Faustin swung into action and drove me down to Kara hospital (24km round trip) where I had three stitches and a tetanus jab. Not the best way to ease back into life up on the mountain!

Eduardo placed the knife in a separate drawer in the kitchen, and no-one must use it until I get better. He explained that if the knife was to be used to cut something hot in the meantime, I would feel the pain. I was also interested to learn that in Kabiye, you can’t say “I cut myself with a knife”. The correct form is “A knife cut me”, as though it was the fault of the knife itself, not the person holding it.

Update: had the stitches out today and all is well.

We buried Martin today. He had been looking increasingly thin and frail for the past few weeks, and died peacefully last night. In Kabiyeland, when an old person dies, there is general rejoicing for a life well-lived. But this was different. Many were in tears, because Martin was middle-aged and leaves two small children.

It was beautiful to see how the church here has successfully integrated Christian and traditional practice. Paulin, the catechist, led prayers in Kabiye as the body was lowered into one of the traditional vaults. The vaults are communal and will be used again next time. The body is buried with no clothes, no coffin : naked we come into the world and naked we depart from it. The tomb and the womb are mirror images of each other. Following the burial, the Christians refused to invite the diviner to a public meeting to establish who was responsible for the death.

Divorce is an aspect of family dynamics which I find hard to penetrate. In the case of divorce, the man takes all. The women does not have custody of the children and returns to her own family destitute. The explanation goes something like this: the relationship between a man and woman is the same as that of the farmer and his field. The farmer sows his field and waits for the crops to grow. Now who gets the harvest – the farmer or the field ? The farmer of course! The same argument is used to justify polygamy. Why shouldn’t a man have several wives when a farmer has several fields? And of course, the other way round, it would be as inappropriate for a woman to have two husbands as it would for one field to be owned by two farmers.

This week a light bulb went on. Of course! Why didn’t I ever notice that before…! One small word, yɔ, is pronounced in two different ways. If you say it with a high tone, it marks a relative clause (“the man who…”). If you say it with a mid tone it marks a conditional clause (“If the man…”). But these two meanings are currently spelled the same way. No wonder people are find it difficult to read if Kabiye spelling is littered with small pitfalls like this.

Along with Emmanuel and Noel, my assistants, our job is to study the way Kabiye is written, and find ways of improving it. This leaves the translation team free to plod on with the Old Testament.

And remember, not all clauses are linguistic ones. The cat, for example, is called Embedded Clause.

This morning Faustin climbed down into the compound well with a long stick to measure the depth of the water. You need to be incredibly athletic to do this, because there is no ladder. He just had to push his feet and hands against the vertical sides of the well. To our astonishment, the water is still 3.5 metres deep : as deep as the height of the house. He also rescued five toads.