May Update

It has already been three weeks since I left Calgary and I’ve already experienced a lot of new things and met a lot of new people! I spent a couple of days in Johannesburg, South Africa to recover from jet lag before completing my journey to the city of Nampula in Mozambique. I have even had a chance to spend a week in Lichinga, a city in the mountains!

My first impression of Mozambique had to do with the wide-spread poverty all around me. There are some concrete buildings left over from when the Portuguese were here, but most people live in mud huts with thatched roofs. Most roads are made of red sand, which has been molded into mounds and dips from the rainy season, and the few paved roads have gigantic potholes. The smells of animals, dust, sweat, and other unknown odors fill the air everywhere you go. The life expectancy here is about 38 years old, and the infant mortality rate is extremely high. AIDS is very prevalent here, and other diseases such as cholera, as well as malnutrition, claim many lives. The people don’t seem to mind, of course, because this is the only kind of life they have ever seen and probably will ever see.

While I’m here, I have been assigned to help A (a linguist with Wycliffe) with the production of dictionaries. These dictionaries are bilingual, translating Portuguese (the trade language) into mother tongue languages here. Everyone in Mozambique has learned a language such as Makhuwa or Sena growing up, and these languages are used when talking to family and in most other informal situations. People in the cities or those who come in contact with other groups also speak Portuguese so that communication can happen throughout the country. There are 14 languages with a project in progress now, and this includes many, if not all, the mother tongue languages in Mozambique (and surrounding area). The purpose of these dictionaries is to not only to help teach the people how to read and write in their own language, but to also generate research data to assist those who are completing Bible translation projects in those languages.

My time in Lichinga was devoted to helping A facilitate a workshop for the languages of Makhuwa-Xirima and Ciyaawo (the spelling varies). Speakers of these languages came together and spent countless hours in front of computers, searching for the right translations for the Portuguese words. These speakers have been working on these dictionaries for many months already, so this workshop was the final one before a preliminary printing. Only through God’s perfect timing did we get all the work done before the end of the week! Now my job this week is to edit and format everything in preparation for the preliminary printing of the Ciyaawo dictionary next week. This will be the first publication of its type in this language and the workshop groups were very excited to see the project come this far!

Thank you for your continued support through prayer! Please pray that I would pick up the Portuguese language quickly and that I would learn the Mozambican culture more so I can understand why people do what they do. Pray for these dictionary projects that they would be carried out efficiently. Also, pray that the churches and missionaries here would be encouraged and empowered by God.

Até logo!