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Welcome to Illuminating the Word! We built this site to help us share our news and information about our ministry with Wycliffe, where we partner in the work of Bible translation. Please explore our blog entries, photos, and newsletters. Jeremy & Sara Brown Computer Conference A week ago Thursday, I attended the JCertif conference here in Brazzaville, the first conference about the Java programming language in Congo. (I used Java in my job at Biola University before we moved to Congo.) When we moved to Congo, on a lark I decided to see if I could find any information about Java programmers in Congo. Much to my surprise, I found that a Java Users' Group, Congo-JUG, had just recently been formed. I signed up to be a member, figuring that maybe if there were meetings, I could go and help out budding Java programmers or something. However, all I got were a few sporadic emails, and it didn't seem like anyone was meeting in person. Then this spring, I started getting emails about a Java conference that would take place in Brazzaville. The leader of Congo-JUG, Max Bonbhel, is Congolese but currently works with Java for Fujitsu in Quebec, Canada. He was the one organizing the conference, rounding up partnerships, and so on. I thought it would be cool to go to a Java conference, meet some Congolese who are in the informatique business, and learn some more computer terminology in French. So I signed up for the conference. Since I was already a member of Congo-JUG, I got the reduced price of only 800 CFA (about $1.50) as opposed to the price I would have payed as a non-Congolese and non-Congo-JUG member: $150. Quite a deal. The one-day plenary conference was held in the Palais des Congrès where the Congolese parliament meets, which was a pretty nice venue. There were probably 300 people in attendance. If you care, you can read more about the conference speakers on the blog of one of the speakers, Oracle's representative from France. I'll spare the rest of you. 
The next 3 days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), I joined about 35 Congolese for a class on Java certification, taught in French by Max Bonbhel. It was mostly stuff I already knew in English, but I got to pick up some new vocabulary in French, as well as make contacts with people that are already using Java or are interested in it. Maybe I'll be able to help some of these guys out in the future, who knows? There were about 15 guys in the class from across the river in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, and a couple of people who had flown in from Togo. In fact, there were so many people that came for the course that a lot had to be turned away. Max decided to teach another class the following weekend, but was looking for a place to hold it, since the Centre Culturel Français was charging too much for him to do a repeat performance on his self-funded budget. I let him know that SIL-Congo rents meeting rooms at a much cheaper rate. On Tuesday, he came over to check out our meeting room, which met with his approval. But even our lower rate was too much for him at this point. So I offered to pony up half of the costs in order to help another roomful of people get a start on a programming career. The room was full on Friday and Saturday, and the final session is scheduled for Monday. I think it is great that this guy who has a cushy job in IT in Canada would work so hard and spend his own money to come back to Congo and help others get started in programming too. And now that there has been this conference, I think Congo-JUG will be getting a lot of new member sign-ups. Hopefully we'll be able to start having meetings, and I'll be able to share some of my expertise too. -Jeremy The Rest Of The Story In a prior blog entry we wrote about the language documentation that we did while we were in Kimba and we promised pictures and more details about the trip. The wait is over! We left early on Saturday morning July 31st. We were rather disgruntled to find that the second spare tire was in parts rather than assembled (although we had all the pieces). So on our way out of town we stopped at a place and got the tire assembled and filled with air. About 20 minutes down the road, we got a flat tire and had to stop to change it. We stopped in Kinkala to fix the flat tire and by then it was lunch time. All told it took us 4 hours to make the 2 hour drive, and the road from Brazzaville to Kinkala is paved! After a quick lunch of egg and chicken salad sandwiches, chips, and cookies we got back on the road, which is unimproved after Kinkala. Thus started hours of bouncing around in the back of the Landcruiser. We were supposed to have a military escort along part of the road, but there were none that day. Around 3PM we stopped at Mindouli to grab some food. Guy wanted to eat there, but we were still a long ways from Kindamba where we were supposed to spend the night, so we pressed on right away. It's a good thing we did, because we didn't arrive in Kindamba until more than an hour after dark. In Kindamba, we were welcomed by the pastor of the EEC church. The EEC (Eglise Evangelique du Congo) is one of the largest denominations in Congo and they often have guest houses. The church there provided us with lodging, dinner and breakfast at a reasonable price. The next morning we left early and the EEC pastor sent Pierre with us. Pierre's a church leader (but not a pastor) who oversees the churches in Kimba and Vinza and he speaks Teke-Tyee (the language we were documenting). After another four hours of bumping around in the back of the Landcruiser, we arrived in Kimba, having stopped along the way to purchase a fish (there's a photo album picture) and for Marcelin to visit his grandmother. First, we went to see the sous-préfet, the local government leader who also is the village chief, and let him know we were there. This is the first thing visitors to a village are supposed to do, as he is responsible for making sure visitors have lodging as well as ensuring their safety. We gave him documents for each person explaining who we were and why we were there. He was very gracious and offered to help us. Next we went to the EEC church where we were staying. While we waited to eat, we unpacked and got situated. Jeremy and I had a room to ourselves and we set up our mosquito net tent and air mattress right away. We ate the fish for dinner, along with foufou and kwanga (two different preparations of manioc), and fresh fruit. It was yummy. Not long after dinner an older man and woman showed up; they were willing to talk to us, so we started on our language documentation the night before we had planned on. Monday we split into two teams and started recordings. Because of a random comment and some mis-communication on Tuesday, one team went to another village, Kidzoua, did some recordings there and bought a live pig. While they were buying the pig, the other team bought some half-smoked game (and worked of course). By the end of Tuesday, we had pretty much collected all the original recordings we needed. Wednesday through Friday were spent doing transcription. Guy arranged with the school superintendent for us to use his office, since he was traveling to another village to check up on the schools there. This worked really well, since it was a bit off the beaten path and relatively quiet. With the generator, two computers and two sets of recording equipment, we were able to have two transcription/translation teams. For the transcription, we worked primarily with Pierre and Mr. Kaba (who works for the school superintendent). We had three 3-hour shifts each day. Pierre and Mr. Kaba each did the first and third shifts and for the middle shift we had various other people. Late on Friday, we started the translation. Saturday morning, the sous-préfet invited us to go out to see the ferry. People and motorcycles can cross the river by ferry, cutting out about half the travel time between Kindamba and Kimba. Larger vehicles like the Landcruiser have to take a longer route around. After the ferry, we took a short walk to see where the old ferry was (this ferry had been large enough for vehicles but hasn't been working since the civil war) and to see if we could see any crocodiles, a small species of which inhabits the river. We didn't see one and the sous-préfet expressed regret that he didn't have a small dog to toss in the water because then we would see one for sure. The view there was lovely, so I didn't mind not seeing the crocodile. We spent Saturday afternoon working on the translation and the evening getting things prepared to leave. Sunday morning we left bright and early. This time, we packed the car with the people toward front and the luggage in back and the bumps in the road were much more tolerable. There was still no military escort, so once again we braved the roads without them. All the bumping must have caused some of the wiring to be loose, so we were without lights and horn off and on. We made it back to Brazzaville around 6PM that night, just as it was getting dark. Overall, we worked hard and ate well. I'm very glad to be home safely and I still haven't quite caught up on the laundry. But we have managed to post this blog and a photo album for you. Click here to see pictures. - Sara Talk on Development A guy who works at the Congolese Bible Society asked me to come and speak at an English club that he helps organize. I asked him for a topic and he asked me to speak about how young Congolese people can help to develop their country. I put together a list of some ideas that I have had while I have been here. Some of these thoughts came from websites I had been following even before we left the US - websites about sustainable and appropriate technologies, having a maker/crafter/hacker/DIY approach to life, and the benefits of working together (à la tool libraries, open source software, and hacker-spaces). So I went to the English club on Saturday afternoon. There were about 20 people there. They started the class by calling up 2 people at a time to have practice dialogs with each other. After a few of those, the moved on to practice interviews (where people in the club would ask them questions). After that, I gave my talk. (See my notes below). Afterwards, people asked questions like:
Here are the notes I made that I gave my talk from:
-Jeremy Happy Independence Day! Today is Independence Day here and this year the Republic of Congo is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its independence from France. We went to check out the parade; it was a bit different from what I'm used to. The parade route was pretty short and after Congo's president drove by, he took a seat in the stands, greeted all the visiting dignitaries and then sat and watched the military delegations that came with the foreign dignitaries as they marched the parade route. Not long after the military groups began their walk, I started to feel faint from the heat (and the number of people crowded onto the short parade route), so Jeremy and I left and went to lunch at a restaurant where we watched more of the parade on TV. Apparently later there were some other groups that walked, but since we weren't watching I'm not sure who/what. This evening there were lots of fireworks set off from the river. We had a nice view from the windows of the center's third story conference room. They lasted for a long time. I think there might have been music playing but we weren't close enough to hear it. --Sara When Life Gives You Lemons... Pretty much everybody knows the expression "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." We lived this during our time in Kimba. On our second day of recording, a man asked me "Do you eat lemons?" When I replied "Yes," he sent his grandkids off to get me some lemons. We took the lemons back to where we were staying and asked the cooks to juice the lemons. Then I added water and some of the 5 liters of honey Jeremy bought on the roadside to make lemonade. Guy, our Congolese linguist, loved it, although everybody agreed that I like my lemonade too sour. He told us that the Congolese don't really know what to do with lemons so most of them end up rotting on the trees. Someone told me that lemon trees are planted to keep mosquitoes away, but I have no idea if that's true or not. When people brought more lemons the next day, Guy made several liters of lemonade and showed the cooks how to make it too. I hope now they'll be able to use some of their lemons for a yummy drink. -- Sara Archive... | Join Our E-mail List! Prayers
Jungle Trading Post
We've just opened the "Jungle Trading Post" on our website.
Now, in the course of your normal online shopping, you can help provide funds for our ministry. It's like the modern-day version of tentmaking! Visit the Jungle Trading Post! |
