Hannah's Blog: Cultures collide, and other notes from Nampula

The road to downtown Nampula

Being in Mozambique, and living among ex-pats from various other nations, I am learning about a lot more about culture, Mozambican and otherwise. In some ways, I am surprised to find how globalisation has affected this country. I found Nutella in one shop. A boy wore a shirt that said “Vodka: Connecting People.” Another shop was playing country music in the background: “Baby, you a song, you make me want to roll my windows down, and cruise.” It is clear that Western culture has invaded these folk’s way of life. But that’s just in the city. And even in the city, women wear capulanas, people carry things on their head and speak Makua as well as Portuguese, and suck on sugar cane. But, many Mozambicans, the majority, do not live in the city. They live in rural areas. There are many languages spoken in Mozambique. One of these is Koti. Last week, the Koti translation team came to the SIL Centre to check the book of Exodus with a translation consultant. This team was made up of native Koti-speaking men. Some things they had difficulty translating? First of all, they did not know what to do about snow. Only one or two of the men had heard of it. Some thought they knew what it was but really they were thinking of fog. Additionally, some of the younger men did not know what locusts were. The older men had to explain how there was a plague of locusts in their area, almost 40 years ago. Also, they did not know if they had unleavened bread. They had to ask their wives if such a thing existed in their culture. In Bible translation, knowledge of a people’s culture is a must. Sometimes there is not even a word in the language that describes the thing that is described in Hebrew or Greek. The enduring question of Bible translation is this: how can the Bible be translated so that it is comprehensible to the reader without losing its original meaning? There is a lot of prayer involved.

Living and working with missionaries from all over the world—Mozambique, Kenya, England, the US, Germany, and Sweden, to name a few—I am learning how different our cultures are. Our home cultures never seem strange until we see what other people consider to be normal. Today I tried to explain to a Nigerian what poutine is: “It’s French fries [he knew what French fries were], covered with cheese curds…which are like… by-products of making cheese… and then covered in gravy, which is like…a liquid by-product of cooking meat. It’s really unhealthy.” Somehow, I don’t think I accurately conveyed the deliciousness of our signature Canadian dish! Also, here's a question for you: if you were to choose one dish to represent typical Canadian cuisine, what would it be?

An example of cultures colliding within the ex-pat community: two Americans, two Brits and a Canadian eat Mexican food in Mozambique... sounds like the beginning of a joke!

Speaking of poutine… you may be wondering what exactly I am doing. In fact, I am translating some linguistic materials into French. I thought my French days were behind me, but I wrong. I think it is neat how God prepares us in advance. I could never have foreseen how my French classes would help me. It’s like it says in Ephesians 2:10— “For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” So what are the “good works” God prepared in advance for me to do? Well, there are some notas grammatacais, or grammar notes, written about different Bantu languages. They are booklets of about 40 pages all about the grammar of Bantu languages.[If you read Portuguese, find an example here] They are developed by having workshops with speakers of the languages. These are very useful for orthography, literacy, Bible translation and language learning. Originally, most are in Portuguese, as this is the lingua franca of Mozambique. But there have since been English translations, and now, folks in the Congo want them translated into French so they can publish them about their own languages. So, I get to start the translation process. I say “start” because I am sure it will receive many revisions by native French speakers in the future. But my task is to at least make it understandable to them. Something that Africans are very good at is being flexible. When I came here, I was unsure of what my job would be. I am happy to do what needs to be done, and in this case it is French translation. Please pray that I can do this task well, and that the materials will be useful for Bantu speakers in the Congo and other francophone southern African countries.