Postscript

Edward and Diane are both Canadian Chinese originally from Hong Kong.  They both currently serve SIL Cameroon in the Extreme North of Cameroon in the city of Maroua.  We visited with them for five days.

Diane works in the SIL office in Maroua helping with finance and office management. Edward is working with a team on a revision of the Fulfulde Bible.  He’s an exigete, which means that he’s the person on the revision team primarily responsible for making sure that the translation accurately reflects the Biblical texts.  His teammates concentrate more on ensuring that the text reads naturally in Fulfulde.

Photo by Zeke Du Plessis

Fulfulde is the mother tongue of the Fulani people, but is a language of wider communication throughout the Extreme North of Cameroon and in parts if Chad, Nigeria and Sudan. Approximately 1 million people speak this language.  The first complete Bible was published in 1983, and the hope is that this revision will be complete in less than 5 years.

As we talked with Shu-Mei and then Edward and Diane, we learned that Asians share some cultural values with Africans that many Westerners don’t.  For example, in Asian cultures and African cultures age and authority figures are given great respect, harmony and community are valued above the individual, many African and Asian cultures understand status in a different way than most Westerners, also many Asian and African cultures share a shame and honor cultural paradigm. There are still differences, but these similarities can position Asian colleagues in the gap between the cultures of the West and the cultures of Africa.  This can be a valuable asset on a multicultural team.

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