Postscript

Reliable information technology (IT) infrastructure and support for Bible translation teams serving in Africa are essential.  A new annual training conference, called IT Connect, seeks to improve and expand the knowledge of IT staff in our organization.  The first one in Nairobi began last week and will continue until June 18.  Students have come from several eastern African nations: Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.  Jeff is participating in today’s session on remote IT support.

With advancements in available technology, remote IT support is becoming a viable option for many teams serving in Africa.  While it doesn’t entirely replace local IT support, remote staff can address a variety of IT problems using tools like instant messaging, VoIP, virtual private networks (VPN), and remote access software like Bomgar.

All too often thin IT teams struggle to keep up with demands in their locations. Sometimes only one IT tech is responsible for maintaining up to 30 people’s computers; other times a team may have no locally available IT support.  Remote staff can help.

Jeff will soon be moving into a role as a remote IT support specialist for Africa.  While he’ll stay focused on Africa, he’ll be joining a small and growing team that will provide remote IT support services to staff in four or five time zones that cover both Europe and Africa.  In his new position Jeff will be able to serve teams and offices based all around the continent of Africa, instead of just serving one administrative office.

This is a new initiative of Wycliffe International, so Jeff will be the first of what is hoped to be several remote IT staff based in Africa.  He hasn’t moved into this position yet, but an initial request for his assistance has already come in from some staff in Nigeria.  Their IT tech will be leaving Nigeria soon for a while, and Jeff could provide them with service remotely to keep their computers running until their IT tech returns.

His new role also comes with opportunities to travel a couple of times a year out to teams that need more significant help.  By providing on-site support for a specified period of time, he’ll be able to assist teams with special projects, events that require additional IT support and/or just help them catch up on regular work that has backed up.

We’re planning to coordinate his trips with mine so that we can do some traveling together.  At the end of the week we’ll be traveling together to Europe so that Jeff can meet his new team, and I can talk to the Europe staff about communications in Africa.

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It’s always nice to see some friends from home.  This month, we’ve hosted three at our house in Nairobi.  We’ve hosted two co-workers that we used to work with in Orlando (Norm and Susan). Susan came bearing corn tortillas from home. That’s one our favorite treats from the US. Norm caught us up on his family’s new life in Singapore; they moved there about a year ago.

We also hosted a friend we met while we were traveling in New York almost two years ago (Gordon). We stayed in Gordon’s house while we were traveling in New York, so it was neat to then have him stay with us.  He was in Kenya to visit with his family and attend his grandson’s wedding.

In about a month we’ll host another guest–my sister.  She’ll be the first person from either of our families to visit.  Very exciting.  Our organization will be sending us to Europe for meetings at the end of the month.  We’ll be able to meet Ashley in London, and then we’ll travel together to Kenya on our return trip.  We’re both looking forward to her visit.

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It was time to clean our water storage tank.  Dirt often settles on the bottom of it.  The water is typically not brown, but the picture shows the water near the very bottom of the tank.  We’ve had an abundance of rain the last few weeks, so some were scared that more than just dirt was getting into the water lines.  We already use a special water filter for our drinking water to ensure that we don’t get sick from waterborne illnesses, but at the moment, we’re boiling it, too, just to be extra careful.

Like many houses in Nairobi, we have a large water storage tank in our back yard.  City water pressure fluctuates. Sometimes water is cut for a few hours in a day or for a whole day or two during a week depending on how much water is available for city consumption.  Water storage tanks like ours fill when the pressure is good and the water is running from the city.  An electric pump pumps the water to a smaller tank in our attic so that all the faucets in the house, save the kitchen cold water tap, have gravity-fed water pressure.  It’s a practical water system design.

By shutting off the valve to refill the storage tank, we drained it over a few weeks enough to clean it out.  The tank in the attic is still full…for now.  We’ll have to wait for the big storage tank to fill, though, before resuming all of our regular water-based activities.  Since living here, we have a little better understanding of what a precious resource water is and how we shouldn’t take it for granted.

Access to water and to clean water is challenging in many parts of the world.  People use water for drinking, cleaning, cooking, irrigation, generating power and more.  According to BBC, “The world’s supply of fresh water is running out.  Already one person in five have no access to safe drinking water.”

Water access can also be a challenge to Bible translation projects.  Local and foreign staff working on projects may get sick from waterborne illnesses.  Some of these illnesses can cause death. They may have to spend time collecting water by hand from far away sources, or spend money having clean water delivered by truck.  For these reasons, Wycliffe Associates (a partner organization of Wycliffe Bible Translators), is committed to Operation Clean Water. Through this project Wycliffe Associates is providing funding for clean water projects and training local people.  Here’s an excerpt from a report from a water project in Cameroon (a country in Central Africa):

“Recently, a team of Wycliffe Associates volunteers returned from the Ndop region of Cameroon, where they spent a week training locals on the design, construction, and use of Bio Sand water filters. Ndop is made up of 10 language groups with one language group having a translated New Testament. Bible translation projects are currently underway for two more language groups. This training demonstrates the love of Christ in a practical way, which helps open up communities to the work of Bible translation.

As the training concluded, participants took Bio Sand filter molds back to their villages to begin the construction of home filtration units from gravel and sand. These lifesaving units are a godsend for families where sickness and death are everyday realities as a direct result of using dirty water. Their main water source is a contaminated river used for bathing, washing dishes and clothes, watering animals, and drinking. Properly used, the filters will remove 95 to 98 percent of harmful bacteria from the water.” Read the full report and see how you can be involved.

Learn more about global water access.

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To celebrate my birthday this year we made a short visit to the Lake Nakuru national park.  It is just a couple of hours from our home in Nairobi.  We stayed in a lodge in the park at a discount because so many people had canceled due to ash over Europe.  Our first evening, there seemed to only be one other family, but by the day we left the lodge had filled up again.  It’s amazing to think that the volcano in Iceland was effecting hotels in Kenya!

Lake Nakuru is known for its pink flamingos.  It and Lake Elementaita, a neighboring lake, have so many flamingos they look like they have pink rims and pink islands from a distance. While we were at the park, we were able to drive to the lake front.  It was amazing to see so many flamingos.  A hyena came by while we were looking at them. They kept a safe distance.

We saw all kinds of animals in the park.  We even were able to drive near several rhinos.  One seemed a little annoyed by our presence.  It kept staring at us and running back and forth behind the car with its tail up.  We decided to drive away instead of provoking it further–could have been a great story…with an unhappy ending!

Our real adventure was getting the car stuck in some mud on an obscure path in the park.  Jeff had to get out of the car to figure out how to get us out.  There was mud everywhere.  While I was steering and pushing on the gas, I kept hoping no predators were nearby!  We got out of the mud thanks to Jeff’s good thinking.  His clothes suffered a little in the process.

Just before we left we saw seven lions on a hill looking out towards the lake; five of them appear in the picture above.  We drove up close to them.  I was thinking about how we’d gotten stuck–would we get stuck by the lions?  They paid no attention to us…and we didn’t get stuck.

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With only two percent of the international Deaf community professing a belief in Christ, the Deaf are one of the most unreached people groups in the world. In this video, learn about how Wycliffe is working in Sign Language translations.  This is the second part of God Speaks My Language produced by 100 Huntley Street and Wycliffe Canada.

Learn more about sign language translation projects in Africa.

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Maik teaching a translation course at NEGST.
Photos by Zeke du Plessis

On university campuses around the world, you can find translation workers and linguists using their experience to train others.  In Nairobi four people have been seconded from our organization to serve the Nairobi Evangelical School of Theology (NEGST) as professors in their Master’s and PhD programs.   These four men are the faculty of the NEGST translation department.

Steve, Maik, and Andy, meeting together at NEGST. They are all members of the translation department faculty at NEGST.

Most students attending NEGST are from one of the many nations in Africa, but some students also come to NEGST from Asia, Europe and the Americas. Students can choose to study translation on the Master’s or PhD level.  Students graduating with degrees in these programs may choose a career in Bible translation or use this knowledge to enrich another ministry that they pursue.

Translation courses are also part of the Master’s of Divinity program.  One reason for this is to help these students to discern appropriate languages of ministry for the given context where they will or are currently ministering.  For example, what languages will be most effective in communicating the gospel with a given congregation; when should a pastor or evangelist use a trade language like English; when should they use a local language; what translation of the Bible should they use; how can they support translation programs?  In contexts in the US where English is predominant, it’s easy to forget how multilingual much of the rest of the world is and how important choosing the right language can be to effective ministry.

The translation studies program at NEGST is one of the strategies for both casting vision for Bible translation among ministry leaders in Africa and equipping more Africans to be involved in Bible translation work in their mother tongue or another language.   Ministry leaders that value and promote scriptures translated into languages their congregations understand well, can be instrumental in supporting current translation programs or encouraging their congregations to use scriptures already translated into their local languages.  Congregations that are using scriptures translated into a language they understand well will grow deeper in their faith and will be able to more effectively communicate the gospel to others.

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In January our office moved into a new building.  It’s the same campus, and within view of where we were.  While I was traveling in Cameroon and Chad, the IT team that Jeff is part of played a significant role getting all the technology set up in the building—setting up phones, the internet network, getting new servers up and running….  It was a big job.  Everyone is now mostly settled into their new office spaces.

This leads me to an update on what Jeff has been doing.

Jeff works on a team of three IT support specialists that serves several organizations that all work on this campus—all now in the same building:
•    Bible Translation and Literacy (BTL, Kenya): This is a Kenyan organization that is part of Wycliffe International.  Their organization oversees all the Bible translation and related language work done by our organization in Kenya, and they also promote Bible translation and related language work in churches and to other like-minded organizations.
•    SIL’s Africa Area: This team provides administrative support to the SIL teams serving in about 20 countries in Africa.  These teams provide linguistic and translation services to language communities in the countries where they work.
•    SIL’s Eastern Congo team:  This team provides linguistic and translation services to language communities in eastern DR Congo.
•    Wycliffe International’s Africa Area:  This team provides administrative support to the eight Wycliffe organizations in Africa
•    Other assorted staff that live in Nairobi or come to Nairobi for organizational meetings.

Each day Jeff probably connects with about ten people with computer related questions, and services an average of at least three computers.  Computers are essential to getting work done, and the team helps with any number of computer related issues:
•    connecting staff with network drives and printers
•    cleaning computers of viruses and malware
•    setting up and servicing email accounts
•    installing software
•    repairing and replacing broken hardware
•    setting up and maintaining wired and wireless internet networks

This team supports the computers of administrators that provide oversight in some way to more than one-thousand other staff working across Africa which are connecting with hundreds language communities on the continent.  If that sounds like an important role–that’s because it is!  More IT specialists are needed all over the world.

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The story behind the story…

Photo by Pete Houlihan

A significant part of my job here is to help get stories about what is happening in Bible translation and language development in Africa out for publicity.    In January the first set of scriptures translated into Kenya sign language were dedicated and distributed.  I arranged for two friends and fellow communicators to go to the event to cover it for Wycliffe.  Andy from AIM did videography (using a camera he borrowed from Taylor of SIM), and Salome from BTL went along to conduct the interviews.  Scott from Wycliffe USA commissioned us to do this and made the arrangements with the Christian Broadcasting Network in the US.

The video footage and interviews they did for me were passed on to Scott.  Then, they were used in a recent news story that aired on CBN in the US.  So cool. I’ve got it posted below so you can see it, too.

I’m excited to have been part of getting this story out to you.  It was also cool to see so many partners working together.

Learn more about Bible translation in African sign languages.

Provide financial resources to a sign language translation project.

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All photos in this post by Zeke du Plessis

Jennie and Zeke visited a Chinese church in Nairobi on Sunday.  The pastor of this church, Melody, is supported by Jennie’s home church in Taiwan. She’s ministered to both to Kenyans and Chinese in Kenya for more than 20 years.  The Chinese community in Nairobi is growing, which is why Melody now pastors a church for the Chinese in Nairobi.

She invited all of us to visit a school that her and  her husband oversee in the Embakasi slum in south east Nairobi.   While Nairobi has many high and middle income areas, a large portion of the population (maybe up to 1/3) of Nairobi lives in places like this.  Most of the residents in Embakasi work as casual laborers in nearby factories.  Jeff and I have visited Kibera slum which has about 1 million people.  This one was much smaller (I think about 25,000); it’s a maze of corrugated steel structures–some shops, schools, clinics, homes, food stands…  It’s not far from the international airport, and from the top of a taller building in the slum we could see both downtown Nairobi and the stadium near where Jeff and I live off in the distance.

We were followed most of the way to the school by some children occasionally chanting “How-wah-yoo.” What was fun was to respond in Swahili instead of English, “Nzuri sana.” I don’t think they expected that!  Not every child in this slum is able to go to school.  Costs for uniforms, text books or other school fees can make education cost prohibitive for some families.  In some cases only one child in a family may be able to go to school.  Sometimes a child’s education is paid for by a relative or friend with more financial means, or a child’s education may be sponsored by an organization like Compassion International or Save the Children.

Melody started a school here for children about age 4 through, I think, age 13 or 14.  When the school first opened, Melody and her husband covered many of the school costs out of their personal funds.  Today, Jennie’s home church in Taiwan covers the teachers’ salaries and the text books.  Students do have to pay a small tuition, but the cost is greatly subsidized and much less in comparison to what the costs usually would be.  The buildings are simple, but the students seem happy and excited about learning.   Every student also gets one meal provided to them while they are at school.  For some it may be their only meal for that day.

The younger students greeted us with big smiles.  The older students sang us a special song that one of the students wrote about the school.  All the students and teachers knew Melody.  She checked in with different ones to see how they were doing.  We managed to bring everyone together for a group photo before we left.  Jennie and I helped with getting the crowd together while Zeke got up atop an unfinished classroom building to take the photo.  Almost everyone was in it.

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Damage after the storm: We just had sticks in our backyard, but a branch of our tree fell in our neighbor’s yard. (Click on the images in this post to view them larger)

We had an unusual Christmas this year.  It wasn’t just because we were in Africa, but because we had a large storm on the evening of December 23 and were without power for several days.   The storm lasted 30 minutes.  For about five minutes the wind blew rain horizontally.  The rain came down at such a pace that the road behind our house flowed like a river. The lights in the house flickered and then went out.  We saw sparks and heard a loud bang. The transformer behind our house had blown.

When it was over, branches and fallen trees cluttered and blocked some roads in our neighborhood. Power and phone lines were laying in the road.  Some of our co-workers who live in the Cassia Court compound were not able to leave because a tree had fallen on their drive way.

We drove around town on Christmas Eve — more downed trees and power lines.  Billboards had blown down; in some cases the whole frames had collapsed.  The news reported a roof had blown off a building downtown and fallen trees in the central business district had smashed cars.  At least two had died from storm related events.  From December 24 until about December 27 we heard chain saws as debris was being cleared.

No power the evening of the 23, all day the 24 and 25 and part of the 26 meant no Christmas baking.  The refrigerator stayed closed most of the time.  We saved what food we could.  Not everywhere was without power, so we ate many of our meals during those days at local restaurants. Our office has a generator, so we brought our cell phones and computers there for charging.

We spent Christmas Eve with some colleagues from our office enjoying fellowship, snacks and desserts by candlelight.  They also had a battery-powered MP3 player so that we could listen to Christmas music.  In this case having no power created a nice ambiance.

Christmas morning we were at home.  Our tree remained unlit, but for a brief time we had a small current of power that was enough for us to watch part of a Christmas movie.  It was not enough power to run our refrigerator or stove. When the gifts were all opened, we went to a local mall to see a movie (Avatar) and eat Christmas dinner.  By the time we got back we had enough battery power on our computers to make some calls home using our mobile internet connection and skype.

The power came back on the 26, and went on and off at long increments for a couple of days.  We cleaned out the refrigerator and replaced the food that didn’t make it.  It was certainly a Christmas unlike any we’ve had before.

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