Goma update - December 2014 (by Jennings)

A few highlights from my latest trip to Goma, to check Hebrews with the Tembo team.

The Nyanga delegation, including one of the original translators (far right)

Starting without us: A delegation from the Nyanga language community (above) came to the Tembo office for a meeting. We've been aware of this community for over twenty years, and Douglas and a colleague did a survey there in 1995. The Nyanga are very keen to develop their language and to have a translation of the Bible, but up until now we've not worked formally with them at all.

Nyanga New Testament draft

They did not wait for us. They translated the entire New Testament - by hand. After the war, they had it entered into a computer.

New Testament translation, Nyanga-French dictionnary, linguistic study and history of the Nyanga people

They have also created a Nyanga-French / French-Nyanga dictionary. They worked with a linguist to write up the grammar of their language and the history of their people. They have been involved in oral trauma healing workshops, and they've worked with a senior SIL linguist to establish their orthography. They brought all these materials with them to the office. It was quite impressive and moving to see the amount of work and dedication that had gone into their work so far. They are eager for help from us in preparing their work to be published and disseminated.

In our ministry, we always talk about the importance of local initiative, and of wanting to come alongside a movement that is already happening, rather than creating a project from the outside. With the Nyanga, we are truly seeing local investment and intiative. Now our leaders will need to decide how best we can help.

Translation progress: Two Tembo team members were absent for a funeral for the first several days that I was there, and one translator was sick most of the first week. Despite these obstacles and the complexity of the text, we finished checking Hebrews and are very happy with it! All that remains to check is Romans and a revision of Luke.

With translators Robert Mwanjale, Rev. Masumbuko and Jimmy Ndeshi, and Rev. Rasi

In addition to their translation work, some members are doing trauma healing work in their home areas. The translators are also recording some of their New Testament books to be disseminated electronically (on phones, for example). In addition, as highly-regarded members of the community, they are often called to participate in church and Tembo community events. It takes a lot of wisdom to decide how best to use their time.

Cultural note: Each morning we had devotions, taken from Hebrews. Reverend Rasi talked about Jesus as our high-priest who can understand us because he’s been a human and has been through the things we've been through (Heb. 4:14-16). In Tembo culture, a woman's head is shaved when her husband dies. The person who shaves the new widow's head is another widow, someone who understands what it is to lose a husband. She can empathize because she's been through it herself. So Jesus can minister to us and represent us before God all the better because he’s been in our place, he’s been tried and tempted as we have.

News from the home area: One of the senior members of the Tembo team, Reverend Rasi, was in the home area when I first arrived. He was there was for the funeral of a Tembo elder, who had been one of the original translators. On Rev. Rasi's way back to Goma, he passed a town on Lake Kivu, where there had been a landslide during a rainstorm. Some 200 people died, he heard, including a choir rehearsing in a church, along with the people who had taken shelter there, and children at school. The town is right on the edge of the lake, so houses and other buildings just slid right into the lake.

Jesus Film - available, sort of: The Tembo recorded the Jesus Film in their language many years ago, at the time that Luke's Gospel was printed. When this film first came out and was shown to a big audience in the home area, there was a strong, positive reaction. In a culture with low literacy, non-print media resources are quite valuable. And of course, people enjoy watching movies: Rev. Masumbuko remembers when a missionary group screened the Swahili version of the film in 1984. People came from surrounding areas and slept on the lawn, they were that excited.

Many Tembo people are asking to see the film in Tembo. But the equipment (projector, loudspeakers) belonged to the people who showed it before. Without the equipment, the Tembo aren't able to show the film except to small groups on a computer. They regret that they can't respond to the people in villages who want to see it.