5k Kate

What a crazy past ten days it’s been! Ten days of extreme contrast. February 17-21 were my final work days this trip and I finished gathering 61/64 sociolinguistic interviews and one special 4-hour recording by Tonny before I left. Conducting the interviews really improved my Ende. It was 16.5 hours of actively interacting in Ende with lots of different people in the village. Not only did I learn a lot about the language but I also learned a lot about the people in Limol, their histories, their families.  On Feb 22, we set off for Kapal in the 40HP community dinghy. No goodbye feast this trip, save a delicious fish and rice meal at Wagiba’s the night before. My send-off was happy and quick. Plenty of hand shaking, and picture snapping before we were off racing down Taolang road to get started in the dinghy before it got too hot. We made it to Kapal in record time - the huge engine sucked up 15L of fuel.  Once in Kapal, I mostly hid in my room away from the constant...

Thursday was our leaving day. I woke up happy and excited. I packed quickly as I was leaving most of my things in the village since I'm coming back in just one month. I left my pop up mosquito tent up in my room, and put my recording equipment, notebooks, prescription meds, and camping things inside. I hung my cassowary bag and crocodile necklace up with a picture of me and Grace above. I packed all the community equipment, like the laptop, batteries, back up drive, sat phone, pens and notebooks and things, in a separate pelican case to give to Warama and Tonny for their use this next month. Then I left with just my red backpack partway filled. Grace was also packed up quickly and we stood outside with friends while Lauren packed up and went around giving things away.  When all was ready to go, the village gathered at the language house and Kidarga arrived again still dressed in young coconut leaves. The men (Jerry, Gidu, Francis, Jugu and Kenny) dressed in grass skirts, cassowary ...