5k Kate

Today was a big day! As the women came back from Malam just two days ago and the entire village will be returning to Malam to head to Wim in just a few days, we had only a few days to do a few big community events. And since events keep the village from doing other important work, we fit them all on the same day.  First up was the much anticipated anti-violence march, followed by a celebration of Diwa Nägäm, Wäli Wäziag, Dipa Nägäm, and Mangkol Sobam, the first Ende pastors and the stars of the documentary, Ende Tän e Indrang, then the closing of the technology class, which made this documentary, then some goodbye words for me, and finally the premiere showing of the movie.  The anti-violence march accomplished exactly what it set out and thus was a success I think. Mostly I wanted a forum in which I could tell the entire community exactly what I think about the domestic violence in Limol, support the women, and not enrage the men but push them to do better. I wanted this for ...

Travel update: I’m back in Limol! A very quick trip through Sydney, Cairns, Moresby, Daru, and Upiara in just two and a half days! Running update: Back to my every other day routine, trailed by a gaggle of children. I would write about it more if it were more interesting. Lack of food, abundance of sun, and rolled ankles keep me at a cautious pace, but I’m feeling happy. A, meanwhile, is killing it - he ran the Cherry Blossom 10-miler in 32 degrees this morning! Language update: this week has been about settling in and typing up all the transcriptions that Tonny and Warama completed while I was in Canberra. They did amazing work! Hope to get to some more fun activities soon.  Writing update: I’m very excited about my writing progress! While in Canberra I was able to complete rough drafts of four chapters to send my advisors! I’ve decided to devote weekends to writing this trip, and each weekend I’ll spend two days on a different chapter. This weekend was Chapter 1, the introduction...

It wasn’t until late in the evening after I wrote that last blog post that I really realized what I might have lost from my computer. Not only was I missing 18 days of FLEx work, but the most recent copy of my Verbs Database (containing information on 500+ verbs and the meat of my dissertation) was also on my computer and I couldn’t find a back up. This resulted in a worry-filled frantic night in which Andrey came to the rescue and found a copy in one of my back up accounts. In the worry however, I made up my mind that it was worth it to return to Australia to fix the computer. Dineke helped the idea along suggesting I simply lengthen my second trip and then I won’t even be losing any fieldwork time. So today Grace bought me my tickets back to Canberra for one week from today. Conversations with Nick and Penny have been reassuring and Andrey and I are shifting our schedules around so we can still see Australia together in the summer. Work has been difficult without my computer but not ...

Today is Saturday, the first day of week 8 and officially the longest I’ve ever stayed in Limol in one go. Because of Grace’s 60-day visa restriction, we’ve only been able to stay in Limol for 7 weeks, using the last days as cushion to travel and get out of Port Moresby. My visa allows me to stay for three years, and just mentioning that enormous amount of time makes my “eight weeks” seem insignificant, but I’m celebrating and feeling grateful that I haven’t run out of anything I really need, that I’m still healthy and happy, and most importantly that my hosts/family have not gotten tired of me or the work yet. I sent Nick a text yesterday catching him up on the past two weeks: we’ve recorded five instantiations of what’s called the Family Problems Picture Task which include four recordings each of two speakers each. They are supposed to be interactive speech so this dataset is really diversifying my corpus which is mostly narratives and songs. This task has also been done throughout m...

I love, love, love Mondays. They are my actual favorite day of the week unlike Thursday which is what I like to say is my favorite day.  This Monday was particularly wonderful because it involved so many of my favorite things: a schedule, a to-do list, heaps of productivity, new notebooks, and a tale of female bravery overcoming a horrible situation.  Warama shares many of these favorite things and yesterday when I went for a visit and to pay him for his outstanding transcription work, he showed me a blackboard on which he had drafted a potential daily schedule, beginning at 8 am with morning prayer, including breaks at 10:00, 12:30, and 3:00, and ending at 4:30. I loved the idea and so started a fresh moleskine notebook with lists of all the tasks that need doing, followed by five daily schedules for the coming week. In the schedules is room for to-do lists and notes. So in the morning, a time for planning the day is penned in after “opening prayer” where all language workers...

I haven’t been writing posts so frequently this trip, but it’s not because I’ve been running less (I’m still running every other day!) or because less is happening. Honestly I think it’s because I set up a chair and a mosquito net on the balcony which allows me to work until 9 or 10 or even later at night. Before I would go to bed around 8 or 9 because it was dark and because of the mosquitoes. And it’s just too uncomfortable to do work in bed. But now I can stay up transcribing and glossing stories until I’m nice and tired. Then I’m too tired to write blog posts when I crawl into bed.  Anyway, I passed a little milestone yesterday. The Ende text corpus now has more than 70,000 words! I wonder if I can get to 100,000 by the end of the year. Now that would be a nice base for a dissertation! Work is still going strong and steady and mostly by myself. The village is mostly away in their gardens or chopping sago. I feel a little guilty for not being more helpful with the gardening work...