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...

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...

Yesterday’s run was exceptional. Huge dark clouds were rolling in right at 5:30 when I was wrapping up language work for the day. As people hurried to bring in their laundry and solar lights, I hurried to tie my shoes and get as much of a run in as possible before the heavens opened. This particular run I was chased by about 20 kids. We ran ‘the loop’ twice before drops began to fall, at a record pace since I didn’t know how long the clouds would wait for me. When it really started raining we turned the group around and raced to the house Grace and I call “the bachelor pad” which is tall enough to stand under comfortably. Together we all did my 8-minute strength routine as the sky poured and huge gusts of wind blew the water into our circle. The kids love jumping jacks and high knees and think squats and jump squats are hilarious (they like to make pooping noises). During the other exercises like push ups and lunges they mimic my breathing. We laughed when my feet slipped out from und...

It’s the middle of January, nearly the new moon, and a good time to reflect on what I’ve accomplished and what I’m dreaming to accomplish.  After the big recording frenzy of the holidays, I’ve been putting most of my attention on organizing and transcribing the corpus. Partly because Limolians have been very busy the past few weeks and also because I want the corpus in archival state by the end of this summer. This has involved a number of tasks: 1. I went back through all the raw data to find recordings that didn’t make it into the database. Many of these were chance recordings of spontaneous speech or intentional recordings done by someone that wasn’t me. This resulted in 500+ unique recordings. 2. Once all the material was in, I tagged each recording for a number of characteristics to generate a file name. The language spoken, the type of speech (spoken, read, or written), whether or not it was spontaneous, prompted (by me), or elicited word for word (by me), and whether it was ...

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 ...

So much has happened in the past few days that it's hard to know where to begin. Our last full day in the village (Wednesday) was the first half sunny day in a week and it was a really good day. I got nine final recordings from Tonny (readings of the storybook texts) then spent the rest of the day teaching Warama, Tonny, and Wagiba again how to use the satellite phone, computer, and solar panels.  At 4:00 the feast started. We walked down to the community hall, a space in the center of Limol which is just a dirt floor covered by a sago leaf roof. Palm fronds and tarps were laid out and a huge mountain of pots with cooked rice and flour dumplings sat in the middle of the hall. Families sat around the periphery with their own pots of food (yams, sweet potatoes, noodles, fish, banana sago cake). We sat in the front center with Wagiba and Warama. Grace had helped Wagiba make a huge banana sago cake, and our friends came to give us small pots of food, purple yam, sweet potato, fish. It ...

Sixth day of rain. I did get out this morning and went with Wagiba to go pick up her sago bundles to carry them back to the village. Grace and I headed over to her house early morning and said hello to the puppies before heading out. Even in our hiking boots we slipped a bit on the path. Wagiba walks in front, swinging her machete along the path, breaking tree branches, small shrubs, hitting pieces of wood. Her erratic machete swinging is scary because I'm always worried I'll start following her too closely and get hit, but it does serve a purpose. First, it is a way of upkeeping all the trails little by little every time they're walked. Second, it's a way of marking where you've been so you can a)find your way back, or more likely b) someone can find you if you don't return. As she swung, Wagiba chatted about sago chopping and health plans and our ever approaching departure. As she talks, she effortlessly chops off branches for firewood, peels bark for rope, an...

Today is the fourth or fifth day or rain we've had. Rain all night and much of the day makes the trails quite slippery and I can't justify breaking my leg just to get a run in, so I've been feeling quite lazy. I did walk halfway to the yamhouse with Grace to carry back Wagibas yams yesterday, and I chased after a deer to film it being shot, butchered, and distributed this afternoon so I haven't been without some heart racing entertainment.  Today was a beautiful day, we celebrated Grace's birthday, which is tomorrow. The language house was filled with people and decorated with flowers. Grace was given a beautiful lei of cordyline, hibiscus, and other tree flowers, and sung happy birthday. She was then sat on a beautiful mat, also covered in tree flowers and she was given plenty of presents of food as we sang more happy birthday song. I gave her a poem I wrote called Omad and Wagiba translated for everyone. Lauren gave her a beautiful drawing of Grace and Pingam, don...

Had to skip my run this morning because of heavy rain - it made the trail very slippery. I did however walk nearly 7km with a heavy load to and from the canoe spot on my first fishing trip! Everyone went, but our fishing party was Wagiba, Wendy, Lauren. Grace, and me. Many other woman and small girls also walked down with us to go fishing. When we got to the canoe place, we bailed the rain water out of the canoes, spent a little time digging in the mud for worms, then settled in to Wagibas big canoe and took off. Others were throwing lines but we were going to drag a net to catch fish. Riding in the canoe was beautiful but frightening. I was so worried I would topple out.  I helped Wagiba throw out the net properly, we tied one end to a stick in the mud then paddled out into the clear part of the swamp tossing the net out as we went and back to the stick in a big circle. One side of the net had floaters and the other had sinkers. Then with the circle complete, you drag the net in f...

Big milestone day! I think I passed my tenth 5k here in PNG, if not in Limol, which makes 50km! A distance that always reminds me of A. Today was a bit drizzly, which made the dirt trail a little slippery in places. I passed a few women on their way to the swamp and a man working in his garden. The whole village is feeling under pressure - it's time to build new gardens so everyone is out clearing trees, digging posts, and burning land. Barefoot and with rusty tools. Many people have come asking for medicine for body aches and it's hard to say no. Our policy is to only give medicine for non-chronic pain otherwise we will run out in just a few days and people might overwork their already overworked muscles. All the women are also going for sago, which involves falling a huge sago palm tree, debarking it, beating the pith into a powder, squeezing water through the powder into a pool and siphoning off the water to return with a super fine grained starch. This sago will be going to...