5k Kate

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...

Last night, we had front row seats to an amazing lunar eclipse! We sat around campfires at the community hall to watch the moon. We started an hour early because my timing was off but at exactly 9:48 the first hint of a shadow emerged front the lower right of the moon. When the moon is full, it’s possible to walk around the village at night without a light, just soaking in the moonlight and trailing a moon shadow behind you. As the shadow started to creep up the moon, the face of the moon was clearly visible, like a serene old woman. Language abounded as people chatted about the moon. I caught a fresh Wagiba-ism “If you keep looking at the moon like that, one of your eyes will fly up there!” This is something she said her grandparents would say when they were around. I guess there were some dreamy moon gazers in Old Limol 🌝. The shadow moved quite quickly and soon the moon was half, then a quarter, then a sliver, then just a dull yellow glow behind a dark mask. We walked home crowded ...