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...

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 ...

Well my computer died today. As they say, it’s not a question of IF you’ll lose your data it’s a question of WHEN and HOW MUCH. Luckily, I’ve been well trained and I made regular backups and three back up drives of all my recordings, transcriptions, translations, photos, etc. I last backed up last night and I was able to grab a few transcripts that I typed before my computer really crashed. These data were irreplaceable and completely saved! However... I wasn’t regularly backing up my FLEx files which include all my text analysis and an enormous amount of work that I’ve done mostly at night the past seven weeks. I also potentially lost all the documents on my computer. So I feel like a back up queen and a total idiot at the same time. Luckily I have a back-up laptop (!) but doing my work for the evening felt like someone took my beautiful well-oiled machine and replaced it with a stick. I’ll be able to keep doing my work and an evening run persuaded me that in fact I will still do ever...

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...

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...

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 ...