The Translation Beat

PNG’s Morehead District is dry for many months of the year, and it is very flat. Tall red anthills reach out of the grasses toward the sky, sometimes growing taller than a man. The flat terrain is well-suited to bicycle travel, and that’s how many people get around.

Coconuts and big, old mango trees give the villages a park-like feel. Cockatoos and birds-of-paradise feed in fruiting trees, and carefully planted rows of flowers and shrubs keep the pathways bright. Houses are made from huge slabs of bark.

Morehead people are quick to laugh and like to tell each other stories. Their languages are related to one another but do differ, sometimes even between one village the next. This man speaks Nama, and regular readers may remember that I’ve posted about Nama before.

Having wrapped up grated coconut and sliced yams in a coconut frond, women place the dinner onto embers and heated stones. It will be covered with leaves and bark slabs to hold in the heat during cooking.

The people are proud of their dancing clothes. They put on their feathers, grass skirts, and other decorations to celebrate feasts and holidays, and to impress their guests.

I came upon this family just sitting outside together as evening fell. The mother was scraping yams to eat, and her son was blowing on a bamboo flute. Men and boys play the flutes only during yam harvest, but I noticed that some of the boys seemed more interested in using their instruments for blow guns than for music.

A man carves a design into into his kundu, an hourglass-shaped drum beaten during dances.

Yams, cassava, and other garden foods are the foundation of people’s diet, but they also catch fish in the rivers and hunt for feral pigs, cassowaries, wallabies, and deer that have been introduced from Indonesia. Here, a man carves a bamboo bow for hunting.

Of the 10 or more languages in Morehead District, only one has an active Bible translation project. How long will all the others have to wait for the Scriptures? I didn’t have an answer to give the people; I could only tell them to pray.