It's all pidgin to me!

Hello Friends.

Sorry you haven’t heard much from us, we have spent the majority of the last week studying.

The new maf staff couples, Tobias and Anita (from Germany, Tobias is a pilot, Anita a pediatrics nurse), and Ed and Debbie (who are from Canada, Ed was in management and is hoping tot be working for MAF at the base, Debbie is a pilot) and Sandy and I meet at our house every morning from 8.30 till 12.30 where we have our language class. Nicki Duncalfe, (wife of one of the MAF pilots) is our teacher. She and her hubby Michael have been here for many years, and she is in charge of language and culture classes for new MAF expatriate staff.

We decided to be kind to ourselves and not attempt home schooling with Rachel and Megan for the two weeks of language. Looking over our week, this was a wise decision and I have stopped feeling guilty about it. We just couldn’t have done it. Nicki gives us about 2 or 3 hours of home work each day (which seems to take me 3 or 4 hours), and so by the time we shop and cook and clean and get our homework done, it is time for bed.

The girls are a bit bored, but have been spending their mornings keeping busy with books, computer games and dvds. Their afternoons are more fun as they get to go play with the other kids on the compound.

We have ten language lessons altogether, so only 3 to go now. It doesn't seem like much, but we feel like we are getting enough of the basics that we can continue studying on our own. We are finding Pidgin easier to hear and recognize words and understand, but it is much more difficult to speak it correctly, so we are working hard to get the rules locked into the brain.

The national ladies who live on our compound are fantastic – patient, encouraging and kind. They only speak Pidgin to us and are more than happy to help correct our many mistakes. We also practice when we are at the shops in town and at the market.

On Sunday morning we went to a church just down the road. We walked with Ben, one of the national guys from the compound. It is a Lutheran church, and fairly formal and all in pidgin. They have a prayer book, and they used lots of readings, so it was pretty easy to follow along.

Church was held in a big building with a cement floor, and wooden and grass walls. A dog wandered through near the end of the service, everyone just ignored it as it sniffed around. Our girls found this pretty amusing! Probably about 70 people, all the ladies sit one side and the men the other side. Our family, and Tobias and Anita were the only white skins. We had to go up the front and introduce ourselves and Sandy did a great job in pidgin with a bit of English mixed in. All the MAF families go to local churches, and then once a month they have a get together called 'soul food' - which is a worship service for the expatriates in English.

That’s about all for now. I have to go and translate a bible passage for today’s class.
Have a great day!