Settling in

Well I have settled into my tiny apartment, and have discovered that there are not one, but two French grocery stores, Casíno and Leader Price within walking distance. It's always nice to have options, although I understand they are in the same family !

I have been buying groceries and stocking the kitchenette in my apartment, but today decided to try the little "pain-bro" stall near the Center that seems to operate at dinnertime. "Pain-bro" is an abbreviation for "brochettes" (meat on skewers) and "pain" (bread). They typically sell chicken or beef as brochettes, or sandwiches sometimes accompanied with a popular local side-dish like alloco (fried plantains). There is a plastic table and maybe 3 chairs nearby for those who prefer to eat there instead of carrying out their food 

Here's the pain-bro stand before they open for business

Many SILpeople I have met seem to be passing through here and I have run into both Marian Hagg (Mali) and Zakaria (Burkina Faso). In fact Laurel Miller (my supervisor here) invited Cornelia (a German woman I met last year),  Silke, (another somewhat younger German woman), and me over for card games on Saturday evening. Cards are not really my thing, but it was fun getting together, and Laurel was trying to whittle down her personal library, so was  giving away reading material.

I was looking for something to do on Sunday and Silke and her husband Martin invited Marian and me to go with them to visit a African CMA church they have been attending fairly regularly since they arrived last September. I found it similar in many ways to Baptist one I attended in Abidjan a year ago, albeit a bit larger. There was hymn singing and more exuberant contemporary Christian music sung by both the congregation, and special music performances provided by church members, but less dancing in the aisles. The sermon was long, in the staccato, repetitive  yelling style that I have unconsciously learned to tune out. The pastor, I understand, was a visiting one from another West African country, so I'll have to withhold judgement on that portion of the experience. On the other hand, this was definitely a more upscale African congregation, than most I have experienced in the past, and I was impressed by the sense of style of some of the women. The very American-looking Christmas tree and decorations were still up.

Inside the church before the service begins

Also located very close to the SIL Center is the Grande Mosquée de la Rivièra Golf. It is also the home of Radio Al-bayane Abidjan, a Muslim radio station that apparently has the potential of reaching 95% of the population of the Côte d'Ivoire and is diffused in some 25 languages. The one advantage of having this enormous mosque nearby is that it is easy to give directions to a cab when you need to return to the SIL Center ! Marian and I found this out last Sunday when we needed to return from the church we were visiting, as neither of us were very familiar with Abidjan.

The Grande Mosquée de la Riviera Golf not far from the SIL Center *

Meanwhile, in the library I am putting things in order as I am able.  The books on the shelves are in good shape, but the vertical file containing copies of articles on local language studies by SIL linguists and others was quite a disaster. I rearranged it, file-by-file, so it can eventually be catalogued by subject, enabling the contents to be accessed more readily, including remotely.  I am now adding natural-language subject-headings to an Excel spreadsheet listing of the file cabinet's contents--something it did not have before.  Unfortunately this is taking forever because I am making corrections to the document as I go along. It has become obvious to me that the first language of the compiler was not English, and there are glaring mistakes that jump out at me even though I am not looking for them...

The SIL-Burkina Faso Library has a similar vertical file accessible through their online catalog, which makes it easy to find both books and articles on a particular subject all in a single location. One spinoff of all this mind-numbing work is that I found an article on the tonal system of the Gulmancema language of Burkina Faso that is not at the SIL Library in Burkina Faso, which may be of interest to someone, so I am scanning it to give to Ezéchiel.  I also found a copy of a student paper Stuart Showalter wrote in 1985 for a course at Georgetown University with the scintillating title of "Triangulation in rural Language Attitude Measures : the Need for Indirect Techniques." He'll probably cringe at the thought, but I'm also scanning it as well for the SIL (BF) Library as there is always someone interested in reading all the works of the local SIL linguists. As you may recall from earlier posts, Stuart and his wife [Cathy] worked on the Kaansa language for more than 20 years in Obiré, situated in southern Burkina Faso near the Ghana border.

The vertical file in question

Stuart's paper

 




I see that Laurel has been at work since I visited the library in Abidjan a year ago, and has the archival collection sorted, relabeled and shelved by language family using the SIL Ethnologue designations. This is a major improvement as they were being worked on a year ago, and stacked all over the place.

Shelving space is a problem so the archives as shelved above the windows

 

* To listen to a 10 second clip of the call to prayer at the Grande Mosquée you can click here