Five Banna speakers joined David, Getu and Ayke to help us construct the Banna primers.

Two of them could already read a little bit. On the first day of the workshop, we had Ayke and Getu show them how to spell in Banna. Here Ayke is working with Sani (pronounced "Sunny").

Donna Clawson, coordinator for the Banna Literacy and Translation work, had prepared word lists to use in the primer construction workshop. She also arranged for all of us to eat the midday meal in her home - the national food, "injera b'wat." Click here for an "injera b'wat" slideshow.

Eamon Anderson, a missionary from New Jersey to Gypsies in Romania, had come to help us in the workshop. (She hopes to do primers in the Gypsies’ language.) She and I decided to share one plate at mealtime, since even together we couldn’t finish a whole injera (the sourdough bread, shaped like a huge pancake, on which Mago is adding stew). We break off a piece of injera and wrap it around a bit of stew, then pop it into our mouth. mmm mmm good!

We started each day with a Banna praise chorus and a devotion led by one of the workshop participants. David is leading in this photo. Can you tell he loves to sing?

James Kigamwa (standing) came from Kenya to lead our workshop. I was impressed by his wealth of experience, his commitment to ministry, and his insight into what will and won’t work in a literacy program. Here he discusses with one of the teams the lesson they are writing. (On the fourth day of the workshop we divided into three teams in order to progress more quickly.)

James was able to keep us all encouraged and in focus. Here Sani, Jammo and Getu smile during a brief respite from the intense concentration required for writing primer lessons.

When a team finished writing a lesson, James and I would go through it with them, checking to be sure they had used only the characters taught up to that point in the primer, and that they hadn’t gone over their quota of new words. (Too many new words in a lesson make it difficult for a new reader.)

Then the team leader (here it's David) would write the new words on a piece of newsprint taped to the wall so that all the teams could use those words in subsequent lessons.