Aari Primer

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:22:11 -0600

In March, 2003, 8 fine Aari Christians joined Allen & Joan Lovekin (from Literacy Evangelism International), Gideon Kiongo & Patrick Malasi (from Literacy Evangelism Fellowship, Kenya), and me for a Primer Construction Workshop. We drafted 3 primers to cover all of the 182 characters needed for the Aari language. Starting with Lesson 12, every lesson has something about Jesus. The third primer contains 11 lessons on health and agriculture, and 25 Bible lessons.

The Aari participants developed a special friendship with Patrick & Gideon (left), who fit much more naturally into their culture than we from the West.
Aari Translators Duba and Fikadu had worked hard to translate the Bible lessons and those on health and agriculture into Aari in preparation for the workshop. These would later be revised for inclusion in the primers.
Two of the new words in each lesson had to be �picture words� - nouns that could be illustrated in a picture. Here participants discuss together possible picture words for a lesson.
Duba points to the list of available new characters on the blackboard and suggests a picture word. The Aari participants wrote the lessons themselves. They were challenged by the "word control" - only 4 words and 7 characters allowed in Lesson 1. After that not more than 2 new characters and 4 new words per lesson.
In later lessons they could have 6 new words, and toward the end up to 21 new words. The first lessons were VERY hard to write. Here Agonafar and Fikadu count the new words in their lesson to be sure they don�t have too many.
After the participants gained experience in writing lessons, they divided into 3 groups to speed up the process. Each team would write a different lesson, then read it to the rest of the group, who checked to be sure the wording was natural and no untaught words or characters had gotten in by mistake.
Duba reads the lesson he and his team have written. His father-in-law (lower left) was the only non-reading participant. He patiently endured through the entire two-week workshop and offered valuable insight when questions came up regarding the naturalness of a phrase or sentence.
The local and district church leaders made sure we were well-fed during the workshop - three meals each day plus coffee or tea and snacks at break time. Here the participants munch sugar cane at breaktime.
And here Fikadu receive a ladleful of split pea wat (stew) to eat with his injera (the national staple - a sourdough bread made from tef, a fine millet-like grain native to Ethiopia). Click here to see how injera is made.
After the workshop, the Lovekins, Gideon, Patrick and I returned to Addis Ababa. We had planned to check all 90 primer lessons again to be sure that none had too many new words or any characters that hadn�t been taught. Here Allen and Joan are looking at the draft pages. Due to illness, we were not able to complete the checking then.
After returning to the USA, we found that some of the later lessons did have too many new words and revision would be necessary. So when I made my next visit to Ethiopia, I arranged to spend a week at the church office in order to work with Duba, Fikadu and the church leaders on primer revision. Here Duba, Fikadu and Degu discuss a change in one of the lessons.
Then Duba and Fikadu worked with me in Addis Ababa for 2 weeks as I tried to be sure I had all the revisions and pictures necessary for the primers.
Ed Owen, a member of Wycliffe�s Seed Company, developed software to give us a better print-out in Ethiopic script, and I began pasting the primer lessons into the computer program "Publisher". The next two pictures are sample pages from a primer.
The two picture words for this lesson are 'wali' (a kind of sickle) and 'zhabna' (clay coffee pot). The Scripture reference is John 1:9-13. For the last five minutes of each lesson, the tutor reads the Scripture reference and gives a brief testimony or engages the student in discussion of spiritual things.
Primer 3: The third primer has 25 Bible lessons, covering the main events from Creation to the return of Christ. These 2 pages have the account of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. You can read about it in Acts 8:26-40.
Twenty-five Aari church leaders attended the Tutor Training Workshop August 1-6, 2004. The first couple of days they seemed only mildly interested, but then they began to catch the vision for using the Aari primers as tools for evangelism.
Gideon Kiongo and Patrick Malasi came from Nairobi, Kenya, to lead the tutor trainings. It looks like Gideon is really concentrating on their conversation over the midday meal of injera and wat. (Patrick got a special dispensation of white bread, since the injera didn't always agree with him.)
The participants broke into small groups to practice teaching the primer lessons. We copied a lesson onto a large piece of newsprint and hung it up so that everyone could see the demonstration of how to teach.
One of the participants teaches a lesson as Patrick looks on.
At break time Patrick enjoyed playing ball with some of the local boys.
We teach writing as well as reading. Here Terrefe (left) from the Word of Life (SIM-related) Church looks on as one of his �students� practices writing a new word. This helps reinforce the reading, too.
The Mekane Yesus (Lutheran) Church hosted the Aari Tutor training and provided good meals for all of us in the workshop.
Only five of the trainees were from the Word of Life Church, and only 3 of them finished the course � translators Duba and Fikadu, and Degu (left) who discusses church matters with Terrefe over lunch.

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