BF Journal: 9/1

As promised, I went to a Seeku speaking village today.  The drive was maybe 90 minutes.  We stopped some on the way there and on the way back so that Jeff could snag some specimens, photos, local names, etc. of flora and fauna.  We did the same thing in the village for a few hours.  I wasn’t much help since Jeff has pictures loaded on his computer and book he works from but I think today’s sessions did help me a bit with recognizing tones.  I think I heard three or four tones!  It’s not my project obviously and I haven't been working on it so it is hard to say, but Jeff loves his flora and fauna.  For those unfamiliar with tone systems, they are kind of a pain for speakers of English (and other non-tonal languages).  You can easily google these things (I suggest Chinese), so I won’t bother trying to link anything with my spotty connection.

The people were very friendly even through my Jula isn’t good enough yet to carry on much conversation.  Almost nobody knew any French, so all communication had to go through only a couple of people.  This really makes me wish I knew more Jula.  I am in a predicament with it though.  I would rather focus on learning more Jula than French, however, in order to ask questions about Jula grammar and how to say stuff in Jula, I usually need to have the French words.  So, I think I will continue to frontload French even though it is less useful for the actual fieldwork I will do.

I regret to inform you that I was slightly distracted in the village.  There were baby goats everywhere.  This might be a legitimate problem for me.  Try listening for tones (which is not the fun part of fieldwork) while there is a pack of four Baby goats jumping on each other just a few feet away.  This is unpossible.  UN-POSSILE.

I am fairly certain that I insulted our Seeku informant’s older sister.  Her small toddler came up to me and wanted to be picked up and give me high fives.  She also kept giving me back the 50 franc piece I gave her.  That went on for a while.  Anyways, during the high-fiving something sticky appeared on my hand.  I guess this happens with kids everywhere.  I attempted to wipe it on my pants and it wouldn’t come off, so I wiped harder.  Finally it came off and by then the older sister was scowling at me.  She thought I was wiping my hands after touching her child.  Laura, I made a great impression: enjoy any future visits.