Elijah and Moira Hall TRIBAL MISSIONS - Reaching the unreached _img.jpg)
“Aaah.”
“Haah.”
Ninety-odd voices in our classroom resonated as we “learned to read” again – a part of the literacy training we recieved the past couple of weeks.
We, along with our classmates, take our ability to read for granted and barely realize the impact it has on our relationship with the Lord. Just how important is it? Try not reading your Bible for a while…
By the time the teacher introduced the fifth odd symbol/sound connection, we were making mistakes already. My head was swimming already and it was even worse when I was put on the spot! I felt helpless and stupid in my hour of illiteracy.
This was part of our training designed to help us sympathize with those who we will be teaching how to read and write. During the two week course, we put together our own short “primer” and taught a mock lesson to some of our classmates. We had no idea everything that is involved.
First, pre-literacy must be taught. Which is the top of the paper? Which is the bottom? How should they hold a pencil? Our teacher showed us a photo of a fish hook – right side up, up side down, sideways – and asked us what it was. Of course we all answered, “A fish hook.”
He said, “Now imagine you are a fifty year old lady and all your life a fish hook is a fish hook, no matter which way you turn it – but all of a sudden in literacy class, someone shows you this picture.” The teacher showed us a “t”, then turned it upside down and said, “Imagine explaining to this lady how this is a t or an f, depending on which way you turn it! This is part of the challenge of pre-literacy.”
Then primers, readers, lesson plans and books translated for the newly literate people also must be prepared ahead of time. Months are spent teaching the first classes how to read, keeping careful records and then training indigenous literacy teachers to carry on the work. This can take years of concentrated effort to turn a program of full curriculum for the teachers and students over to the tribal people, but that is the goal.
Why? As one tribal believer explained it, translation and literacy are two legs that the new church stands on to continue growing. “If there is no Bible for us, we cannot have the Word of God to us. If we have a Bible and cannot read it, we do not profit from translation either.”
