The Roman Catholic Order of Worship

Many Roman Catholic faithful have wanted their worship to be meaningful in the sense that it was translated into Badwe'e and Nzime clearly. Now some of their priests are coming to our Cameroonian coworkers to get help in the translation of these orders of worship. Two of them have written them out by hand! The Nzime order of worship is now in use and the Badwe'e will be done soon.

One of my jobs this week has been to correct errors of all sorts in the Nzime document and then to produce a Badwe'e one based on it. These will have a guaranteed wide usage.

I have learned how they talk about making the sign of the cross. They use the verb "slap/stick on": -bIr, where the vowel "I" is at low tone and inbetween the vowels "i" and "e". The verb is used in the context of building a mud house, whereby someone grabs a handful of wet mud and slaps it onto the wall, where it sticks. The sign of the cross is done in somewhat the same way in their thinking.