The Njyem Transition Primer

To see a PDF file of the Njyem transition primer, go to http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16109934/NjyManTrans.pdf. The lessons and key to the exercises are complete. I have also added an index to the topics taught in addition to the letters. In a few days we go back to the Njyem area and test it and teach people to write their language in the southern canton. We have not been there before, but some people there know us from having met us elsewhere. We will go with our camper this time and look for a place in the area where we can set up a permanent base.

AIDS Awareness Needed for the Njyem

In February I worked with Collette Nkom on an AIDS brochure that is now available for use in helping the Njyem community resist this terrible danger. You can print the document from Adobe Acrobat on any printer.

The Gospel of Mark in Njyem

In February 2010 we sent a preliminary version of Mark to the Njyem villages. We are now done with a light revision of the whole Gospel, incorporating some new proposals for the writing system. We will be going out to Ngoyla on Dec. 10. You can see the document here, in Open Office Writer format, which works well in Word, as well. We are also taking a summary of the writing system to test out: pg1, pg2 and pg3. If we can convince ourselves that people are learning to write and to read with a minimum of effort, we will do the pedagogical manual that corresponds to this orthographic standard.

The Budget for the St. Mark's Building Project

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Thanks for your concern.
The parish of Ngoyla lacks a safe and welcoming environment for the resident priest and for his parishioners when they need to come together.
They have an critically-important building project which includes a meeting-place for the church and a the parsonage.
This was proposed by the Priest of the Parish, Father Tarcisius Mpa, who can be contacted at peretarcisiusmpa@yahoo.fr. The Bishop in Doume-Abong Mbang, Jan Ozga, has approved it and authorizes this funding project. For more on this worthy project, see my post here.
If you are ready to help, a donation can be sent to the Reverend MPA through the Bishop.

New Leadership for the Njyem Language Committee

Last month Francois Medjo went by motorcycle 120 miles from Lomie to Ngoyla and back, one of the main places where the Njyem people, who speak a neighboring language, are located. Last year, we helped them to produce The Gospel of Mark and an order of worship for the Roman Catho­lic Church. After that, we noticed that there seemed to be little movement for­ward. They seemed at risk of losing in­ter­est in this project. Rufine Adjowa, a proud speaker of Njyem living outside of the area, re­quested that Francois pay the com­mu­nity a visit and see what could be done to restart the project. During his visit, he exhorted them about the need for ongoing programs of translation and literacy. They chose some new leaders for this project, in­clud­ing the schoolteacher, Mbi Aimé, and proposed a list of activities for the next three months. These include as­sembl­ing a collection of Njyem pro­verbs and revising a draft hymnbook. A meeting will be held in December to look at what has been accomp­lished. The Roman Catholic priest of Ngoyla, Rev. Mpa Tarcisius, has a big role in the Njyem language committee even though he does not speak their lan­guage yet. He wants to participate in all these activities in the interest of building a viable Bible translation committee. Although these people are mini­mally impacted by the Christian Gospel, several groups of the Njyem who also understand Nzime somewhat have been listening to recordings of the Nzime New Testament. Please pray for a powerful move­ment of God among the Njyem.

Beginning a New Phase of the Njyem Work

From Jan. 13 to Feb 5 I worked with a speaker of Njyem, Colette NKOM. We were limited to spending the mornings together. We have made significant progress on the adaptation of the Scriptures from Badwe'e, finishing Mark's Gospel in first draft. Rufine ADJOWA, her older sister, participated with us on the reading of the first 4 chapters.
The Badwe'e Bible portions include the New Testament, Genesis, Ruth, and Jonah.
I am doing this in the expectation that it will be an offering to the Lord Jesus which he will accept and bless as a means of bringing new life to the Njyem.
Other than doing the first draft of Mark's Gospel, we have adapted the AIDS book ("Kande's Story") into Njyem. We also transcribed natural texts and analyzed them. For us to have an adequate knowledge of the unique features of the Njyem language, we must do this analysis.

Last updated: Feb. 8

Miracles

Miracles are something done by God for the salvation or joy of people he is saving. They point to His ability to do in an unusual manner many of those things that he would otherwise do in an ordinary manner. They must include a salvific element in them to qualify. There are, therefore, no secular miracles or humanist miracles. Miracles point us to God's intimate involvement in human affairs. They clearly show his earnestness and pleasure in saving the lost.
In this light, I would point to two miracles we have witnessed since following Christ in engaging the Njyem people.

1. The solution of the phonological problem.
   I was not a speaker of Njyem in Feb. 2004 when we came to the USA, nor did I understand it. I had one tape of dialogue that I had neither understood nor transcribed. I was unaware of the tonal system and not aware of the existence of "polar tone rules". I came to understand the tape and the amazing tone rules by listening to the hitherto meaningless tape. This was miraculous!
2. The meeting with the Njyem community
   I knew the name of a Njyem speaker in the city of Yaounde who was to host a meeting at his home. I had never seen his home or the neighborhood in which he lived. I went to the neighborhood to make contact with that man, resolving to ask strangers until I found him. The first person I talked to about this man was the man himself! That was miraculous! (See also http://khbeavon.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-i-met-njyem-in-ekunu.html)

What these miracles mean to me is that God is preparing to do a mighty work among the Njyem, drawing many to himself.

How Long to Create a Draft of a New Testament?

I've been adapting the Nzime New Testament into Njyem, and 92.35% of the New Testament remains to be adapted. The last time I was able to work on this was in March. I had about 2 days' worth of time with Jean Bart KUL and Etienne AMFANGNSO', and we completed Mark 1-6 and Luke 22-24. The program we used was "Adapt-It", which worked like a gem.
In my experience, 1.9% of the New Testament can be done every day. This means that the remainder of the Njyem New Testament should require only 48 more days of work.

Njyem Hearing God's Word... in Nzime(!)

The Nzime received the New Testament in 1998 as a result of the support of CABTAL and other funders. Then they received generous support from Faith Comes By Hearing, which orchestrated the recording of their New Testament and the distribution of "Proclaimers", digital players that are powered by the sun. They saw the Nzime at first responding little to the printed New Testament, but then responding with joy and excitement at the arrival of the Proclaimers. They gather together in listening groups and let the translated and recorded Word of God pour into their ears and hearts. Lives are changed, relationships restored, and people given new hope. One of the readers, Bolakam Severin, died recently in total peace, asking for nothing but the Proclaimer that he could play at all times.
ASTRADHE is the literacy and Scripture-Impact organization that is providing the supervision for this far-flung program.
The Njyem, meanwhile, were seeing little progress on their side of the river. Life was not bad, but it wasn't quite what it should be, either. They asked for a New Testament to be translated, but the resources were not forthcoming. They waited some more and then they did something uncharacteristic... they asked and asked again for the Proclaimers to be brought south across the river for use in their villages. They knew that this was going to mean that the Nzime language would gain more of a foothold in their midst, but they could not let that distasteful aspect come between them and their deeper exposure to the Word of God.
After all, the proverb says "a drowning man will even grab a snake that is swimming by if will help him to survive".
They still want the word of God in their language, but until that happens, they know they need the Proclaimer and the Nzime language that it brings.
The Presbyterian pastor of Ngoyla is Reverend Bengene Mebere Innocent. He wrote:
"We ask you to esctend the praiseworthy project into our sector, that of the Njyem. This program you initiated faacilitates the evangelization of a people group through the hearing of the Word of God in the local language.
"We have met in August 2008 in Ngoyla to study how to better evangelize this area and it was found that the main handicap was that the majority of the population was illiterate, and for this reason very few read the Bible.
"Having heard a member of ASTRADHE speak of the FCBH program, we expressed our appreciation for the program and are asking that in the days to come seven listening centers should be opened as a preliminary step. ...I will supervise the listening centers so that peoplle are blessed by the Word of God."
In the days to come, however, the Roman Catholic curé based in Ngoyla also said that he would supervise listening centers for his own parishioners. As a result, twenty listening centers have been started in the Njyem area, half under the supervision of each of the major Christian communions.
Recently, Rufine Adjowa returned from her Njyem village and said that the Proclaimer is used in church where the reading of the Word of God is called for. She said lives are being touched by God and they are finding a sure basis for their faith in God.

The Njyem People

Our work in the Njyem area started in December 2001 when we spent a few weeks in the village of Mbalam 1. Our friends, mentors, and allies in this work have been Adjowa Rufine and Moise Mebere.

The Njyem have a website now that you can access, where we have put the little guidebook for their orthography. It is http://www.kulnjyem.blogspot.com/.

Their language is listed along with all the other languages of the world at http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=njy, which is the definitive catalogue of languages maintained by SIL.

Orthography guides

On other websites there are some orthography guides that helps speakers of Njyem, Nzime and Badwe'e know where to put accents as he or she writes his/her language. The general rule is "no accents unless they are required by this book." So we hope that someone will find this and make use of it to become an author. The guides require that one have a reading knowledge of French. Here they are: Njyem: http://kulnjyem.blogspot.com/2009/07/aide-memoire-pour-les-ecrivains-njyem.html Badwe'e: http://codylko.blogspot.com/2009/07/guide-pour-les-ecrivains-badwee.html Nzime: http://francoismedardmedjo.blogspot.com/2009/07/guide-pour-lorthographe-nzime-allegee.html

Prayer Letter from June 2009

This is one of the new styles for prayer letters that Wycliffe Bible Translators created and advocates.

Prayer letter from March 2009

Bonjour, mes amis francophones!

Je vous salue! Nous avons publié ce blog dans lʼintérêt de rendre accessible les nouvelles de nos collaborateurs dans le Province de lʼEst. Les quatre principaux sont:

• François Médard MEDJO, fils du chef de Somalomo, du dialecte Badwéʼé; Travaillant à Lomié parmi les Nzimé; en train de terminer sa formation d'alphabétiseur en langues nationales.
• Rufine ADJOWA, de Te'esaŋ, qui anime le peuple Njyem depuis bien d'années, à la mesure de ses possibilités.
• Ferdinand ELANGA, de Mboumo, du dialecte Badwé'é; travaillant à Somalomo et à Mindourou; en train de terminer sa formation d'alphabétiseur en langues nationales.
• Maurice EKOALEA “Janvier”, dʼAlouma; travaillant à Somalomo. Il vient de commencer sa préparation pour une formation théologique en vue de devenir pasteur dans l'EPC, Consistoire Nkol Mvolan.

Ils sont en train de diriger les ONG qui auront le souci permanent:

• d'alphabétiser tous les Koozimé (Badwe'e, Njémé, Nzimé, Njyém)
• de leur donner les textes bibliques dont ils sentent le besoin
• de leur aider à éviter les MST
• de leur aider à surmonter les problèmes comme la pauvreté, l'abus de l'alcool, l'accès difficile à l'éducation

The origin of the Koonzime people

The Koonzime ("OZM" in the Ethnologue) are a group of people with a common ancestor, Nzime ("Zime" if you speak the Badwe'e dialect). He had a son, Kɔɔ, who was a polygamist. He and one wife, Ampiʼi, had three sons, named Njeme, Nzime (for the grandfather), and Edweʼe. (click on the JPG at the left to enlarge.) These sons gave rise to the four ethnic groups known as Njeme, Nzime, Badweʼe and Njyem.

The Njeme, Nzime and Badweʼe speak one language, which can be called Kɔɔnzime, and which should probably have been hyphenated: Kɔɔ-nzime. This is the short form of the following phrase:

Dyɛɛ me Kɔɔ, mwan me Nzime

people of Kɔɔ child of Nzime

The three have discernable dialects and subdialects of Kɔɔnzime.

The Njeme split into two groups, one being on the northern border of the Koonzime, at Mindourou, and the other being south of the Dja River, south of Lomie. The latter group underwent a major linguistic change and they now call themselves and their language, now distinct, as “Njyem”. Their language is identified in the Ethnologue as “NJE”.