Waratibu wapya!

Here’s a little Swahili lesson for you:
“Waratibu” means “Coordinators” (the ‘wa’ indicates plurality, ‘mratibu’ would be just one) and “wapya” means “new” (note that ‘wa’ is at the beginning of this word too – that’s because adjectives have to agree with the noun that they are referring to, so one new coordinator would be ‘mratibu mpya’).
Last week we held a workshop to train three new people to be the coordinators of Literacy and Scripture Use work in their respective language areas (Sangu, Safwa and Bena). We praise God that there were three people, as we had struggled to find a suitable candidate for the Sangu language until the last minute. It was a busy week, with lots of things for them to take in, but we have been pleased with how keen they were and with how many questions they asked! The workshop isn’t over yet though. This week we will also be training the six coordinators that are already in place, addressing issues that they need more help in and providing opportunities for them to share with each other how things are going.

I find teaching both exhilarating and tiring, so please pray that we would all have the energy we need to keep going! It’s only 2 weeks before I get on a bus to Dar as I start my journey home to England, so I have lots of other things to get sorted too. As I write, it is a beautiful, blue skied Sunday morning, and I am going to make sure it is a good ‘day of rest’ so that I am ready for the busy week ahead! (It’s just a shame that someone is working with a very noisy chainsaw nearby, destroying the silence and making it hard to hear the birds singing).