Category: Culture

A few years ago, when we still had young kids, we hired a young Kwakum woman to come and help us with cooking and cleaning in our home. She came to us one day and said that she wouldn’t be able to work for a week because one of her family members had died. The reason she wanted a week off was that the Kwakum have funeral celebrations that last for six days. They spend all six days at the burial site, they sleep next to the tomb, and they spend all that time with their family. So, attending this…

The Kwakum people, whom we work with, believe that they are surrounded by the spirits of their ancestors. This might sound romantic or even exciting, but in reality for most Kwakum people it is terrifying. I think I have shared the story here before, but early on in our ministry, we did a language survey with a man in a different village whom we had never met before. At the end of the survey we asked him if there were any ways we could be praying for him. At that point, he nearly started weeping. He told us that his…

Stacey and I are scientists. No, we don’t wear lab coats, or work in a sterile environment. We are linguists. Some people consider linguistics a “soft science,” as opposed to the “hard sciences” like biology and chemistry. However, linguists do follow the scientific method: 1) make observations, 2) make a hypothesis, 3) test the hypothesis, 4) repeat until data is accounted for. Rather than chemicals or microorganisms, linguists study languages. Our main area of study so far has been the Kwakum language. Kwakum is structured so different from Indo-European languages and we often encounter grammatical constructions that are untranslatable in…

These past two weeks have been filled with incredible disappointments. Bible translation To start with, I had been working alongside Kwakum colleagues in a particular village for over a year. We have been taking recently translated Scripture and then sit down with two people there, read them the story, and then ask them comprehension questions. These two individuals have learned to read in Kwakum and have begun to understand who God has revealed himself to be, specifically in the book of Genesis. Then, out of nowhere, both of them started avoiding my calls and were “busy” when we arrived in…

I often have trouble sleeping when we are in Cameroon. One of the many things that bothers my sleep is that I often hear people calling out to me in the night. I then find myself waking up while opening the front door, or calling back out the window. Of course, at that point I realize that there is no one there. When I talk to my neighbors about this, they often get very afraid. They tell me that when you hear someone calling out to you in your sleep, it is someone using magic against you. They warn me…

I am not sure how many Africans read our blog, but if you do, this blog is for you. I don’t believe for a second that all Africans hold the same views. With over 1,500 languages in Africa, there is bound to be a great deal of diversity. That said, I have noticed some patterns in African cultures in regard to magic. The Bible has a great deal to say about magic, and I wanted to sum up three biblical truths that deal with the issue of magic. If your culture already agrees with these principles, praise the Lord! If…

Years ago, while just beginning to learn about Kwakum culture, we asked a language partner for the worst thing he could imagine his son doing. His response was very telling. He said the worst thing he could imagine for his son was for him to get caught stealing. It was very interesting to me that he did not say “for my son to steal” but “for my son to get caught stealing.” This gave me an insight into the pressure of shame in the Kwakum culture. There is even a song that we sing sometimes in church that basically uses shame to…

Since our arrival in Cameroon in 2014, there have been a handful of people from our village that have attended church semi-regularly. The services are conducted in French and this group of people speaks almost exclusively Kwakum. These neighbors put on their nicest clothes, arrive at church, and…sleep through the services. This is very regrettable because our pastor just finished a very long series on the book of Romans where he clearly presented the Gospel of grace. When I asked my Kwakum-speaking friends what they understood at church, I would often get answers like, “I learned that we need to…

What an amazing Easter! Stacey and I had the privilege of seeing our co-worker and friend Jean Pierre (JP) baptized on Sunday. Baptism is always exciting in our village because the river is a long walk from our church building. That means that the whole congregation (and even a bunch of people not a part of the congregation) end up singing praises to God all along the way. Baptism to me has always felt solemn, sacred, quiet. But baptism here is a party, a time for rejoicing, and very much like the arrival of a newborn. One of the most…

Yesterday was packed with joy from the first rooster crow until people fell into their beds exhausted from all the yipping, cheering, and dancing they did in celebration of something that the Lord holds dear: marriage. It was a day that, I believe, mirrored a celebration in Heaven. Two young believers (Koo and Mami) have taken up their crosses, turned their backs on the ways of their culture, and followed God’s will for marriage. One Kwakum friend told me that he had never heard of two young Kwakum people getting married. This occasion therefore merited the song (composed in Kwakum)…