Karima's Notes on Making Recording in Villages

I realized I hadn't written anything about Tunen, and I had these notes already typed up. I typed them out right after Tunen, when I was in Younde, so I wrote a lot of them with the Tunen team in mind. So here are my findings. I wrote this like I was teaching someone what to do, because they wanted me to write something for others who came. I ended up not giving it to them, by the way, if you're freaking out about my informality.

   1.       Try not to go during the harvest season. No one will be on time and they will always want to be on their farms rather than working with you. Unless you have a really forceful leader among them who makes the others come in and work with you.

   2.       If there is a weird noise in the background of the recordings but there wasn’t a car driving by, try unplugging your computer. That happened to me and I had to do all the recordings on battery power.

   3.       Make sure you reiterate that the readers should be practicing their chapters. And if they read for you and you feel like they haven’t practiced, it is easier to tell them to keep practicing and come back than to fix the same mistake on the recording five times.

   4.       Edit the recordings with a native speaker on hand. Even if you can read their language, you can’t speak it. Some of the Bantu languages have tones, and tones are hard to hear/read when you aren’t native.

a.       If the language has tones, prepare yourself to re-record a single word several times. If the readers are picky, you could basically record the whole chapter over again with all the words they want to redo. It may sound the same to you, but it is not to them. If you get stressed out with having to record something every five seconds, I suggest you could go take a walk. Or get something to eat. Just try not to snap at them, because these really are important things they are correcting and you’ll feel really bad later, when you’ve come to your senses.

   5.       At the very start, ask if anyone knows how to use Audacity and if it is on any of the computers there. If someone does then they will be the greatest boon on the whole team. I don’t care if they have ten farms to work at; they are staying by your side. Give them some files to edit while you edit others. Once you get a feel for how fast each of you works, you can split the files up more evenly. Make sure to retrieve the files from their computer once you finish.

   6.       If you are more attentive than me and do not want to goof off while they are recording, I suggest you keep some paper close at hand along with a copy of the words. This is what I did at first, but then I started editing with the team and found it to be superfluous. But, if you want to, I would right down the time on the recording when a mistake was made. That way, I could go through and take out most of the mistakes before listening to the whole thing. Keep in mind, though, that if you do this you’ll have to work from the end to the beginning or else all the times will be off after you fix the first mistake.

a.       That being said, I worked out a system which I consider much better than this. First I went through and took out all the spaces (the pauses) and extra noise (like the birds) I could easily notice. Then I went through with the words in front of me (and preferably with a native speaker beside me) and took out the mistakes (when people stumbled or reread a sentence). My last step was to listen through again. If I could follow along easily and there weren’t any mistakes, then I exported it as a wav file and considered it finished. Yay!

   7.       Birds, children, and cars are your enemy. Your mortal enemies. If you feel like it is too loud, don’t be afraid to stop the reader. It’s so much easier to wait for the car to drive by, or go scare away the birds/children than to take out all their noises. I mean, no one minds a few birds in their recording and children far off aren’t a problem, but a bird in the bush or someone yelling right outside the window? Those are problems. And cars are always a problem. If you can hear them then the microphone is picking them up. You’ll have to experiment and see how sensitive your mic is, but know that you will get other noises in there so it is best to try and minimize what you can.

   8.   Try not to have an audience. In one village all the readers sat behind me while the person who was recording was reading. And they corrected the mistakes. All of them. I have so much audio of people speaking who are not the readers. I’m not going to lie, it was hilarious, but besides being a hassle to take out later, I think it made the readers more nervous than they already were. This was a group where no one would sit in front of the mic unless they were recording, even if it wasn’t on. And it was really odd because when they were practicing they sounded good, but when they came to record they suddenly stumbled over every other word. I really think they were nervous.

   9.   So try to make them relax. It is actually not a big deal.

   10.   Make a schedule. Line out a schedule the very first morning. I didn’t always do this, and that sometimes created problems. It is best if everyone has a time to come in and record and everyone has a time to come and help you edit. And you don’t have to do all the recordings before you edit. You could spend five hours with one person one day and never see him again the rest of the time, but his two chapters will be completely finished.

   11.   Get to know your team. If all you do is work, work, work, you’ll get finished, but what have you really done? Have you made any friends? Do you have any fun stories to tell? Can you name the reader just by listening to his voice because you listened to the recording so often or because you hung out and talked with him? I did not do enough of this and I regret it.

   12.   Do not let them sit back from the mic. Pick it up and hold it to their mouth if you have to. You may have a fluent reader, but they are sitting five feet from the mic. That’s ridiculous. The reader should sit right in front of the mic. The closer they are to the mic, the clearer and the stronger they speak, the better the recording will be. If they don’t do those things… I hope you know how to use the effects on audacity because you’re going to need them. That being said, you should know how to use amplify at least.

a.       Also, with amplify, sometimes just one section needs to be amplified. Totally possible, but I hope you knew that. If not, you may want to consider a little more training in audacity before you start your work.

   13.   If you have a cold, show the reader how to press the ‘record’ and ‘stop’ button and go sit in another room. You are going to cough, you are going to sneeze, you are going to sniff, and the reader will just keep talking. No one wants to listen to your sniffles when they are listening to the recording and, my word!, it is hard to take them out.

   14.   With each new reader, tell them the basic points. Sometimes I only told the first few people and figured that the others had told the others – I was wrong.

a.       Read slowly. It is easier to take out pauses than someone stumbling over a word fifty times. (“bo, bo , bo, bo, bo’o” is a hassle. "……………………………….. Bo’o” is simple.)

b.      If you do make a mistake, go back and read the last few words. (It is easier to fix “Yesobega’awen…..Yesobega’avewene” than “Yesobega’awen….vewenela.” I don’t know if this makes sense… If not, you’ll figure out soon what I mean.)

c.       If you hear a car or motorbike drive by, please stop and wait for it to leave before continuing.

   15.  It doesn’t matter in what order you record chapters. Each chapter is a new track on the CD, so they all have to be recorded separately, anyway. You could go backwards for all it matters. Make sure the readers know that the order doesn’t matter or else you may have people trying to work out complicated schedules so you can record in order.

   16.   If you are working with a mother of a baby, make sure the baby is out of the room and she has practiced. Babies are temperamental and she is only going to be able to be away from it for so long if it is a tiny baby. Don’t get me wrong. Babies are adorable and so much fun to have around, but they make noise and they give the mother limited time to do recordings. So she’s one person who is going to have to work fast. Don’t tell her to work fast, in case she becomes flustered, but do tell her it is better if she has read through the chapter multiple times and knows it almost by heart. In my opinion this applies to everyone, but to mothers it is especially crucial.

  And those are my notes. The ones about re-recording the same one syllable word fifty times... That, specifically, is about Tunen. I worked with a bunch of old men - very fluent readers and Godly men - but so nit-picky. I almost walked out on them. But I also hadn't eaten in probably 8 hours.

I I finished my chapters, by the way! All my work for my internship is finished and I mailed it off yesterday! Yay! I have one more post planned because I do want to talk a little bit more about Tunen and then I will share what I think God has worked in me while I was there. And that's it. I've been home for 22 days now. I should really wrap up my blog.

Pictures!

I tried to mostly include things I talked about. I thought about going through my old posts and putting pictures up where I talked about things, but decided this was easier for me and for you, dear reader, because it means you don't have to look through all my old posts and I don't have to, either. The pictures go in order. I start in Bamenda, then Kumbo, then Bamenda, then Pinyin, then Awing, then Bamenda again, the Babanki, then Tunen, and finally Yaounde.

This was my very first view of Cameroon. I could look out my window and see all of Bamenda. If this is just a view from a guesthouse/convent/hospital, can you start to imagine how beautiful Cameroon really is?

This is the dormitory room I was moved to when I was kicked out of Little House, in Kumbo. Okay, it was nicer than that. They moved me out because someone else was coming in for longer than me.

This is me cooking by lamplight. I don't remember if I wrote about it, but it happened enough that I should have, if I didn't.

This is me cooking... with a big knife.

My poor feet after my hike to the market.

This is the mysterious attic. I never made it up there. But that just makes this another reason why I have to go back.

A flower outside Little House. It was beautiful.

See? Absolutely beautiful.

The man in the tan coat is Alfred and I really hoped I talked about him. He was basically forced to take me around to the literacy classes. He didn't really know what to do with me because I wasn't allowed to ride motorbikes, but we went to a few classes, when we could take a taxi. He's been with the Lamnso' translators since the beginning and worked with them to develop an alphabet.

This is one of the little boys at the VBS. Fuomo. He called me Mama.

Here's the whole group of the VBS kids.

this is Andy, the boy who held my hand and tried to scrap my freckles off.

You cannot really see him, but there is a lizard in this picture. This was my first of many lizards. This was my first night back in Bamenda after spending 10 days in Kumbo.

This is outside the guesthouse in Bamenda (I took this after I moved from the Grebes' and into the SIL guesthouse).

Here's the front of it.

Can you get a feel of how often the power goes out? And these are only about half of the candles that were there.

IT'S THE DOORBELL!

This is Courage, from the Pinyin village. He's the youngest.

This is Divine Favour. He's before Courage.

And Awa, with some neighbor kids. He's the middle child, but I didn't really meet the older two siblings.

This is Mama Vivian. She was fun.

And her pig.

Here's the whole team!

This is the sack of potatoes. Yep. It was huge. I left it with Papa Daniel in Tunen and I'm pretty sure there were still at least a quarter of them left.

This is Helen and one of her nieces.

I don't think I talked about this. This was my bed in Awing. I shared it with Helen, but it wasn't so bad.

Helen's family's chickens.

Me with my hair braided.

My Babanki team! They may have understood me the least, but they were such a blessing to me.

And not just because they gave me this basket. With a pineapple.

Pastor Gabe, the Babanki liaison. He kept asking me when I was coming back to record with his other villages. I told him I'd come back when God brought me back.

This is me with my hair half down.

And all the way down. Oh yeah. I'm styling.

This is the main room of the guesthouse. I stayed here a lot. I honestly came back to the guesthouse sometimes and felt like I was coming home.

It's a bag of water. That was fun.

My Tunen team! They were all old men... Papa Daniel is on the far left, next to me. I stayed with him. He's 63 and says he worked at the bank for 50 years.

I call it Tunen, but in reality that is just the language I was working with. The village itself is called Endikimiki. That's what the sign says, in Tunen.

This was my room at the Wycliffe Associates Annex. I called it "the Wycliffe place over there." until I realized when people said the Annex, this was what they were talking about. 

They have a laundry machine. And running hot water. And I had my own bathroom connected to my room. I almost threw a party and I was pretty sure I was in heaven.

This is me at the Pentecostal church, The Lighthouse Chapel. They danced. I clapped.

Nice try, Cameroon. I wish I had gotten a picture of their other soda, American Cola, but I never had it.

Me, Julie, and Mirjam! Those girls were so great. They ran all over creation with me on my last day to help me get some jewelry for souvenirs. And they took me out a lot while I was in Yaounde, especially Mirjam. They are great .

I took over the Annex commons room. I had a wonderful internet connection and it was comfy when I decided I should probably get back to work. Also, the kettle was right there. I probably drank 20 cups of tea in the 7 days I was there.

Me and Sandrine, right before I left for the airport! Sandrine was great, too. She's the one who worked everything out on the Cameroonian side so I could come to Cameroon in the first place!

Me at the airport. I wasn't nearly as scared as I look. The Yaounde airport has three gates and I think two planes fly in everyday. The Brussels plane and the Air France plane.

They tagged my backpack. I don't know why.

This was me when I got home. I was about five seconds away from falling on my bed and straight to sleep. This was thirty hours later, which is why I look.. not great.

And that is my Cameroon trip in a nutshell. A very small, condensed nutshell. I have a few more good pictures I might put up (none of elephants... another reason I have to go back to Cameroon) but that'll be later. I still have three weeks before school starts, so keep checking back weekly (or so) for updates on how I'm doing and maybe (hopefully) more pictures.

Home again, home again

After spending so much time just living out of one bag I feel like my room is so cluttered. There's so little space... It's odd coming from rooms with barely anything in them to coming back to my room of 19 years, where there is memorabilia of my life everywhere. This room is so close to my heart. This house is so dear to me. And yet... it feels almost wrong to be here now. I'm not working anymore. I can't walk to the office. I'm in America now.

It is nice to be home, yes, but I'm going to be a little cliched and say, if home is where the heart is, I think my real home is in Africa now. I know it is early in my life to say where I think I'll be in ten years, but it feels so right doing that. Of course, it also felt so right working at the Bowery a couple years ago and working at the Hispanic Day Camps over the years. Working for God, whatever I do, always feels like the right thing to do. I never have the same feeling when I'm doing other types of work. It's the feeling you get when everything in your world lines up and you KNOW you're doing something that God wants you to do. I do believe that everything you do is what God has planned for you and everything should be done for His glory, but doing something like this versus studying... It's not the same.

I don't want anyone to think now that I've come home I've forgotten the challenges I faced and that I did feel like the work I was doing wasn't good enough. I remember it. I wrote it all here, after all, so others could read it. I'm not romanticizing the time I had there. And it's not really that I loved the work so much I just have to go back and do some more. It's that I loved the people and the life and doing work for God that has a much greater impact than something I could do here. What is getting a college degree when you could be out in the world, helping people? It is the smart thing to do, is what, and it allows you to help more people in a better way in the end. At least, that is what I have to keep telling myself so I do not drop out and run off to India. Or Africa. Or Guatemala. Or anywhere that is not America or Canada. It just makes me so mad, so FRUSTRATED! that in the 6 weeks I was in Cameroon I did more for the furthering of God's kingdom than in the eight months I was at Tyndale. Or the 18 years I was in Georgia. And now you are thinking, "then get involved! Do things for the community. That is a mission field in and of itself." And it is. I do believe that. I also believe it is not my work.

Tyndale has lots of outreach opportunities. But nothing pulls on my heartstrings and makes me want to DO something like going to Africa did. Or the Bowery or Day Camps did. I sincerely applaud everyone who has a heart for their own community, I just feel like I am being pulled towards a different one. A people not my own, but who will be my own. If God has truly blessed me with a gift in languages then how could I possibly be meant to stay in America and Canada, the most uni-lingual countries on this whole planet?

I hope this explains a little how I am feeling right now. It is a little jumbled, but it is what is on my heart right now. I am specifically missing the Cameroonians and being in Africa, but I am also missing doing God's work! No matter what my parents may say, cleaning my room does not impact the future of God's kingdom. But that's about all I can do right now. I still have a few chapters to edit in Pinyin, and unlike when I was in Cameroon, I'm looking forward to doing that because it will feel like I am back in Cameroon.

Please keep praying for me. I'll probably put up a few more posts, but the time to write in my blog is winding down. I still have to post pictures, of course, and I still have a few more stories to tell about my time there, but by September, finished or not with my Cameroon remembrances, I'm going to have to stop because I'll be going back to school. School... and Canada.... I'm definitely going to need your prayers in the coming weeks.