You may not have read about it in the paper, or heard about it on the evening news, but history was made recently: The first-ever Iski literacy class just graduated its first students!
That’s right, for the first time in HUMAN HISTORY, a mixed group of Iski men, women, and children were able to stand up in front of a crowd of people and read stories that they had written themselves IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE!
The significance of this special day certainly wasn’t lost on our people. Six weeks before the big event, preparations were already under way to get the village up to snuff. You would have thought that we were hosting the summer Olympics for the amount of hustle and bustle that was going on!
Everyone’s yard was cut and cleaned of debris, almost every family-line dug a brand new outhouse (even the ones who didn’t have an outhouse before), and over half a dozen new hauswins were built for the occasion.*
They also built a “grandstand” of sorts in the center of the village, along with shade arbors for the spectators that would be present. And, since they invited about half of the population of the jungle to come and witness the graduation, extra garden work needed to be done to ensure that they had enough food to feed all the guests.
There were a couple hundred people present on the morning of the graduation, including visiting family and friends of the graduates, local government officials, and people from at least four different, neighboring language groups.
They started off the morning with a series of comedic mini dramas depicting various moments in history: the first Iski claiming their territorial ground, tribal wars with neighboring people groups, killing the first white people they saw.**
Performances by various singing groups were interspersed between the skits, all of which sang songs that they had created especially for the graduation.
The main event was comprised of a medley of speeches, declaring how proud they were to have their language in a written form and how thankful they were to have a literacy program that highlighted the unique qualities of their language.
They emphasized this last point by having a visiting Iski man, who had graduated from a university, but hadn’t been through our literacy course, try to read a few sentences from one of our primers. He could hardly get through a sentence.***
Following this failed attempt, each of our 18 graduates stood up and, one by one, flawlessly read out a story that they had written for their last homework assignment of the class.
We had chosen the students for this first class from every walk of life: boys and girls, men and women, singles and married couples, even a daughter in the same class as her dad!
Even though some of them had previously been educated in government schools in Tok Pisin, and some had started out completely illiterate, after just 16 weeks of schooling, you couldn’t even tell the difference! Every single one was reading with confidence!
Of the 14 eligible adults in the class, 13 of them have stepped forward and decided to take on the additional training that will be required for them to become literacy teachers themselves. Is that awesome, or what?!
The next literacy class is going to be taught to Iski students by Iski teachers! Aurelie and Nisae, our team’s two literacy ladies, will still be assisting in a support capacity, as well as offering on-the-job training, but all of the teaching will be done by the Iski themselves.
When it came to our team’s turn to address the crowd, we took it as an opportunity to remind our village (and the visitors) why this literacy program is so important. We told them that the message that we are going to be sharing with them early next year isn’t OUR message; it’s GOD’S message.
We told them that it is important that as they sit under our teaching that they be able to compare what they are hearing to what is written in the Bible.
We told them that we came to teach them God’s Word in their language, and this literacy program is the best way that they can be preparing themselves to be able to fully understand the message of the Bible. Learning to read and write isn’t about “being educated,” it’s about being able to access God’s Word for yourself and your family!
All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable day. Except for one unexpected incident towards the end, we left very encouraged about our literacy program and its reception among the Iski people.
We appreciate your prayers over the next months as our team continues to work at translating Scripture, writing lessons, and (for Rochelle and I) learning culture and language.
We are still hoping to be able to present the story of salvation to the Iski early in 2017, and there is a lot of work we need to do to get ready!
* hauswin = house wind = house without walls. These are thatched, open-air pavilions that our people use for most of their domestic activities. They are like combination living/dining/recreation rooms.
**You could tell who were portraying the white people, because they wore white shirts and sunglasses. The Iski don’t have a problem with stereotyping.
***Our orthography, while utilizing standard English characters (letters), does not follow English pronunciation. This, combined with a difficult grammatical feature of the Iski language, where word-final vowels are often left unpronounced, make it almost impossible for a newcomer to figure out what is going on.
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