Rev: Hendrik du Plessis
Introductory
This past weekend from Thursday we were able to visit Bere again. With our visits there it is not only about preaching from a pulpit but also about our interaction with the people there. There are personal conversations that people value a lot. Some admonitions are essential. There are new people you meet or people you haven’t talked to on such a level before. There are friendships you make and old friendships grow stronger. This is what the Lord Jesus and his apostles did day by day. If you study the Gospel according to John, you will see many conversations that have been recorded for us.
Two movies
On Friday evening we showed the people a video about the life of Samson. It is an English video and I had to interpret for them during the video and explain what is going on. On Saturday evening we showed them the “Walking with Jesus” video again at their insistence. Some people had not seen the video yet, but most had already seen the video for the umpteenth time. Initially it is only a few who sit there but with time the numbers increase as people pass by.
The videos we usually show against a white or a yellow wall. The deputy chief made his wall available to us. He and the chief are some of our big supporters there. It was cold both nights and everyone had to brave the cold. We sit outside and most of them don’t have chairs, and anyone who knows the Kalahari knows how cold the sand can get.
In the Kalahari, it is usually hot during the day and cold at night. When the sun goes down, an icy cold descends on you. It feels like you are walking into a refrigerator. Temperatures of minus 11 have been measured in the past. Luckily it wasn’t that cold this weekend.
The “Walking with Jesus” video has five episodes spanning three hours. After the third episode, I started to feel sorry for them about the cold and suggested that we could watch the other episodes later, but they didn’t want to know anything about my proposal. We sat there until the last episode. Later I got into the van which helped quite a bit. Before the start of the fifth episode, I suggested again, but they didn’t want to know anything about it. They wanted to see the last and fifth episodes despite the cold.
What is very important to me about the video is not so much the video itself, but the Bible verses that are quoted from the Bible. The conversations among themselves in the video are constantly about what is written in the Bible. These are all verses that are very necessary to understand the Gospel. These are verses that lead people to lead other people to Christ. You train evangelists without them realizing it, because after the umpteenth time the verses not only make sense, but the verses remain anchored in the person’s memory and subconscious to be deepened again at any time later. Along with this, we know that the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of his children. It is then not just something you learn by heart, but the living Word itself. I am convinced that people who have become familiar with the video will later be able to have the same conversations with other people, and that is the purpose of missionary work.
The Qgõo language
With great excitement, the two chiefs told me about their successful culture day the past Friday. The government encourages this and arranges it seeing that many indigenous peoples are slowly but surely losing their culture.
On the other hand, they can make money by showcasing their culture to visitors. Thousands of visitors from all over the world come to Botswana every year to experience something of the Bushman culture. That way, millions of dollars and pounds come into the country. Hence the government realized that it was something to invest in.
During our conversation, the concern about the San languages came up again. The concern exists that the San- or Bushman languages may be swallowed up by the Kgalagadi language. Kgalagadi is a variation (not negative) form of the Tswana language that does not enjoy official status in Botswana. Several Kgalagadi dialects make it difficult for them to understand each other. By swallowed up, I mean that the Kgalagadi language has a dominant effect on the San languages (Bushman languages) and the Bushman in that region then speak their language less and less. If the Kgalagadi language was an internationally recognized language like English, one could understand it, but the Kgalagadi language is only dominant in the western parts of Botswana and it only serves as a spoken language.
The New Testament has recently been translated into their language. They are still busy with the Old Testament. It is sad when a language dies out. This happened in South Africa with the X/am language. The X/am language was a San language that Dorothy Bleeck and before that, her father, Wilhelm Bleek recorded with Lucy Loyd. In 1912 there was already a dictionary written in the language and 13,000 pages of stories recorded and translated (not audio recordings). The tragic thing is that the language died out in 1912, never to be heard again.
How many times were there laughter and stories told around the fire in that language? How beautiful the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ would have sounded in that language. The highest purpose of a language is to glorify and praise the Lord in it. With the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit wanted people to hear the Gospel in their own language and not just in the lingua franca of that time.
Currently, there is another San language in South Africa dying out. It is the N/u language that has only one native speaker left and she is already well into her eighties. While she is still alive they try to do everything in their power to record the language. To teach children to speak the language, there is now a dictionary and books written in the language, but the problem is that the children speak to each other in Afrikaans. This is the instant recipe for any language to die out when the children no longer speak their mother tongue.
We see this in Mababe where the children communicate and play with each other in Tswana. There they speak the Ts’iga language. The elderly people speak to each other in the language, but the younger ones only speak Tswana, and when the elderly speak to the younger people, they only communicate in Tswana. If you ask them why they do this, their defense is that they don’t want their children to have to struggle with Tswana in school.
Here in D’kar it is so different. The children are talking and playing everywhere in Naro, their mother tongue. All the Bushman have their unique Naro names. Now we have already the New Testament translated into Naro. In church, we teach our children to read Naro. There is a translation team currently working on the Old Testament.
The government helps us in the schools to employ native speakers for assistance so that the children can understand the work more easily.
Unfortunately, the !Xõo language is not yet at that level. They do have a dictionary but that’s all. However, what is gratifying is the fact that the language is still spoken by many children. In Bere, the children still play and talk among themselves in !Xõo, but in Khagcae, a settlement further down, the tendency is to switch more to Kgalagadi, especially amongst the children.
This is what our chiefs in Bere are worried and concerned about. While we were talking like this, the question came to us, what do all these cultural activities mean without your mother tongue? Is this what visitors want to see and experience? You dance and dance and say you are a Bushman, but when you talk to each other, you do so in someone else’s language.
During my early years in D’kar, there was a group of Bushman from South Africa who came to visit our dance groups here. They wanted to come to improve themselves regarding their Bushman dances. They spoke to each other in Afrikaans. I felt so sorry for them because they realized that they lost the most important part of their culture which is their language.
During my conversation with the one chief, my question to him was: “Cgara, what would you say is the secret to the survival of a language?” He could not answer me immediately, but in the end agreed with me wholeheartedly. The secret to the survival of a language is none other than the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just look at what the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has done for the Naro language.
After decades of missionary work, the Naro language is now stronger than ever. Why would the Lord destroy a language that serves as an instrument to praise and glorify Him? I am convinced that this will also ensure the survival of the Qgõo language (!Xõo language). The Gospel of Luke and several passages in the Bible are already available in Qgõo (!Xõo).
You can go to the application 5fish in Playstore where there is a lot of material available in the San languages and many other languages. (Note that there are two ways of writing that the Bushman or San languages use)
Our worship service and Sunday school on Sunday morning
On Sunday morning it was gratifying for us to see how many children turned up. All sixty chairs donated to us by the BSG were occupied. Our Sunday school teacher, Mereyabone was at her post as usual. One by one, the children came forward with Scripture passages they had memorized.
After that, I explained to them the parable of the prodigal son. Cgara the vice-chief then summed it all up in their Qgõo language. Mereyabone asked afterward for 10 Bibles that could be given to her.
The clothes
These clothes are a donation that Brother Tiddo received from different churches in South Africa to distribute to the needy at our different mission posts. With clothes, you always have a problem. You don’t just hand it out in the presence of others. David the headman or chief is standing in front of the one box. The other box was already carried into the room.
You also don’t throw it out on a bundle for them to choose for themselves, because that’s the breeding ground for bickering that usually results in an argument. If someone else takes, for example, the pants you wanted, it can develop into an argument.
We then decided to give every one of our two chiefs 2 boxes and two boxes to our Sunday school teacher Mereyabone, to distribute the clothes with great care, not necessarily in one day. The needy are determined and the clothes are distributed accordingly, where the right hand will not know and where the left hand will not know what the right hand received.
This is what we did here in D’kar. In the past, we distributed the clothes in the church, and then for months afterward we heard complaints from people who didn’t get what they expected to get. Now we have divided the boxes among our elders who then distribute them with great care to their wards where there are needy people. In the middle behind the second box stands Cgara the deputy chief in dark blue.
For everyone who contributed to alleviating our need here, we want to say a sincere thank you. We also want to say thank you very much to Brother Tiddo who drove far to arrange everything to get the shipment ready for Botswana. We intend to distribute the rest of the boxes in Mababe. Mereyabone is standing behind the boxes with the children.
To conclude, we still ask for your intercession for what we do here in the mission field. We are weak and powerless against the attacks of the evil one and we realize it, but if you can hold your hands up through your prayers as was the case with Moses, we can overcome through Christ who strengthens us.
Your brother in Christ,
Hendrik du Plessis.