Little Language Helper

This is Joe. I think he’s about 6 years old. His baby teeth which look rotten and discolored are starting to fall out and his healthier looking adult teeth are coming in. He was named after our missionary friend Jose whose family lived where we lived for a few years before we arrived. He’s one of my favorite “language helpers” because he giggles and laughs at everything I say instead of just giving me a blank stare. I have fun sometimes when I’m cooking dinner and the Baka kids are playing on the veranda just outside our kitchen window. I repeat them in Baka and they giggle and keep throwing out little phrases just to hear me say it. Then I start saying or singing something in English and they try to repeat me. It’s a fun game. One day, Nathan and I were having a conversation in Baka, for their benefit, all about how we were going to cook the kids on our veranda and what we were going to eat them with (plantains, cassava…etc). They all just giggled and giggled knowing that we were being funny.