Nkolbikon

This is the pre-trip tent testing picture. We set it up in our yard to make sure everything was ok with it and our kids and our neighbors had a great time in the mongulu na mbungeo (foreigner's hut).

Nathan left on Monday for a Baka village about a 50 min drive down the road. His goals were to establish relationships with the Baka of that camp, start sharing some of the Baka Oral Bible stories with this group and get ready for the kids and I to join him there for a few days.

Nathan said there was alot of sitting around during the days for the folks who didn't go out into the forest for hunting and gathering...so lots of time to practice his language skills and ask lots of questions.

These guys are sitting under their cooking shelter, which looks like some day is going to possibly be finished into a house. The guy on the right is Bado, the traveling musician of our area. He has actually been in our neighborhood for a while now and went along with Nathan for the ride. He is blind and is always sitting around strumming on his stringed instrument (Iyeta) and making up new songs. We really enjoy his music...and we've noticed more and more he is starting to learn and add to some of the Baka songs that sing praises to their Creator, or other songs that tell of Jesus' death on the cross.
I don't have any pictures of the Bible story times that are done in the traditional Baka style (called Likano) because they would start gathering for these around 8pm and the only light besides the millions of stars was a dim lantern. The Baka LOVE singing, and before Nathan would even get to play the stories (we have received them in mp3 format from a SIL missionary who wrote them and recorded them with a local Baka story teller) they would sing for over an hour.
More to come...