Welcome to my parking lot on the web for stuff on Miskito culture, linguistics, education, and my adventures in Christian mission with my Miskito peeps.
Yamni Balram! Naha pliska ra yang turi satka ailal ulbi pura prakisna aima banira. Lilya pali inbait mai munisna, aisikaiki bara kli pana uni kakaia, dia man lukisma. kul dukyara, miskitu bila an iwaia natka dukyara sin.
Borrowed
Quarter moon curved upward
red as a righted canoe
settles between pines
It's around a quarter to nine
and I'm walking a borrowed dog
in a body I'll leave behind
gawking in awe
at stars none of which
are mine.
Lord, your works are larger than my
Eyesearsnosetonguetouch
I have no thing, no,
I have nothing but
Am in You.
Sakamhni Tanka Ba: The Meaning of Sakamhni
kuswa pilalka
hicotee turtle soup is definitely sakamhni
Friday, November 13, 2009
Today we had Miskito-style fish chowder for lunch: kalwa tapauhka. Snook in coconut broth with green plantains. It's an extremely simple soup; there's a half fish in a huge bowl in front of you ... if you're a man or an American woman it's the tail portion of the fish, but if you're a Miskito woman you get the head. In my bowl there were also two halves of a green plantain. That's all; the soup is mostly broth. You get a bowl of rice with it, and if you're uncouth you can dump your rice into your soup bowl, but if you really want to appreciate the soup you have to take spoonfuls of rice and submerge them into the liquid in such a manner that the rice becomes saturated but the starch doesn't leech out into your soup bowl. It doesn't matter if your entire portion of soup is consumed in this manner ... sometimes you're really hungry and you eat a ton of rice ... but the proper thing to do is to have some pure, unadulterated broth left over after you've finished the fish, the plantains, and enough rice to satisfy your hunger. If you get to the bottom of the bowl and you find 0 fish scales, you must congratulate the cook.
you can tell it's good for fishing when the lagoon has
that smell to it: sakamhni
BTW the fish head is the tastiest part; it's kind of like eating chicken wings. Once upon a time they practically threw all the chicken wings away and asked you, "What do you want, leg or breast?" but then all of a sudden chicken wings caught on and now everyone wants them. Well, here peope haven't discovered chicken wings so it's still that way; the women pick the chicken wings out of the bottom of the pot and chow down on them (also the krukmaika--the gizzards). So anyway, my theory is that sooner or later eating fish heads is going to be the big thing. Especially the eyeballs and the brain. Try them if you don't believe me.
But this is not what I brought you here to talk about. No, I wanted to talk about linguistics, Miskito words. One of my favorite Miskito words is SAKAMHNI. It's a very unusual word; if the idea of a spelling bee ever comes to the Miskito school system ... hey, that would be a fantastic way to promote the standard rules of orthography in this oral language which everyone writes any way they please ... yes, if you held a Miskitu spelling bee the word sakamhni would probably stump just about everyone and determine the winner. The reason is the /h/; people have a hard time placing the letter h in its proper place in many words because its phonetic purpose is to slam the brakes on the sound of the vowel that comes before it, yet it always occurs as the last sound in the syllable, even if it doesn't immediately follow the vowel it affects. This is the case in the word sakamhni; there is a nasal /m/ between the vowel and the /h/. That's not the kicker, though. The /h/ occurs at the end of the second syllable instead of the first, accentuated one (in Miskito the first syllable is always accentuated), which is even more unusual: SA-kamh-ni
.
the essence of "sakamhni"
But I'm digressing, getting into matters only grammar nurds care about. What makes the word sakamhni cool is that there is no adequate translation for it in any language. It's a concept that doesn't exist in English, Spanish, French, German, or Japanese. Sakamhni refers to a certain kind of smell, but it's not just a smell. In the category labelled sakamhni are all kinds of things whose odor you wouldn't normally associate with one another. Fish are the number 1 sakamhni creatures, but not just fish on your plate. When the lagoon or the ocean is good for fishing the water smells sakamhni too, just from their bodies swimming in it. So is chicken sakamhni, but you can have 100 chickens running around in your yard, scratching and pecking at bugs, but the air doesn't get sakamhni. Eating chicken makes your hands sakamhni; you've got to scrub them with plenty soap afterward to get rid of the sakamhni smell and feel ... that sticky feeling is also part of being sakamhni. Bats do make the air sakamhni; just a single bat flying by and you can smell it, but bats hardly ever fly solo. The whole place smells like bats in the jungle... it's powerful sakamhni. But I seriously can't tell you whether a cooked bat would be sakamhni, for obvious reasons. Oh yes, and eggs are sakamhni too, but you hardly ever hear of someone calling beef sakamhni. Go figure. It's the apparent randomness of the term that gets me off.
Before I go, I want you to learn how to pronounce the word sakamhni.
the key is to push some air out through your nostrils after you've closed your lips to pronounce the /m/. Just let it out easy, like a connoisseur savoring a fine wine, only this is sakamhni. Pronounce it = taste it. Ready:
SUH-comhhhhhh-nee. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Be sure to wash your hands after eating!!!
The End
Little Hurricane Ida
Saturday, November 7; the storm is passed and the sun is shining. In Waspam, Miskitos from villages downriver are breathing a sigh of relief, because the Coco River has probably reached its highest point of flood. The water will gradually begin to drop. The report from the contingency committee which was sent downriver yesterday is not in yet, but there is reason to believe that, even though the water level is most assuredly up to the floorboards of long-legged stilt houses in flooded villages, it will go no higher. Furthermore it's the extended duration of the floodwaters that causes loss of cattle and horses, the big ticket items in the Miskito economy. The rice is already in, so that's not a problem. Surely some banana trees growing along the banks have fallen into the river, and any canoes carelessly tied to moorings are on their way out to sea. There is a spirit of gratitude for the fact that Hurricane Ida, this year's natural disaster, only reached category 1 strength before it stuck Corn Island and Tasbapauni many miles to the south, producing only rain--albeit a ton of it--here on the Wangki. Is this the worst that hurricane season 2009 has to offer?
There isn't any reason to be smug, however; for people who live a subsistence lifestyle in a swampy river delta that has not been dammed, drained, or otherwise engineered by the enemies of the postmodern Green Generation, there will be suffering as a consequence of even a small hurricane in a quiet tropical season. By the time the waters recede and the mud cleaned out of classrooms, two weeks of school will have been lost at this crucial time of preparation for final evaluations. Standing water will certainly cause a whole lot of fungal infections for barefoot women and children, and most probably a spike in cases of diarrhea--even infant deaths--because of the absence of adequate drinking water. The swamps will give the gift of life to great clouds of mosquitos. Just the discomfort they cause is reason why most people cannot survive here, but for those stout folks who call Wangki Maya home, these swarms bring the threat of malaria. The sun is shining, but there is no rainbow.
Waspam is the largest population center along the river. Although it is built on significantly higher ground upriver, it has not escaped damage. The bridge at Ulwastara, which communicates the town with Kisalaya, Leimus, and all of the Honduran Mosquitia, was taken out by the current of what is normally a clear brook.
Nutie and I came across a group of teenage boys on bicycles surveying the damage to the Ulwastara bridge. They looked on motionless, speechless for fifteen minutes as we took photographs. When finally I asked them where they were from, they answered me respectfully, "Kisalaya. Where are you from?" "Hawaii," Nutie answered. "In the middle of the Pacific Ocean." I explained how volcanos managed to form islands in the middle of the great sea. "How do you plan to get home?" I asked, motioning toward the opposite bank. "Wait till the water subsides," said one. Another of the boys went back with us to Waspam. He was a 9th grade student at IVASRA, the Catholic high school in town. Normally, he commutes to school from Kisalaya on his bike; now, he told us matter-of-factly that he was going to stay with one of his classmates for a couple of days. Little hurricanes call for minor adjustments.
Does the flood bring any benefit to the people? Well, if it's not too severe or for too long a duration, the silt it deposits along the banks of the river fertilize the inhabitants' farmland 100% organically. That's good. They could sell their products 100% organic, if they had any export products and access to such a market. Cancer is much rarer here than it is in the United States. Another thing: as the flood recedes, fish become trapped in the oxbows and swampy pools downriver. "Upan manis!" Plenty protein. Women and children take their bed sheets and drag for bilamh and other small species in their back yard. "Blisin kum sa!" God's blessing!.
The End
Walking With Jesus in Rubber Boots
At the entrance to Truman’s grand house is a gate of iron grillwork inside of which exists an unenclosed porch where visitors can sit. At any given time there are at least four plastic chairs set out, and inevitably, people sitting in them awaiting some determination from the owner or listening as Truman gives forth counsel. I call it the gate of judgement. It’s very old testament. Sometimes in the evening he hangs a scale in the open gate and people from downriver sell fish.
The other day I ran into one of our teachers sitting there. He had been talking to Doña Mirna about buying life insurance. As I walked in, she excused herself and disappeared inside the house, where only family and invited guests may tread.
“Naksa Teacher,” I greeted happily.
My friend pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket.
“I’m trying to buy some life insurance and this is the list of documents that are required,” he said, shoving the paper at me.
I didn’t take it from him. That would be the first step towards commitment. Instead, I maneuvered around him so that I could read the scrawled letters on paper.
“This is the only one I’m concerned about,” he said, motioning with his lips in the general direction of his outstretched hand. He had a free hand but didn’t consider it necessary to point with it.
I looked at the list: applicant’s birth certificate, applicant’s wife’s birth certificate, children's birth certificates, marriage license, medical records, etc. The normal stuff. All of a sudden I knew what he was getting at. I can’t explain how I knew it, I just knew.
“I’ve got all these other ones together, but no Acta de Matrimonio, since I’m not married...”
He looked at me as though he were standing on the bank of a great river, wanting to cross over to the other side where I was ... at the helm of a very nice ferry boat in a little captain’s hat. He continued: “I was really impacted by what you said the last time we spoke. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and I’m ready to give my life to Jesus Christ.”
I know that what I had said really challenged him to make a decision for Jesus just as he was--a man living in a troubled relationship with a woman who was the mother of his child--but right now I wondered if he might be complimenting me to soften me up for what was to come next.
“Well, let’s do it,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. I bowed my head and closed my eyes ... well, one eye remained open.
“I know you said I don’t need to get married...”
“That’s right. You don’t need to get married in order to receive Jesus.”
“...but I want to get married. I went back and talked to my wife, and she’s changed. She’s not like before.”
I remembered the last time we’d talked, about a month ago. He had told me about his partner’s jealousy and anger issues.
“That’s great news!” I said, wondering who or what had changed most in 30 days. Something was definitely moving in a good direction, but it was really tangled up like live fish in a gill net. You want to be deft and skillful, fast, yet careful or else you’ll get a dorsal fin in your hand.
“So when’s the big day?” I inquired.
“I don’t know. It costs money to get married.”
“Not that much with the judge,” I said. “What does it cost, 300 Cords?”
“They say it’s 500 now.”
I knew him as an upright man who was committed to his family, attended church regularly and loved to worship the Lord. I couldn’t tell if he wasn’t already saved; he’s the only one who could know that. I also remembered how I thought in the days when I myself came to the Lord: “My Catholic upbringing and conscience always compels me to do the right thing for which I usually get pummeled anyway ... so I might as well accept Jesus and go to heaven. What’s the downside?” Especially in the Mosquitia, leading people to the Lord isn’t always textbook, like ... I’m a sinner/Jesus is Lord/save me Jesus/Hallelujah.
“But this case,” I thought, “is wild. Let me see if I’ve got the facts straight (in my mind I could see little bullet points):
I had challenged him to make a decision for Jesus even as he was
Someone showed up in the jungle and told him that if he died, his family could get plenty of money
The policy required that he produce a marriage certificate
It was going to cost him 500 Córdovas to get hitched
Seeing he was going through with it he might as well give his life to Christ officially
Where was he going to get the 500 Cords?
I could see I was looming very large in his plans right now. But if heaven is free, why should I have to buy the guy a ticket there for 25 bucks? I know he’s got his theology all backwards among other things but he’s not taking out the insurance policy on his wife ... he’s moving forward spiritually and God knows how to get to him. There is a Bible verse swimming around in my head:
But the king replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them.
I explained to him the benefits of investing something of his own in this new venture upon which he was embarking to honor God, but after several illustrations I could see that he wasn’t in a place to receive it. HUMAN NATURE: In the end our desire to avoid pain muddies up our landscape like a driving tropical rain through which nothing can be seen clearly. Yet Jesus will put on rubber boots and walk us through it if we just continue to move forward. I understood his preference to see this ‘going before the judge thing’ as merely a requirement imposed by a foreign culture for the purpose of obtaining money, a plentiful resource in their jungle, not his. Through the rain he sees people of every other race gathering these resources. God provided them according to their habitat, and all they need to do is just go out and pluck them off the trees.
“I’ll talk to Nutie and we’ll pray about it,” I said. “We might help you but we’re not going to give you the whole amount. You must ask God to help you find the rest of the money yourself.”
Our call is to keep our friends moving through the rain. Jesus said, “Whoever forces you to go one mile,go with him two.” And don’t forget your rubber boots.
Tom Keogh
Meet my family:Taya nani lilka nani (Mihta lupia ba lilka purara raski "clic" ba tais, lilkika kau tara takbia:
Nutie Melrose and I were married on Sanibel Island, Florida, on January 24, 2009. Her three children--Matt, Nick, and Kirsten--and my two sons, Tommy and Brian, played music, sang, read, and toasted.
My daughter Jessi and her daughter Aleena. Jessi lives in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and teaches in a Christian "American" school.
Tommy just graduated from The Great Commison BibleInstitute in Sebring, Florida and is beginning a hispanic ministry at Grace Church. His goal is to return to Honduras and teach God's word.
Brian is also recently graduated from GCBI and will be attending the University of South Florida in the fall.
Nutie likes flowers and brightens my life. She was born with a spirit a little lighter than Tinkerbell, and I with a spirit a little heavier than Johnny Cash. So now I have flowers!
Krabu tangni painkira!
Make a Donation to Tom's Mission by clicking here: Donations
Read Tom's Poetry.
Here's a link to Tom's Biblical Studies.
