Lost tribes look for me

I have been assigned to teach informal English classes once a week. Almost all the students signed up initially, but only half of them showed up for the first classes at the beginning of the month.  Fewer and fewer have come each time, principally because they are simply overloaded by their coursework.  At first I was covering the most common mistakes in verb usage.  They tend to use 'use to' for the simple present, e.g., I am use to eat rice for breakfast every day.  I spent a lot of time on the differences between 'I used to' and 'I am used to' and have come to the renewed conclusion that English is just a horrible language.  We have also worked on pronunciation: they have several 'ch', 'ts', and 'sh' sounds, some of which I cannot hear the difference between, but they seem to have no pure 's' sound.  They can faithfully recite "She sells seashells by the seashore", but they fail to use their ability on a daily basis.
The students also have questions about life in the U.S. and life in the world outside India.  Sometimes I just talk to them and we come across idioms and vocabulary that they are not familiar with.  At those times, we discuss those things in particular.
The other day I was teaching and someone came to the door.  I didn't recognize the man, but I am not yet acquainted with all the students by sight and I assumed he wanted to attend the class.  I invited him into the room, but he stood in the doorway and began to explain his mission. He had heard from some friends that someone had come to ATC to teach 'ivrit'.  Yes, I replied, that is me.  He began to stumble over his words even more, mentioning the connection in Israel.  I explained to him that I was teaching class and if he would give me his phone number, I would call him later.  He seemed reticent so I told him he could wait if he liked and I would be done in 40 minutes.  He agreed to wait.
I returned my attention to the class and the students decided that I must be famous.  If you know me at all, then you know that I am quite famous but not quite so famous that a completely unknown person would show up at my classroom at the end of the earth looking for me.
After I was finished teaching, Adam and I had a very nice conversation.  He started to talk about lost tribes and I assumed he meant the Bnei Menashe.  No, he said, he did not join their group because he doesn't want to lose Yeshua.  He described himself as belonging to Messianic Judaism.  Yes, even here, people are returning to the roots of the faith and still believing in Yeshua.
Adam came back to my apartment and we talked for a good hour.  He said he has about six people who are interested in learning Hebrew but, again, transportation is a problem.  I told them they were welcome to come to my apartment which can easily seat a dozen, or if someone were willing to come and get me, or arrange for a taxi, I could meet them anywhere in the city.  When I gave him the learning Hebrew DVD's, he almost cried.  He said whenever he gets a gift, he becomes very emotional.  He told me that he had been in Messianic Judaism for about one and a half years.
He also told me that he was sure that others in the group would want to meet me and that he would call me to make arrangements, but in fact, I hadn't heard from him for a week.  Yesterday, I had a new dilemma in that the College wants to sponsor a Passover seder demonstration with some minimal participation, but there is nothing in the native culture here that resembles horseradish.  So I called Adam to see what they use here, but he was so busy apologizing for the fact that none of the people wanted to participate in the Hebrew classes, that I never got to ask him.  He told me that he was leaving shortly, that he had to be some place in a hurry, and that he would call me back, but I haven't heard from him.  I imagine that he is embarrassed about the situation.  I am sorry that I might not get to talk to some of the group, about 70 people who meet every other week, to encourage them, but I do not want to embarrass him anymore.  I will leave the ball in his court.  Please pray that Adam would not worry about the others and would come and speak with me again.

I look for lost tribes

If you haven't heard about the people from this region who lately have been claiming to be of the lost tribes, I recommend Simcha Jacobovici's Quest for the Lost Tribes by A&E.  It seems to be available on youtube here: https://youtu.be/PhB16xVTlbQ or you can get it on amazon.  While I don't agree with everything he presents, I believe the piece on Manipur is accurate.  There was an additional group making aliyah this week: http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/detailsnew.asp?id=feb1817/oth050
They also have a website http://www.bneimenashe.com/index.html which appears to be maintained by one Stephen Epstein (about whom I know nothing).
Through a contact in Israel, I was able to get in touch with someone from the local Bnei Menashe community.  She came to visit me in my apartment on Shabbat last week.  Although she has a car and driver (as some older people do here), she took a taxi because it was Shabbat.  I gather she wanted to give the driver the day off.
She told me many stories, about half of which I understood.  There are many dreams and visions associated with the process of moving the people to full-fledged Judaism from Christianity.  In the 50's, there was a tribal leader in Manipur, the next state over, who had a vision that the people were of the lost tribes.   Someone had a vision for the state of Mizoram, and a man who later took the name Gideon Ray began preaching Judaism here.  Although they were Christians, they gradually migrated toward Judaism and when Rabbi Avichayil found them in the 1980's or 90's, he affirmed their identity and many of them began to officially convert and make aliyah. 
My guest told me of one pastor who had a vision of a large stone coming toward Mizoram shouting "Maher maher shabbat leil".  She said the pastor knew no Hebrew.  I asked her if she knew what it meant and she suggested that I could tell her.  She said at that time, people began to question that pastor about whether the vision was talking about the Jewish sabbath, but in the end he denied it.  She said he was jealous for his Presbyterian salary and retirement. It is told that he died an agonizing death.
The lost tribes people always tend to tell the story of how they had leather scrolls, but the dog ate them.  It seems like the dog might have been some ancient Chinese emperor, but they take the reference to dogs in the New Testament to mean that gentiles either burned or otherwise destroyed their scrolls.
My guest's father was a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, but her parents were divorced and she grew up with her mother.  However, she was already acclimated to the sabbath at the time that she became convinced that Judaism was the way.  She has been practicing since 1980, having become persuaded in her mind from the preaching.
There are some 30 people in her group, but just like everywhere else in the world, the community is divided into two groups: Avichayil's group Amishav and Michael Freund's group Shavei Israel.  They are divided not only here in Mizoram but also in Israel.  Since Avichayil passed away, Freund's group is growing stronger and more people are joining.
My guest had a lot of 'interesting' ideas about the New Testament: that it was written about a thousand years ago to force people to adopt Roman customs.  I politely disagreed and told her it was a very Jewish book.  I told her she needed to have another look at it since it has undoubtedly been a long time since she read it.  She also does not understand why, if Jesus is the son of Abraham, the church does not worship on Sabbath.  Good question, indeed.  She says that if the church says that Yeshua is the son of the Holy Spirit, then it's fine for them to worship on Sunday, but if not, they should worship on Saturday.
We talked for a long time about many things, including what I am doing here.  She did agree that it was a good thing for the church to understand Old Testament faith and practice.  I would say that we had a moderate amount of communication difficulties, but we left the apartment arm in arm and immediately ran into some young people who already had taxis ordered that would carry her down the hill to the nearest town where should could catch a cab back to her house.

I have my say - Part 2

Sunday nights at chapel is a much bigger deal than morning devotions.  During the week, the students are permitted to lead the service, but Sunday evenings are reserved for faculty and persons of consequence in the broader community.  The service alternates weeks in Mizo and English.

On the Wednesday after I led the devotions, there was a(nother) short impromptu faculty meeting after the morning service and they asked me to lead the service that coming Sunday evening.  I was a bit shocked.  I asked if there was any special theme and they said, no, I could speak as I liked.  I determined to give my testimony and whatever else came along after that.  For one thing, there are no native Jews here, only ones converted by rabbis who agree that the Mizo are lost tribes.  Afterwards it occurred to me that these people have probably never heard the testimony of someone who became a believer later in life after having been out 'in the world'.  These people are all born into active Christian families.

On Sunday evenings they also have a chairperson who leads the service and the speaker only gives the sermon.  At first, the chairperson asked me if I could say the blessing over the tithe and offering, which I agreed to.  Then I asked him if I could do the benediction and he said that was customary for the speaker.  When the time for blessing the offerings came though, he called on someone else.

At the appropriate time I said my piece, again from the lectern.  I spoke a bit too quickly, for which I was chided afterwards.  Truth to tell, I had woken up with a seriously runny nose that morning and determined by late afternoon that a decongestant was in order.  It helped my nose, but it also made my mouth really dry.  And I do get excited when I am talking about all the things that I see YH doing in the earth.  In the end, I talked about this time of mutual investigation of 'Jewish' things in the Biblical studies seminar (which, after the first session, has been postponed a number of times) and how the beauty of what YH speaks of and prescribes for us in His word feeds our souls and spirits.

I was really looking forward to doing the benediction because it had been so well received on Monday morning, but, alas, when the time came, the chairperson called on the Principal to deliver it.  As we exited the chapel, he told me he did that for security reasons.  I began to imagine that if I had delivered the benediction, someone might have shot me, which is completely out of the range of possibility here.  He went on to say that it had to do with my visa.  Somehow it has come into someone's mind that I do not ascend to the upper pulpit because preaching is against my tourist visa, as if some stranger in the chapel that night might have ratted me out.  I know exactly where this is coming from: someone has manufactured the idea that they are covering my backside politically when they are really covering their own backside religiously, that I could not possibly have another reason for not ascending to the pulpit, i.e., not keeping their religious tradition, outside of putting my visa in jeopardy. I think that some people do not think it is okay for me to do what is comfortable for me to do, but instead think they might look bad if I do not follow the traditions of their church.  In general, the Mizo people appear to be very non-condemning and I think this is an unusual situation, but indeed I am an unusual person, especially here.

I have my say - Part 1

Back in January, I was scheduled to do the morning devotions which are held Monday through Friday at 8:30 a.m., beginning of the school day.  All the themes and scriptures are determined by the College chaplain in advance.  First they gave me one date, then another date, and I had my opportunity on Monday last week.  They gave me the last 3 verses of Genesis with the theme for the month of February being "faith".  The subtheme for the week was 'faith and works', but I just sort of ignored the works part.  I also had to choose the hymns for the day.  I have heard them sing On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand, so I chose that to open the service.  I asked them if they knew All the Way My Savior Leads Me, and a few of the students opened the hymn book and began to work their way through it following the solfeggio.  They said they didn't really know it (actually I don't know the original melody either, just the Rich Mullins melody), but they would learn it as they went.  The Mizo people are very gifted musically.  Everyone plays an instrument and they all love to sing.

The pulpit is about like this.  I don't really want to take a picture inside the chapel here.  They are very reverent about it.  When people first enter and sit down, they close their eyes and are very still for some minutes.  When a 'special number' is part of the service, applause is forbidden.  The chapel here at the College is less ornate than the one in this photo, but this is the general relative height of the pulpit.

 I admit that I was quite nervous.  For one thing, they have a platform where the faculty sit on either side, a large desk in the middle for the 'chairperson' of the service, a lectern on the right and left of the desk for readers (segregated male and female).  And then there is this very high pulpit another half a flight of stairs above the platform that the preachers generally step up to.  I told them from the beginning that I would not be going up there, because it was not 'my tradition'.  This is a phrase they understand, even though they were in disagreement with me.  However, it is the general attitude here that people should be comfortable with what they are doing.  So I preached from the 'female' lectern.  The true reason I don't want to go up there is because I just don't think Yeshua would have walked up there.

I think I wrote my whole sermon the day it was assigned to me, but over the weeks until the day, I added to and refined it.  I wrote it out entirely and practiced it to myself, because the speaker is limited to 10 minutes.  I talked about how the lives of Joseph and Yeshua are parallel, how Joseph's Hebrew and Egyptian names figure into that, how the word for 'embalm' is related in Hebrew to the word for 'wheat', how Joseph had the faith to know that his descendants would leave Egypt some 200 years after his death.  I continually came back to the idea of resurrection and quoted the scriptures that assure us as believers.  I honestly don't know if anyone followed much of what I said.  They do not usually quote many scriptures from all over the Bible, but you know that I did.

I asked my Hebrew students the next day what they had understood, and they mumbled a few words about Joseph and faith.  It should also be noted that not many of the faculty were in attendance because there had a been a conference over the weekend and they hadn't returned yet.

I had also asked the chaplain if it would be okay if I said the benediction and could I say the Aaronic benediction.  Yes, he said, they are interested in all kinds of new things.

And that was how Monday went last week.  I managed to do everything in order, say my speech, although probably a bit too quickly.  Everyone really liked the benediction.

Banana miracles

Many of you have already heard the story of the bananas that occurred while I was here for my survey week in November.  The administration was very concerned about how I would get rice for breakfast and I told them I don't eat breakfast.  I guess they were fairly well horrified.  I told them I would have a banana for breakfast.  This apparently is unheard of.  My entire stay was for 6 days and they brought me 30, yes, I counted 30, bananas.  The miracle was that they only generated one fruit fly.

Seriously, there is something quite different about the produce here.  It seems to last for a much longer time than in the US.  As far as I can tell, the produce is fairly organic.  Almost everyone here on campus has a garden and they don't use any chemicals.  The bananas just grow naturally.  People harvest them and bring them to market.  You can see papaya trees around campus as well.

And you can buy two weeks worth of bananas and by the end of two weeks, the last one might have a small brown spot on it.  The bananas are smaller, maybe 4", and very sweet.  I have bought one cabbage and had it in the fridge for 2 weeks and it still appeared and tasted quite fresh.

I think the big food corporations have sold the American public a line.  I suppose if our produce were raised to ripen naturally and not shipped cross country, we also might have longer lasting fruits and vegetables.

you can't get in hot water here

There is a hot water heater in every bathroom and it has a tap about knee height on the bathroom wall. There's another tap on the other side of the bathroom for the cold water.  Some bathrooms have shower heads installed, but some don't. As in some other countries, the whole bathroom is the shower and there's a drain in the corner of the room.  When you turn the shower on, everything in the bathroom gets wet.  Toilet paper alert!

Here people take 'bucket baths' (my name, not theirs).  You fill up a bucket from the hot water and cold water taps, get wet with the ubiquitous handled cups hanging on the side of every bucket, soap up, rinse yourself off.  It took some real grit to bathe when I first got here.  The challenge of standing in an unheated, tiled space pouring water over myself was a bit daunting.  Baths are finished in a hurry.

Finally the day came that I thought it was warm enough that I could actually stand naked for a bit and take a real shower.  I turned on the tap for the shower and waited for the water to warm up.  Alas, the hot water heater is not connected to any other tap in the apartment, not the shower, not the kitchen sink, nothing.

In English class, we talked about taking =a= shower or =a= bath and I asked the students if they ever took showers.  Yes, they said, during the summer when it's really hot.  At that time, the water which is in a giant cistern on the roof is also somewhat warm.  However, summer here is like one big shower.  It rains constantly during the monsoon season.

subject to change without notice

From the beginning I was surprised at how unaware the faculty were of the daily class schedule.  I'm not talking about that of other professors; I'm talking about their own.  The man whose place I took in teaching beginning Hebrew kept asking when I was teaching class.  Originally it was his class and he taught it for half a semester.

Faculty meetings are held when needed, but in general I am excused from the big ones because they are held in Mizo.  However, there are lots of short, spontaneous meetings after chapel and someone always motions me to come and sit up front where the rest of the male faculty sit during morning devotions. (The female faculty sit on the other side of the podium, but I sit in the back of the chapel.  They have finally quit asking me to sit up front.  Anyway, I'm not the only faculty member that sits in the back.) 

However, what is more troubling is the number of classes that are canceled because other events are happening.  There have already been several holidays since my arrival on January 11.  In addition, there have been several days of testing for prospective students.  These tests require use of all the classrooms and so classes are canceled.  The professors also speak regularly at conferences held off campus on the weekends, and they often don't arrive back before classes on Monday.  Again, classes are canceled.

Even more disturbing is the number of deaths and illnesses in the extended community.  Of about 25 faculty, 3 or 4 have lost family members in this past month, several have had friends or family members who went in for surgery, and several former professors have either passed away or been sick in the hospital.  For those events, the faculty is asked to rearrange their schedules in order to  attend the funeral or visit in the hospital.

It seems to me that there is a lot of illness here.  Recently the College ran a blood drive and I was told that half of the students were not allowed to give blood because of high blood pressure.  Though for many of these students this is their 2nd or 3rd degree, they are still young, in their 20's and 30's.  Some people blame it on diet, but when an affliction like this is so widespread, I imagine there is a spiritual root.  I've talked to a few people, but that idea does not resonate here.

The overall result is that sometimes the schedule is a bit erratic.  Of course, this is frustrating to me because my students need every minute of class time that they are scheduled for.  A few times I've met with them outside just for additional practice.

This irregularity reminds me of the ants in my bathroom.  I have no idea where they come from, but every two or three days there are several of them just wandering around aimlessly.

Maybe it is all something in the air here.

a matter of definition

On the way from the airport when I first arrived, Sam told me that he and his wife and the driver and the driver’s wife had spent all day cleaning the apartment and that they rolled out all new carpet.  When I got here, there was not a carpet in sight, but all new roll linoleum rolled out on the floor.  It is full of air pockets, lumps and bumps, barely cut to size, with long pieces folded up along the walls in some places.  Well, they are a theological student and a handy man at the College.  They are not professional floor installers.  It’s going to have that characteristic new linoleum smell as long as I am here.

In fact, all the floors in every room in every building are covered with this rolled linoleum and none of it is glued down.  It is all rolled up a few inches at the wall and wherever there are places that the rolls don’t exactly meet, small pieces are cut and put under the larger pieces.

However, almost everywhere else, the linoleum lies quite flat.  The bumps make sweeping in my apartment kind of interesting.  Not to mention the tools that I have to use.

My broom and dustpan.  The broom (100% natural fibers) is about 3' tall and the dustpan about 16".  It makes sweeping back breaking work.  And all the action is in one wrist.

So when the principal came around to make sure everything was okay, including if the dryer was “installed”, I just said yes, even though it is sitting in the spare bedroom with the ventilation hose sitting in the spare bathroom, just perched inside the door.  "Installed" here is a matter of definition. At first I was thinking about running the dryer at night and sleeping in that room, just for the warmth, but now it seems that spring has sprung and the nights are warmer.  I have discarded one of my three blankets.

The wedding

The son of the Australian woman who arranged for me to come here married the young lady who has been her translator for the past seven years.  I don't think they actually met one another until the last couple of years.  Her son came as her escort on one or two trips here and that is how the couple met.  If their happiness during all the ceremony is any indication, they are truly in love.

I'm really sorry that I don't have many pictures.  The ceremony was held at a resort at the bottom of some mountain trail and the sun was quite bright during the afternoon, which made it impossible to see what the camera was focusing on.  Also I was sitting at an odd angle and didn't have a good view of the bride and groom, but I was happy for a seat at all, as 600 people attended the wedding, and I was even slightly in the shade.

First there was a longish western style ceremony.  A female pastor came from Australia, but several other local pastors spoke first.  The groom's sisters each read from Scripture, then the vows were said and rings exchanged.  The Australian pastor preached from the Song of Songs and then the couple took communion.  Everything was translated into Mizo which effectively doubled the length of the ceremony.

The bride and groom left to change into traditional dress for a Mizo wedding and there was an entertainment provided by a local dance team.  I asked my escort, Dr. Lawma, head of the Old Testament studies department, whether he had ever seen a Mizo wedding, and he said no.  In fact, no one else here that I have asked has seen one either.  The Mizos were evangelized 100 years ago and not much remains of the local culture outside of some dances and their language.


First the dancers did the bamboo dance which looks like this:  https://youtu.be/RhJTKPPq1G4  The dancers were too far to get a picture but here is the sole musician who accompanied the dancers at the wedding.

She is wearing three gongs around her waist by which the dancers kept the rhythm.  I have seen a similar dance done by dancers from the Philippines.

Then the dancers did a couple dance like this. https://youtu.be/1KxsLNATqeY  It is imitating a rooster and a hen.  I was close enough to get some pictures of this, but every time I hit the button, the dancers turned and all I got was their back sides.   The dancers I saw stayed a lot closer together, but you can see how they are in a total squat position the entire time.

Finally the bride and groom returned in full Mizo dress. My understanding was that the bride is from a group calling themselves Beit Israel.  I admit to expecting some vaguely Hebraic custom or ritual but, alas, nothing.  Here is the man who conducted the supposedly Mizo ceremony.

His speech was not translated into English so I had to rely on my escort.  Apparently, the minister made some speeches against the Christianization/westernization of the native peoples.  That hula hoop looking thing he is holding is made of some natural fiber; Dr. Lawma called it a rope, but it was rigid.  He had the bride and groom step into it and hold it about waist level while he spoke.  It is supposed to join them together and instead of  wedding rings.  Then they were to drink out of one cup with two straws, cheek to cheek.  Afterwards, he gave the bride a wrap to put around her new husband, but then they both wrapped up in it. Finally, they sang a special song, which turned out to be the Mizo national anthem.  Not exactly what I would have picked for a wedding.

The mothers of the bride and groom made speeches and then the food was to have been served, but it was stuck in a traffic jam.  We had already been there for about four hours and decided it was a good time to make a get-away.  As we were walking back up the hill to the car, the truck with the food was descending.  But, as I have said previously, Mizo food is not really worth waiting for.

My third lesson

It was finally arranged for me to give a weekly seminar to the Biblical studies faculty and Masters students.  We had the first meeting on Thursday afternoon.  There were about 10 students and 5 faculty.  I was surprised because one of the former Principals of the College (they don't call them Deans) had passed away that morning and there was much discussion about who was going to attend the home visitation at 12:30 or the funeral at 2:00.  So I wasn't really expecting any of the faculty to be at a 1:00 pm seminar, but they were all in attendance.  There were the requisite number of post-lunch coma heavy eyelids and the students refused to interact during the meeting, which I found a bit frustrating.

I think the seminar is billed as covering a Jewish view of Scripture, but of course I am teaching a Hebrew roots view of Scripture.  I am covering what is strictly in the Bible, Old and New, contrasted with what is practiced by traditional rabbinical Jews. I leave them to figure out for themselves what they are practicing.

I started with the firm belief that Torah, the five books of Moses, is the foundation and everything else must line up with those teachings, that Torah means 'teaching and instruction', that we do not worship as the nations, that if we have questions we are free to discuss, bring scriptures, and agree to disagree.  That the commandments are not the goal of the religion but a means for experiencing God, that circumcision of the heart is from the beginning, that relationship precedes commandments.  That the word of God is in harmony with all creation and that science will prove the word of God, that we seek patterns in scripture, that history is prophecy.

From there, I explained that the 'paths of righteousness' in Psalm 23 are really 'cycles of righteousness' and that this specifically refers to the feasts of Leviticus 23, starting with Shabbat.

I explained how Shabbat is typically celebrated in Jewish homes and the difference between the Biblical requirements and the rabbinical requirements, and the various places where Shabbat appears in the New Testament, about Yeshua and Paul having a custom of being in the synagogue on shabbat, about Yeshua healing on shabbat, about Paul preaching until Eutychus fell out of the window.  I also talked about Shabbat as a prophecy of the 7th millennium.

I talked for about an hour without stopping.  At one point I asked if I was talking too fast, but the faculty member who had finished his PhD in California a few years ago assured me that it was fine.  I guess I was breathing during all of it because I am still here.

Finally, I got to the end of my notes, and the professors asked a few questions.  They wanted to know how the Jews view keeping Torah in relation to getting into heaven.  It's just such a different mindset.  One said he was glad that I was able to show that Yeshua never broke Torah, that he only conflicted with the traditions of the religious leaders.

Then one of the students asked my opinion about the sabbath, since I had been converted to Christianity.  So we had a little talk about that. (I think I will take up the subject of conversion first thing in my next session even though I really want to cover Passover and Unleavened Bread.) But what he really wanted to know, and it was his own thought, was that it seemed like Christians should still be keeping Saturday sabbath and what did I personally do?  I said that I do keep sabbath on Saturday but he would have to talk to his professors about general practice.  And in fact, one of them immediately jumped in and steered the conversation in another direction.

Bingo!  You know it just doesn't take too much deep thought to figure these things out.  You are grafted in to the commonwealth of Israel.  What is a commonwealth?  A form of government.  A government has laws.  The Torah, the five books of Moses, is the body of that law.

Hebrew lessons

This is about half of my Hebrew class.  Sweet kids and earnest but without a chance of covering the material that was left to me.  First of all, the book is from 1927, full of words like 'thee' and 'hearken'.  Full of descriptions like this:

A word is said to be in pause when its accent is a major stop, i.e.  Silluq or 'Athnah (pp. 20-1): in either case the word being at the end of a clause.  The tendency, in speech, is to prolong the accented syllable of the last word in a sentence, i.e. when the word is in pause: thus, the word for 'water' is מים [with various vowels which I cannot reproduce here] in the middle of the sentence, but in pause it is: מים [with some different vowels] with 'Athnah or Silluq, i.e. the short vowel Pathah in the accented syllable is lengthened to Qames. 

This for students whose second language is English.  I don't even understand this stuff.

So the prof who started teaching the class covered the aleph-bet and rules similar to this one for the first 8 or 9 weeks, without them actually learning a single vocabulary word.  That was 27 pages of the dreadful textbook.  He left me 8 weeks to cover 70 pages including these topics: the definite article, inseparable prepositions, nouns and adjectives, gender and number, dual form, conjunction, interrogative pronouns, construct (I have to stop myself every time and =not= say smikhut), personal pronouns, possessive pronoun suffixes, the direct object marker (this is how far we've gotten as of today), past tense conjugation of regular verbs, active participle conjugations, imperfect conjugation, the imperative, infinitives, the heh interrogative, passive participles, cohortative and jussive and the reversing vav, in addition to all the vocabulary.  They don't cover the binyanim in this semester, which I guess is a blessing.

Last week, I found out that they are taking advanced Greek in the same semester, in addition to 6 other courses.  Of course, there is no option of changing anything because the curriculum is entirely dictated from the Presbyterian Senate (or Synod--many times I can't tell the difference between these two), as are the textbooks and final exam.

On the other hand, when I met with some of them yesterday for extra practice (classes were canceled because they were using all the classrooms for the entrance exam for next year's students--things like this happen often), they told me they really like the concept of the relationship between 'word' and 'thing' as expressed by the one Hebrew word דבר.  I told them I wish we could drop the whole rest of the class to talk about things like that.

At least a few have had their interest piqued.  I just pray that they will study enough and absorb enough to pass the final exam.

Diet

Mizo folks are just not very interesting cooks.  Everything is very plain, although extremely fresh.    Many people have gardens behind their apartments, terraced onto the side of the hill. I guess they eat a lot of pork, but I have told everyone that I don’t eat it, so they serve me chicken.  The chickens here are huge; the ones I saw in the market must be 10 pounds, the size of a small turkey.  However, they don’t tend to buy whole chickens, just some pounds.  They chop it all up into pieces about 1” in size, cook it, sometimes with spices, and serve it bones and all.  Very messy for eating.  They have cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, daikon radish, peas, kale and similar green leaves, potatoes.  Vegetables are mostly steamed and served cold.  Mizo salad is very finely sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions, no dressing.  Dal (very thin lentil soup) is requisite at every meal.  Some people make it with some spices, but some just boil it.  And rice and rice and rice.

Every meal is required to have at least 4 or 5 dishes, which is quite Asian and common in other countries.

Some friends took me to the nicest restaurant in town for my birthday.  The menu is strictly Indian food, which was fine, but really, I've had better Indian food in Athens.

The apartment was not really ready when I moved in, with no means for cooking at all.  The second day, a rice cooker and a microwave arrived.  I have been making do with this and eating at other people’s homes.  They offered me a countertop gas stove, but it would take the whole countertop in the kitchen, so I turned it down.  If the electricity continues to go out every day, though, I might have to see if I can still get one.

So, yeah, I’m on a diet. 

Life is cooperative

There is an open door policy here and you always know if anyone is home.  On the outside facing door of every room in the house, there is a hasp, with a latch on which to hang a lock.  

The door to my apartment

On the inside facing door, there is simply a bolt.  

outside the door to my bedroom

inside the door to my apartment

So if you're passing by anyone's house, you can see if it is locked up or not and you automatically know if anyone is home.

Everyone is always welcome at everyone else’s house all the time.  I've been invited to dinner by several people and they always say, "just stop by anytime".  The thought of showing up at someone's house at 5:30 pm and expecting to eat dinner with the family is a bit alien to me.  I might do it with my family, but I live so far away from my family that the event is unlikely.  However, this is a small, tight-knit community and the behavior stems partly, I expect, from their tribal background and partly because it is so isolated geographically. The open door policy has become the ethos of the people.

You really can’t go anywhere without a vehicle.  The nearest small town in actually less than a mile, and I feel like I could walk (mostly) down to it, but I doubt that I could walk all the way up.

There is a bus that runs several times a day, down and back up to the Presbyterian synod office in Aizawl.  I could get on it by myself, but I would never know where to get off or where to wait to get back on for the return trip.  Every part of Aizawl looks the same as every other part of Aizawl to me, winding streets, hairpin turns, crowded shops.  And shopping will be impossible unless I learn how to count to 100 or so.  However, folks are very honest, they say, and if you give money, you will get the correct change.  No one will cheat you.

If I need something, someone will bring it.  Sometimes they bring things I haven't asked for and don't need.  People have been so kind to offer to take me to the market, or buy food for me, or share whatever they have with me.  It's something we really lack in the US.

scary technology

These are the boxes outside my door, one live, one dead, one meter.

These are the wires coming out from the top of these boxes.

 Please notice that some run directly into the house through the window.  The window will never be closed, more's the pity.  The winds really kicked up last night and there was a cold breeze blowing through all night long.  Actually, none of the doors or windows shut tightly anyway.

These are the wires that run to the left from the above picture.

 This is a box attached to the neighbor's house.

This is attached to a post at the street level near the steps to my apartment.

This, as you can see, is attached to a tree.  I have no idea what it is, but there is a little light on the other side of it which is lit.

But, look, I have internet today in my apartment.  Hooray!
My being here has brought to the attention of those who have lived abroad just how far behind things are at the College.  Some people are quite disturbed and think that I am suffering horribly in the deprivation, but I have assured them that I am all right.  Still, they are trying to make some upgrades on behalf of the next person who arrives to stay and have arranged for me to get a land-line telephone.  I will let you know the number if you like, so you can call anytime......

How many Mizos does it take....

This is my water filter.  There's at one in every house and many in the admin building.  In the admin building, there are one or two cups by which to take a drink of water.  Sharing cups is standard here, but somehow they manage to pour the water down their throats without their mouths touching the cup.  I have not mastered this skill at all.  Mostly I just get water all over me.  I carry my own bottle wherever I go.

All the water that is consumed here on campus is filtered.  I have been in only one house in town and it also has such a filter.  The water is apparently pumped from the river into city-wide reservoirs and then into huge cisterns on the roof.  Although Mizoram is the wettest state in India, there are seasons when the main source of water, the Tlawng River, is reduced to a mere stream.  There does not seem to be any effort to collect rain water in season. Just imagine all the energy required to pump the water up the hills and mountains and onto the roofs.  The water supply in Aizawl has been a long-term problem and there have been several projects to upgrade the system.

So the quality of the water is unsure and everyone drinks filtered water.  It took me a bit to figure out how the filter worked, mainly because the little switch at the tee connection under the sink was switched off, so the water wasn't flowing to the filter at all.  After that was righted, everything worked just fine, including the little song which plays while the water is flowing.  For some reason, Asian appliances are designed to make music.  When we were in Korea, the refrigerator played "Oh Susanna" if it was left open too long.

Everyone keeps extra bottles of water on the counter in the kitchen, used for drinking and cooking.  Initially, someone gave me two such plastic bottles and later two pitchers showed up.  But after about a week, I noticed a brown sediment in one of the bottles, so I asked to have the filtering machine checked.

On the first day, they sent the all-round handyman to the apartment.  He doesn't speak much English, but he turned the filter off and said, "Shop".  I assumed this meant he would go to the shop and retrieve some filter replacements.  I began toting my water from the filters in the admin building. About two days later, the registrar told me that there are many different kinds of filters and that the handyman would come back and take a picture of mine, so they would be sure that they had the correct one.  This he did.  The next day I was gone and someone came but I wasn't there to unlock the door.  (This has been something of a problem because there is no spare key to the giant lock which hangs on the outside of the door when it is shut.  When I arrived, I received 3 keys, but only one of them fit the lock.  This is a different story for a different day.)  The next day I came back immediately after class and there were three men, one boss and two workers, waiting for me, to see about the filter.

In spite of the fact that they had the pictures of the machine, they murmured about this and that and what the brand name really was.  The boss spoke good English and told me they had to get the right filters and that they would come back the next day.  I told him I would not move from my apartment until I saw his face.  Within an hour, the two workers came back with the correct filters and changed them.

And not a minute too soon.  Of the two replacements, one was white in color and the other brown.  The two filters they took out were black and there were black molecules swimming in the excess water in the filter.  I ran the first 2 liters without drinking it, but I am back in drinking water again.