19
Chapter Nineteen
There was no reason to forge ahead with translation of the Bible, I realized, unless there were readers. And there would be no readers unless I myself taught them. Willy-nilly, I found myself involved in education as well as in medicine and translation. As Pedro and I would sit translating, Jorge and Romero would often hang over my shoulder. In the story of Jacob and Esau I needed a word for “game.” I explained to Pedro that it meant meat gotten in the field or forest, not guinea pig or sheep as they were used to. Pedro scratched his head and finally decided that there was no other word for meat. Meat was meat. Aicha. I wrote it down, and Jorge said, “She writes aicha.”
“Where?” said Romero.
“Where, señorita, where is aicha? There?” said Jorge.
“Yes,” I said. “This part says ai, this part says cha. Aicha.” Quichua is a simple language, well-adapted to teaching reading by syllables, and it was not long before the two boys had mastered the three vowels and most of the consonants and could put the syllables together.
My work with Pedro, along with the new reading lessons and my continued medical visits to many homes made it necessary for me to spend a great deal of time walking back and forth from the town. That endless trudge in the rain convinced me that I ought to move closer to the Indians. It would be hard to give up my little house, but how could I stop at the price if such a move would mean closer contact with the Indians? Not that I believed, at this point, that I would ever succeed in identifying myself with them. Nor did I any longer see this as of any great importance. The Indians had become people to me—they were no longer my “field.” While I had once declared them to be my equals, I now regarded myself as theirs. Instead of saying, “Oh, you are as good as I—let me help you,” I now said, “I am as poor as you. God help us all.”
During the first year in Indi Urcu I had coveted the privilege of making noticeable sacrifices—the comfortable village house was one I hoped to make. It was too nice, really, for a pioneer missionary. But at the time there was no way of doing it. Ironically, now that I had learned to be content with lesser self-denials, I saw the opportunity of giving up the house. Pedro told me of an empty house not far from his which could be cleaned up and used if I wanted to put a little money into new tiles for the roof and a new door frame. A young Indian had contracted tuberculosis and been sent to the government hospital, leaving his wife and two small children to run the farm. They had struggled with it but finally given up and gone home to her parents, leaving the house empty and the fields untitled. If I would live in the house Pedro said he would arrange for an Indian to take care of the potato crop. The small rent for the house would cover his wages and the owner would not lose his land. It took some time before the arrangements could be worked out. I looked forward to the move, for funds had been dropping off somewhat of late, and it was expedient for me to look for cheaper quarters. None of my supporters had written directly to explain the decrease in gifts, but one or two had expressed, if not distress, surprise at my sympathy for the Indian outlook. I inferred that they took this as a questioning of the traditional missionary outlook. I searched my form letters for hints that the mission’s program was anything but unimpeachable, and found nothing.
Romero, Jorge and Pava had made great strides in reading Quichua. The language had only three vowels, and teaching by syllables was comparatively simple. It was quite another thing to teach them to read with any indication of the sense of the words. The mere idea that the words were supposed to mean something was new to them, but Romero finally understood and one day I asked him to read aloud from our translation of Mark so that his mother could hear. Up until this time she had paid little attention to the reading lessons, willing enough to let the children learn whatever it was I wanted to teach them—perhaps because it pacified me as well as them—but ignorant of the purpose. Today I announced to her that the children would read from God’s word and she must listen. Obligingly she stopped her work. Romero began to read.
“And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it” Romero had trouble pronouncing the Spanish words we had introduced for the name of the hill and the myrrh. Here Rosa interrupted.
“This is God’s word?”
“Yes,” I said, pleased that she had remembered that.
“God speaks Quichua?”
“Yes,” I said, “He speaks your language. Men wrote His book in another language and we translate it” (the Quichua word meant “to take across”) “into your language. Pedro and I have been translating it, and now your son can read it”
The boy went on. “And they crucified Him, and divided His garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take.” Again Rosa stopped him.
“Is he reading? Is he reading the paper?”
“Yes,” I replied, even more pleased that she had recognized the skill. “Romero is reading the paper. This is what I have been teaching your children all these weeks. It is not easy to read, but Romero has learned, and now he reads God’s word for you.”
“He is reading Quichua!”
I was delighted. “Yes!” I said. “Quichua.”
Rosa’s face grew dark and suspicious. “But he knows Quichua. Why did you teach him to read Quichua?”
Her anger stunned me. Was she not pleased with Romero’s new ability?
“But, Rosa—” I began.
“Why did you not teach him to read Spanish? When people read, they read Spanish. What good is it to read Quichua? Quichua! We are Quichuas! As if he did not know Quichua!” She tore the paper from his hand and flung it toward the fire. Pava snatched it up and clutched it to herself defensively, her eyes snapping like her mother’s. “I want my children to learn,” Rosa went on. “I want them to learn like the white man, to know what the white man knows. Why would I want them to learn Quichua?” She got up from the floor and began violently throwning corn cobs into a basket. Pedro picked at the frayed rope of his sandal. I waited for him to speak, but he said nothing.
“Do you understand, Pedro?” I asked.
“Yes, I understand.”
“Why did we translate God’s word?”
“To take it across from Spanish.”
“And why did we take it across from Spanish?” Oh Pedro—if you don’t know the answer to this one, after all this time . . .
“To put it into our own language, so that we Quichuas could hear it”
“And you see why I taught your children to read in Quichua, and why I want you to learn?”
“So that we could read what God says, señorita.”
“So that you could read what God says. He wants to speak to you.”
Pedro picked at his sandal for a while. He pulled out a fiber and began to run it through his teeth. Then he looked at me and said, “Has God not spoken in Spanish?”
“Well, Pedro—you know He has. You know we use the Spanish God’s Word—what do you mean?”
“If He has spoken in Spanish, we will hear Him in Spanish. It is enough.”
“But, Pedro, we have talked many times of how each man needs to hear it in his mother’s tongue.”
He considered this for a moment, pensively running the thread through his teeth. Then he spat in the fire and said, “No. It is enough, señorita. The white man hears it in Spanish. We, like the white man, will also hear it in Spanish.”