Tragedy led to affirmation
of the need
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| Colombian guerrillas had kidnapped three US journalists inside Panama but the guerrillas had also committed a massacre in a Kuna village near the Colombian border. |
PANAMA — Sanblas Kuna is the language spoken on islands off the coast of Panama. The Bible Society of Panama has an Old Testament translation project in Sanblas Kuna and a workshop to train and select new translators took place in Panama City in January.
The project is a three-way partnership: UBS provides the training and consultancy help, the Bible Society provides the office and the computers on which the work is done and SIL, the sister organisation of Wycliffe Bible Translators, provides some funding for the salaries of the translators. The two-week course was led by three UBS translation consultants.
This workshop was going well. Then, on the Sunday in the middle, the participants went to worship at the Kuna church in Panama City, where they were greeted with some very sad news: Colombian guerrillas had kidnapped three US journalists inside Panama but the guerrillas had also committed a massacre in a Kuna village near the Colombian border.
“Although these Kuna live in the jungle, they are related to the Sanblas Kuna,” Dr Mitchell explains. “And the people on the course had cousins, aunts, uncles in the village; they knew all the people there, so they were deeply shocked and worried. They immediately wanted to know who had died and who was hiding in the jungle.
“The immediate problem facing UBS staff was what to do about the remainder of our course: should it be suspended to allow them to return to their families? So the UBS staff and students talked and prayed together to decide what to do. The students decided that, although it would to be difficult to get through the next week, we should go on with it.
The second week was therefore held under
very different circumstances.
“We never imagined that this kind of atrocity could happen,”
Dr Mitchell says. “This is the kind of reality you can have with
an indigenous group. You’re making all your plans and everything,
and then suddenly you come up against this tragedy which everybody has
got to process.”
In these circumstances the UBS staff naturally felt a great sense of closeness to and sympathy for the translators. Dr Mitchell himself was moved by their own reaction.
“We sensed our own solidarity with the people, yet at the same time they were saying, ‘In the midst of our tragedy, what we need more than anything else is the Word of God. If we are to find comfort and consolation – if we are to find hope for tomorrow – we need to have the Word of God in Kuna.’”
So the course went ahead, the translators were chosen and on March 1 the work got under way.
“It would have been perfectly understandable if they’d just gone home, and the consultants would have accepted that,” says Dr Mitchell. “You couldn’t demand that they remain and go ahead with the work. But out of the tragedy came this expression by the participants that, ‘for our people, in the midst of their tragedy, it is the Word of God that is going to bring us hope and consolation.’” (WR 377/19 - 6.03)