During our last workshop for the !Kung and Ju/’hoansi community checking was an important part to help test the key terms used and for the participants get an opportunity to have a storying session in a public setting. I observe the session in Kano Vlei where newly ordained !Kung Pastor Shotty shares the narrative from Luke 10:25-37. Without prior announcement, a group of 14 adults and 10 children come together in the heat of the afternoon. Shotty initially is a little nervous, but once the story has been shared and people start to respond to the questions, Shotty calls with a big smile out to me to see if I notice that the people are responding to the questions. He says that this is his first time to share like this in the community and outside the church. In Amatako, where about a dozen of adults and an equal amount of children gather, I get a similar response from newly ordained !Kung Pastor Jafet. Afterwards he tells me about telling the narratives of the Bible in the community: ‘Actually this is the work we need to do.’
Next day we debrief from the community checking and issues around most of the key terms are resolved. For example, the word for wine is not known in either language and they will use a borrowed word from Portuguese (because of the Angolan ancestry of many of these !Kung) that is commonly used (viño) and for oil they use the name of the oil from a local berry that looks like an olive and has healing properties, to make sure it won’t be confused with engine oil. All of them were excited about the responses they received and how well the listeners responded to the story. In Mangetti Dune one of the listeners responds afterwards with saying: ‘You need to come every day. This is the first time we hear stories like this. When will you come back?’
