Mission de la Mer Rouge (MMR) has an honoured place in Djibouti’s history as one of its early team members had been instrumental in developing the written Afar language. The heroine was Enid Parker. She trained as a teacher after military service in WW2 but as she was beginning to settle into a teaching career she felt that God was calling her to serve him abroad. The opportunity came to visit Ethiopia where she discovered she had an aptitude for languages. She learned Amharic and Arabic.
Once, when visiting the Red Sea coast, she learned that the Afar language was not yet written. Afar is spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. The entire Afar population, numbering around three million (but up to 4 million in 2019), was either illiterate or had to learn another language to progress with any education (usually French, Amharic or English). Most are Muslim and are poor; many are nomadic farmers.
That caught Enid’s attention. Another language to learn! As her competence grew she began to work with a team that included native Afar speakers to write down the Afar language. She produced short radio programmes in Afar for broadcasting in the region and that engendered interest and enthusiasm. It was not easy. There were many difficulties and delays to overcome but the value of her work was recognised in the 1970s when she was awarded hero status as Qasa Molta (Respected Lioness) though others referred to her as Asamolta (Red lioness)! It seemed she valued those titles more than the PhD her linguistic work earned her from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1978. Not surprisingly, there was pressure from mature adults to learn to read so her early-reading primers included traditional tales, poems and riddles.
The work was long and laborious and there were no computers or internet to help! So it was not until 1985, after 30 years work, that the first Afar-English-French dictionary was published.
After that, Enid began to work on an English-Afar dictionary that would include 13,500 English words with their Afar translations – and, amazingly, an example sentence for every single one. Another 21 years work! During that time Enid received the ‘Commandeur de l’Ordre National’ award in 2003 from Ismail Omar Geulleh, President of Djibouti. Finally publication day came in 2006 and since then it has been available from Dunwoody Press (www.dunwoodypress.com).
Enid lived to 96 years old and even in her 80s and 90s she was able to visit her beloved Djibouti and the Afar people.
The work has continued. The dictionary has been published locally in Ethiopia. It will be immensely valuable especially in the business community, the eleven universities and numerous schools throughout the Afar regions.
It is hard for us in the West to imagine what it means to a people to have their language written down for the first time – to have literacy materials to help them learn their language and dictionaries for translating it into other languages. What a legacy to leave!
Honour and history have a much greater significance in Middle Eastern and North African cultures than in our Western civilisations so Enid Parker’s influence continues. It is a factor in maintaining a good relationship between MMR and the government.
Kerith Trust 