Maik and Rhiannon Gibson live in Nairobi, Kenya, where Maik is a lecturer in Linguistics and Translation Studies at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. On a brief visit home to the North-East (Maik’s dad, John Gibson, was curate and then vicar in Durham Diocese for over 40 years), I took the opportunity to ask a few questions:
You’ve been in Kenya a couple of years now, what are you doing?
“Rather than starting another Bible translation project, we decided it would be better to train others. That’s why we came to Kenya, training Africans not just to translate the Bible, but to lead others in doing so. The Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST) serves to train Christian ministers from many denominations, including Anglicans. In the long run, I hope I too will be replaced by African colleagues. The more Africans involved in Bible translation, the more likely the vision for it will spread.”
How do your children cope?
“We have 3 children: Carys (8), Benjie (5) and Zebedee (2). They love living in Africa; they can play outside, climb trees, ride bikes most of the time, except in rain storms, as well as going to visit elephants or giraffes just a few minutes’ drive away. On a recent visit back home, Benjie mentioned that he preferred being in Kenya, mainly because it wasn’t cold! But they do miss seeing their grandparents.”
How did the recent unrest affect you (the recent elections results were contested)?
“We didn’t see anything ourselves, nor hear any gunfire, but many of our friends did. Every time we wanted to leave our local area, we’d check the news to see where there were problems: we did have to take very long circuitous routes on occasion. We also had to be ready to leave in case things got worse, and had essentials all together in a suitcase ready to go. However, Gladys, a lady who works for us, was being threatened as she belonged to the ‘wrong’ tribe, so had to move to another part of town: higher rent and new school uniforms for the kids. She could only do this because we could help out – not a chance most Kenyans in her situation had. So it was much more stressful for the locals than for us.”
With the unrest over Maik and his family are now back at NEGST.
Tags: Africa, Bible translation, World development