COMMENTARY: Discovering the international meaning of `wow’

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS and a member of the board of World Vision.) UNDATED _ I never appreciated the significance of the word”wow”until I visited Senegal. In English, the word is used as an appreciative exclamation, a fitting reaction to exceptional beauty or bounty. But in the […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS and a member of the board of World Vision.)

UNDATED _ I never appreciated the significance of the word”wow”until I visited Senegal.


In English, the word is used as an appreciative exclamation, a fitting reaction to exceptional beauty or bounty. But in the villages of Senegal, where poverty and hardship are facts of daily life,”wow”in the Woloff language is a word of acknowledgment.

As I sat in the heat and dust of a rural Senegalese village and listened to our translator question the people, I heard their answers punctuated by a sad and hopeless”wow.”The word was pronounced the same, but the meaning was unmistakably different.

We had just viewed the green, fetid pond where many villagers filled jugs with drinking water. It was the only evidence left of the rainy season, which had ended the month before. The stagnant pool was shrinking daily as cattle and people shared its meager _ often deadly _ resources.

It was easy to see why the village chief answered with a sad affirmation when asked if many children in his village were sick or had died.

The contaminated water was a breeding ground for disease and an oasis for the malaria-ridden mosquitoes whose sting is often deadly.

A shallow well in the village offered the only other source of water, but it, too, was contaminated and would run dry before the rains returned next year to replenish its supply.

A World Vision engineer posed questions to the chief and the other village leaders, trying to discover if they understood that the dirty water was the cause of their problems.”We can dig a deeper well and get them clean water,”he explained,”but they have to value the new well and understand its importance or they won’t use it.” In this region, where Islam mixes with African traditional religions, understanding the people’s beliefs is critical to both public health and public works projects. Some believe disease comes not from dirty water but from spirits.

In a second village, where a new well now provides clean water, the people use it only for the animals and the crops, preferring the taste of the old water source.”Wow,”they acknowledged when asked if many children are still sick.”They are not very different from us,”one World Vision staff member observed.”Change is difficult. They got used to the taste of the dirty water and prefer to take their chances with it.” But in a third village, the mood was very different. The people had prepared a celebration. Dressed in beautiful robes, they sang and danced for us. The children were clean and healthy. The women spoke directly to us, telling us their children are no longer sick.


They explained that the new well gives them the gift of health and time. Instead of walking miles to bring water back to the village, they are able to quickly fill their jugs for the day and go on to other things.

A fledgling garden flourished on a small patch of reclaimed desert. A school was started to teach reading and simple math not only to children, but also to adults.

They proudly showed us the”health hut,”where women and children come for basic treatment and where childbirth is now assisted by a trained midwife.

The third village was only an hour’s drive from the first; the people shared the same heritage but have starkly different futures. In this village, there was talk of further education and more extensive trade.

There was excitement in this place, with a view toward growth and progress. And in this village, the word”wow”was an exclamation scattered in conversations, sounding more like I’m used to hearing it.

Clean, available water had transformed the lives of these villagers. But before that could happen, they had to be open to the life-changing”wow”we all confront when we move away from the familiar to risk a better future.


MJP END BOURKE

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