Joan Anderson, with her husband Dick, worked among the Turkana people in North-West Kenya for many years. While Dick worked in the small hospital Joan took on the translation of the Bible into the local language. She didn’t see the finished work in use until their return to Kalokol in 1994.

For the thousandth time I pulled up the sheet to protect my head from the howling wind as it blasted desert sand into my bed, and I longed for morning. What a sight we both looked at dawn!

from Aim International's magazine September 1998

It was August 1994 and Dick and I were visiting the Africa Inland Church at Kalokol in North-West Kenya to take part in a training week for Turkana evangelists. As the sandstorm still raged we wondered if any would turn up, but they came, leaning into the wind and rubbing grit out of their eyes. My task was to teach some Psalms. The Bible Society had just published a slim, blue book entitled Ngieosio , a translation of the Psalms, and each evangelist received a copy. I asked one-armed Lorus (a crocodile had taken his other arm) to read Psalm 63. He read haltingly at first, but gained confidence as he sensed its impact on the whole group. When he came to verse 10, They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals, the class gasped in amazement at the earthy reality of the words. Each Psalm we studied spoke directly into hearts disturbed by struggles, temptations, loss, poverty, disease and injustice.

Thirty-six years earlier, Dick and I, newly wed, began to live among the Turkana. We dreamt of seeing churches, schools, hospitals and even an agricultural scheme established. The key to all this would be Gods Word in their own language. But we seemed like a football coach dreaming of winning the World Cup before he had either a team or even a ball! At that time few Turkana could read' we knew of only one or two young believers and no one had reduced their language to writing.

Three months at the Wycliffe Linguistics Course gave me some skills in that direction. Studying there with a hundred or so others, all committed to the task of translation, fired my determination to press on to do this for the Turkana people. But as I began to learn the language, its many mysteries muddled me. A distinguished London Professor with remarkable expertise in similar languages came to my rescue. For over two weeks Archie Tucker helped to unravel grammar and clarify an appropriate alphabet. Even he had difficulties; he would put down his pen and say, Let's take a break, insanity is just round the corner!

Eario kesi a ngakwaaras, toliworos aMmuj a mgikolowoi, Psalm 63:10 from the Turkana Bible

With a grammar, a reading primer and a few tracts under our belt, we looked in earnest at the New Testament. In 1964 the Bible Society invited would-be translators from all over East Africa to a six-week workshop outside Nairobi. Experienced scholars emphasised the importance of transferring the essential meaning into the receptor language. Back in Turkana I determined to listen carefully to a group of intelligent local people who quickly grasped the basic principles. One of these, Isaya Emanikor, took over the whole project when Dick and I left Turkana for a new assignment. By the time of our seminar at Kalokol he and his wife had completed the translation of the whole Bible.

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