Literacy for Life
Two dozen men and women have gathered in the church at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. Some are grandparents; some 
haven't yet reached 20. Someone has carried a chalkboard to the front of the room, and letters ... words ... sentences are slowly spreading across its surface.
Hannah Messang repeats her question, and a woman on the second row stands to give an answer. Hannah extends a hand with the chalk. The look in her eyes says, “All right, then. Come show me what you've learned.”
The volunteer begins to write a Bakossi word. If she needs help, the rest of the class will jump in with suggestions. But she's got it right, even the slanted line on top to mark a high tone. Excellent!
Literacy and Learning
Do you remember learning how to read and write? I do. I can even remember looking at a page of text before I knew how to read at all, and I wondered what all those strange rows of symbols meant. That's just a faint memory, though. Literacy—the ability to read and write—has been part of my life since I was very young.
Those of us who live in the United States, where literacy is basically taken for granted, can easily forget that up to a billion people in the world have never gotten the chance to read or write at all. About two-thirds of those people are women.
Many other people have learned to read a widely used language like French or English but cannot read the language that they speak at home and at work every day. That would be a little bit like learning to pronounce all the sounds in Latin without knowing what most of the words meant. So, if you had a medicine bottle, an instruction booklet, or a Bible written in Latin, you could “read” it (sound out all of the syllables), but it wouldn't do you very much good.
Literacy and Scripture
Hannah Messang's literacy class is part of a multifaceted literacy and Scripture use program among the Bakossi people in Cameroon. Churches of many denominations host literacy classes for adults and youth. These classes are designed not only to teach reading and writing skills in the people's language but also to equip students to become teachers themselves. “Jesus said that when you receive, don't keep. Go and spread it out,” explains Andrew Njumbe, a literacy class participant.
Project leaders have also worked with education authorities to introduce mother-tongue literacy classes into some of the government schools. One teacher reports that, after a day's class had been canceled, her fourth- and fifth-grade students came to her house, asking her to schedule an extra day of instruction!
Some groups have devised creative ways to promote literacy. For example, the Bakossi Presbyterian Choir Association (Bapresca) collected Christian songs, wrote them down, and put them in a book. Fifty-two Bapresca choirs (totaling more than 1500 members) sing from these songbooks all over Cameroon. Not only do the songbooks promote literacy, but also the songs are powerful tools of evangelism and exhortation. “The Bapresca choir is very, very important,” says Rev. Ngwa, 
pastor of a church in Muambong. “All the songs they are singing, they are singing from the gospel. They are sermons in themselves.”
Some portions of the Old and New Testaments are available to the Bakossi people in their language. These portions, including the four Gospels and the book of Ruth, are being used in church services already. A translation team, funded through The Seed Company, is working toward completing the New Testament in three or four years.
And when that day comes, there will be thousands of Bakossi people who can open the book, and read.
(Story by David Ringer)
Learn more about supporting our literacy projects, including the Bakossi literacy project
Read about the how Wycliffe works in literacy
The Bakossi literacy work is project of Cameroon Association for Bible Translation and Literacy (CABTAL), Wycliffe member organization.