More Than Data: The Adventure of Building an English-Itsekiri Corpus (Part 2)

Working with Lecturer Tosan has been an incredible experience. In case you’re interested in the full gist, click on the link below to read

https://medium.com/@tobilobabeecroft/more-than-data-the-adventure-of-building-an-english-itsekiri-corpus-part-1-4ab9ec0b54c3

Due to Lecturer Tosan very busy schedule, we weren’t able to cover as many sentences as planned. So I suggested bringing someone else on board to support the project, and thankfully, she accepted. Luckily for me, the person I eventually chose to work with was one of her students and honestly, it turned out to be a very good decision. His name is Ayiri.

Ayiri is a graduate of the College of Education, a highly skilled tailor, and a fluent Itsekiri speaker. Luckily for me again he stays in Ubeji which is the same area my aunt lives. So I decided it would be best to come to Ubeji and stay for a while, instead of meeting at the College of Education in Warri.

That decision changed everything.

Coming To Ubeji

Honestly, coming to Ubeji was worth it. I had time to work on the project, rest, and think clearly. Ayiri and I agreed to work for seven days to gather all the data. True to his word, he came every evening for seven days straight, and we worked until around 10:00 p.m. or 10:30 p.m.

Working with Ayiri

Thankfully, we were able to hit our target of 1,000 English–Sentence pair

Also guys Ubeji is quite chill and a very insteresting place, i was even surprised to see that Warri Refinery and NNPC Head Office is very close to Ubeji. Hopefully one of these days i would enter the Refinery and Head Office

The Work Experience

Working with Ayiri was genuinely fun. We had the opportunity to get to know each other better, and I jokingly tell him that it’s because of him I now have “proficiency in serving people.”

One thing he consistently did, which I truly appreciated was speaking Itsekiri to me first and allowing me to figure out the translation on my own. Only if I couldn’t get it would he tell me the English version. It helped me learn faster.

I’m grateful to God for giving me the chance to work with Ayiri. His work ethic is insane, and one of my favorite parts of working with him was the nightly strolls we took after each session.

Thank you, Ayiri.