Anne Kompaore:
CLASS OF 1973
Oakridge High SchoolClass of 1973
London, ON
University of IllinoisClass of 1987
Urbana, IL
Ottawa UniversityClass of 1978
Ottawa, ON
Westdale Public SchoolClass of 1969
London, ON
Anne's Story
Hi all,
With few days free, and a little web surfing looking for a long lost contact, I come to classmates.com.
Life has taken me far from London over the years.
- For studies : Quebec, Ottawa, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, Elkhart, Indiana, and Jerusalem, Israel.
- For work : Nyanga, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), and since 1982, Kotoura and then Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, located in West Africa.
My greatest passion in life is serving our great God as a linguist and now as Bible Translation consultant, with specialties in African languages, Biblical Hebrew, tonology, phonology, semantics, and discourse analaysis.
I'm married to Daniel Kompaore, a widower, and acquired children and grandchildren as a result! So far 10 grandchildren.
Life and worldview are so different here from North America.
People would probably characterize me as some one with a lot of drive to attain my dreams. But as often happens, there are changes in road directions along the way.
When I was at Oakridge, I one day said I would be a linguist, without any idea about what a linguist does. All I knew was that I enjoyed languages.
And then, I had this fervent desire go to Russia - at a time when no one else wanted to go - out of pure curiousity. And I dreamed of being an interpreter at the United Nations. I was all set to enroll at the translation school at the U. of Ottawa in the fall of 1975 when I was solicited to serve ...Expand for more
as a volunteer for our church in the Congo. That one year stint learning an African language, and living next door to an African Bible translator changed my direction for life.
I decided not to enter the translation school where I had been accepted, but rather major in linguistics. A couple of years later, I dropped studying Russian, and focused on return to Africa, to work among a people with no written language - absolutely fascinating. A church was also begun, as well as literacy and Bible translation.
A few years ago, I was travelling on a flight to Israel (for Hebrew studies) and next to me was seated a woman in her early sixties, reading a paper in Russian, speaking to the hostess in French, and talking to me in English.
As we got to talking, I discovered that she was a Russian Orthodox on a pilgrimage to Israel, before continuing on to Nairobi, Kenya for an interpreter job for the United Nations. And she also learned that I was working in Bible Translation.
What, I exclaimed, I had wanted to work as an interpreter at the U.N! Her response took me by complete surprise. No, she said, I only do my job for money. What you are doing is so much more important than my U.N. job.
Inspite of the numerous challenges life and work give me, my life career is full and satisfying. I love my work even though it seems like I am getting too much of a good thing at times! :)
Well, I will stop for now. Maybe more later.
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