Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – The Storytellers of Dulumpur

By Carla Bowman
October / November 2009

It is nightfall in Dulumpur, a miniature hamlet in tribal Jharkand, East India. Thousands of stars cling recklessly onto an ebony sky. The tribal welcome foot washing and the artful, ritually paced serving of the meal on giant leaves take place as if in slow motion. Below the star-encrusted sky this place is suspended in time. Shrouded women dance in a millennia-old line. To the silken movement of saris they rock faintly back and forth on bare feet to an irrepressible, soft, high-pitched, repetitive chant of a biblical song.

The perceived sluggishness of the dance, the foot washing, the ritual meal, and the hypnotic sounds of the music-chant are illusory because there is evidence all around of the reality of hard work: rice and lentils cooked for hours on dry, dung fires; swept dirt streets; immaculate, smooth, plastered, mud-brown walls adorned with white geometric designs and painted with whimsical gazelles floating in a line under tiny windowsills.

The semi-literate storytellers use the printed Santali Bible as an aide to memorization.

Abruptly, a loud beating of the dolak assaults the night silence. It is a drumbeat contradicting the slow rhythm of swaying hammocks that creak as the rope-ends make contact with the trunks of the kikar tree. Contrasting with the slow motion of village ritual, the drum heralds an arrival. A team of community church planters has arrived at the house of peace, a place for night fellowship consisting of a ceremony of scripture, story, song, drama, dance, and prayer.

Adam, Eve, and the Church Planters
On this night a story of Adam and Eve is told and enacted by the community church planters. It is part of the Old Testament Series, a set of stories being presented in Dulumpur and other tribal villages. A pervasive silence hangs in the air as the drum stops and the actors playing Adam and Eve stroll forward.

The subtle chant-song of the narrator begins. Her voice penetrates the night as she begins to sing the enthralling tale from Genesis 3: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.” At this instant a large serpent slithers across the dirt, weaving and gliding toward Adam and Eve. The observers, enraptured and speechless, are gathered under the thatched roof veranda. One can hear a simultaneous, forceful gasp from the audience as the serpent moves across the ground.

It is in reality a small woman wrapped in a silk-stripped sari, slinking realistically in curved slow motion toward Eve. As the serpent lets out a hissing sound the narration in the form of song continues: “The serpent said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” Eve is startled. Her face shows incredulity. The narrator continues in song, changing nothing from scripture, not adding or deleting from the Word of God. The story moves on to its conclusion as the villagers of Dulumpur have watched electrified, spellbound.

BRIDGES Curriculum in Southeast Asia
The performer church planters are talented and creative. Their success is due in no small part to the fact that they have been trained flawlessly by Master Trainers in the Madhupur-based “Engage India” hub that is located in the geographical center of the large Indian state of Jharkhand.

These master trainers of Communication Bridges to Oral Cultures (“BRIDGES”) curriculum have insightfully identified the communication style of the Santali people group and have used to huge advantage the tribal skills in dramatic arts, music, and dance. Their repertoire of stories complete with drama, song, and dance reaches upward of thirty. The stories are sung to one of twelve traditional tunes with total fidelity to the biblical text.

Other stories have been memorized, but are not yet developed in drama and song. The church planters have been taught to revisit these same stories with dialogue later as the villagers sit in a circle around the storyteller. The trainers have taught the church planters to help the listeners discover the meaning of the story through dialogue. The semi-literate storytellers use the printed Santali Bible as an aide to memorization. They are the ideal practitioners of an orality-based method of evangelism and church planting that has gained popularity and momentum in the past decade.

Carla Bowman and her husband, Jim, are founders of Scriptures in Use. SIU currently holds nearly ninety training events each year in over fifty countries. The Bowmans served as missionaries in Latin America, and subsequently extended their training courses worldwide.