[orca-list] using orca api in python

[Thomas Galica <thomas galica7 gmail com>]

I am a student working on a project with several class-mates to add limited TTS capability to the terminal window in Xfce. We are trying to use a bash shell script to format text input for and call a python script we've written (orCall.py).

orCall.py imports;

orca.orca
orca.speech

one of our functions calls orca.speech.speak(<text>)

orCall.py runs and exits gracefully without throwing any errors but doesn't say anything

My question is what am I missing that is required to have the text spoken aloud?
I know orca is primarily event driven and I am sure that the issue lies there somewhere but I can't find much information on what I am trying to do or any good reason why it shouldn't work.

We are looking at the orca API available at:
http://projects.gnome.org/orca/pydoc/