I have joined a French class. I had to do something. Life starts to feel so all-the-same here in the USA. (Side note: in Tanzania, there is a town called Usa River. Very confusing. It makes me want to read the name of the country in which I was born as oooouuuusa.) Anyway, without the daily chaos that is life in a not-so-risk-averse country, I get bored. Sleep, bus, work, bus, internet, sleep. It's fortunate that my job is interesting and ever-changing, or it would all be very tedious. Taking French feels like I am moving forward. (So does applying for jobs in other countries, but that's a whole different topic.)
I went to my first French class yesterday. It was held in a rather elderly high school building, and there were photographs on the wall of sports teams dating back 50 years. It even smelled like school. We sat at chairs with desks attached, all of us continuing learners, only now we all try to sit in the front, books open, eager to learn. I worried about the class being too easy or too hard, but it was just perfect: a good review of passé composé and some new vocabulary. (Good news! This teacher is going to teach us how to swear. FINALLY.)
I had forgotten how fun French is. I leaned forward in my seat, trying to catch everything, finally seeing in writing things that I already say instinctively, thanks to conversations in Rwanda. I am usually a visual person. I want everything written down so I can remember it. Languages, though, I somehow remember by spoken patterns. I can hear when they are right or wrong, even if I can't define why. It came back, slowly, and I felt myself beaming as I listened to the teacher speak. I wanted to leap up and say, "I understand everything he's saying!"
At one point in the middle of class, I felt the world spin around me and I was two places at once. I was in the metal and plastic desk in an old US high school classroom round and I was in a wooden desk in a round open-air Rwandese university classroom. I took a French class in Rwanda, at the Kigali Health Institute, five days a week after work. I think I have mentioned this before, but on the first day of class, the first sentence we learned to say was, "Nous sommes pauvres." We are poor.
It was not true. Every person in that class was comfortable, by Rwandese standards. We were NGO workers and civil servants and lawyers and church leaders, Rwandese and Kenyan and Ugandan and Malawian and US American (um, that would be me), and we could afford to pay for a fairly expensive class. I am still sad that we learned that phrase first. (Now that I think about it, though, maybe it was a complaint on the teacher's part about his pay. Ha.)
Sitting in class last night, I felt disparate pieces of my life coming together and tearing asunder. I was thrilled to be speaking French, but I couldn't stop feeling that I was speaking it in the wrong place. Wrong country, wrong classroom, wrong continent.
I was disappointed to walk outside into the cold with the sound of traffic instead of into the warm air with the lapping sound of the waves on the lake and the bell-like sound of my favorite frogs. But not too disappointed. I was too happy for that. Sorrow and happiness coexist, always.
I went to my first French class yesterday. It was held in a rather elderly high school building, and there were photographs on the wall of sports teams dating back 50 years. It even smelled like school. We sat at chairs with desks attached, all of us continuing learners, only now we all try to sit in the front, books open, eager to learn. I worried about the class being too easy or too hard, but it was just perfect: a good review of passé composé and some new vocabulary. (Good news! This teacher is going to teach us how to swear. FINALLY.)
I had forgotten how fun French is. I leaned forward in my seat, trying to catch everything, finally seeing in writing things that I already say instinctively, thanks to conversations in Rwanda. I am usually a visual person. I want everything written down so I can remember it. Languages, though, I somehow remember by spoken patterns. I can hear when they are right or wrong, even if I can't define why. It came back, slowly, and I felt myself beaming as I listened to the teacher speak. I wanted to leap up and say, "I understand everything he's saying!"
At one point in the middle of class, I felt the world spin around me and I was two places at once. I was in the metal and plastic desk in an old US high school classroom round and I was in a wooden desk in a round open-air Rwandese university classroom. I took a French class in Rwanda, at the Kigali Health Institute, five days a week after work. I think I have mentioned this before, but on the first day of class, the first sentence we learned to say was, "Nous sommes pauvres." We are poor.
It was not true. Every person in that class was comfortable, by Rwandese standards. We were NGO workers and civil servants and lawyers and church leaders, Rwandese and Kenyan and Ugandan and Malawian and US American (um, that would be me), and we could afford to pay for a fairly expensive class. I am still sad that we learned that phrase first. (Now that I think about it, though, maybe it was a complaint on the teacher's part about his pay. Ha.)
Sitting in class last night, I felt disparate pieces of my life coming together and tearing asunder. I was thrilled to be speaking French, but I couldn't stop feeling that I was speaking it in the wrong place. Wrong country, wrong classroom, wrong continent.
I was disappointed to walk outside into the cold with the sound of traffic instead of into the warm air with the lapping sound of the waves on the lake and the bell-like sound of my favorite frogs. But not too disappointed. I was too happy for that. Sorrow and happiness coexist, always.
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