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“Ne vous découragez pas, petit à petit vous apprendrez mon amie,” she said to me every time I almost gave up on learning French. These were such encouraging words from Irene my hairdresser turned friend whom I met at the salon one Saturday morning. I had just relocated to the Democratic Republic of Congo to take up a new assignment. After several weeks here, immersed in a new culture and taking on new challenges. I had a compelling feeling that I could do anything without a care in the world. I found myself indulging in self-sufficiency, feeling like superwoman and indeed, I did very well. Albeit, oftentimes I felt deep emptiness, loneliness and sadness, life was difficult; I had barely made any friends; my lack of proficiency in French had a tremendous effect on my ability to make good connections. For several months, I was in situations where being understood felt like a deficiency of some sort. I had to translate everything in my mind before saying it, people laughed in my face because to them I sounded stupid. Occasionally, I paid twice the price of an item, until I met Irene who encouraged me to take French lessons at Alliance Français. Three months later, I shared with her my first ever written composition in French and she said she was proud of me. Everything changed one chilly Saturday morning when I visited a salon in town; I wanted my hair done and knew that explaining to the hairdressers was near impossible. Thus, downloaded a YouTube video to bridge this gap and used google translate to translate the phrase “this is the style I want” into "c'est le style que je veux" which I recited during my 15-minutes’ drive to the salon. When I got there, I was ushered to a seat at the back, they immediately noticed the language barrier, and potentially this is why I was unattended to for over 30 minutes. Overwhelmed by impatience I signalled for their attention in “broken” French. One of the hairdressers responded and I showed her the video while trying to repeat the phrase I had recited but… could not say it. She kept saying something that I did not understand and amidst my frustration, I nodded “yes”. She indicated that I had to pay $113, not yet familiar with numbers I confused $113-“Cent trieze dollars” with $130-“cent trente dollars” and nodded in agreement. She started doing my hair however, not exactly how I expected, I looked her straight in the eye, pointed to my head and said “NO”. She stopped and signalled that she would be back, in a few minutes she returned with a colleague who spoke a few words in English. She said to me "sorry sister, I help you now". I humbly said thank you as I showed her the video, she took a few minutes watching it and turned to me saying, “box braids yes?" I said yes, please…I would like "box braids". Finally, with a sigh of relief, I felt someone understood what I wanted and did a flawless job. I paid the $130, to my surprise she returned $17 telling me it cost only $113. With my ignorance, I almost paid $17 extra but here Irene was to my rescue. We indulged in small talk; I must have intrigued her she asked, “Which is your country”? I replied with excitement, Uganda! She told me about her 3 months visit to Tanzania; where she learned a few words in English, she revealed how challenging it had been. Then she taught me a few common phrases and encouraged me to enrol for classes at Alliance Français. Currently, I am in level B1 thanks to her encouragement; I can make conversation with market vendors, hairdressers and even my colleagues at work. Two of my colleagues have also enrolled at Alliance Français because of the connection I made. Irene and I frequently talk on the phone and I have made tremendous improvement in my grammar, she has made me feel like I belonged.