On va à l’école

Despite Zambia not being a francophone country, unlike next door Democratic Republic of Congo, we’ve managed to seek out our own slice of France to help prepare for the coming year in Lyon.

Frankie has been attending Le Lycée Francais de Lusaka (The French school of Lusaka). She’s in a the maternelle section (MS), which is essentially kinder. She has a wonderful teacher, originally from Mauritius, called Jenny - “the same as Miss Honey!”, as in Matilda. The class is essentially taught in French, although her teachers can speak English and there are a few dedicated lessons taught in English during the week. The school has a mixture of kids of French expats, Zambians and children from francophone Africa. However, like us, there is a smattering of enfants of parents who speak little French, mainly from UK and the US.

School gates open at 0710, and each morning we are greeted by Monsieur Petit the school principal, “Bonjour Francesca”. As this is usually peak shy time, a reply from Frankie is not always forthcoming “Elle a un peu timid”. Jenny and the two Zambian teacher assistants await us in the classroom: “Bonjour Francesca, ça va?” at which point Frankie has generally warmed up enough to offer a reply “Oui, ça va”. The school bell rings at 0730, and any parents still around soon vanish until pickup at 1230.

For the most part Frankie is enjoying school. Her French is really coming along, her accent is much better than ours and we find ourselves often asking her what certain words are in French when we don’t know…words useful to a 4 year old of course: eg owl, bear, triangle, circle, lolly, doll, to hit (a ball). There have been a few rocky patches when school was less fun, and recess is still not her most favoured or social part of the day: “I just like to go sit on the crocodile”. But overall, we’re very proud of how notre fille (our daughter) has dealt with a not insignificant change.

Our second French outlet has been through the parents and kids from school. Between playdates for kids (both home and away), playdates for adults and the monthly ‘coffee with parents’ morning, we’ve all managed to form some nice friendships here…and improve our French. A few of us have also just started a small French-English conversation group for those wanting to improve their respective additional language. Although the conversation group is a nice way to practice, I sometimes find that chatting with Frankie’s 4 year old friends is often a bit more on my level: “Would you like to swim in the pool?”; “Are you still hungry?”; “Do you want a banana milkshake?”; “I’m a monkey bus!”.

On the same grounds as Frankie’s school is Alliance Français de Lusaka. A place which has become our second home. Ali and I have both signed up to French lessons over the last few months. I’ve been doing an intensive course 4 mornings week, while Ali has been back at Alliance in the evenings les mardis et jeudis (Tuesdays and Thursdays). I’m sure I’ll look back fondly on the concrete classroom with old-school blackboard, and older school paternalistic, slightly authoritarian teaching styles. When one factors in our time in the French library at Alliance, the 10K (1.30 AUD) filter coffee at the onsite ‘Le Bistro’ and several evening performances it sometimes feels like majority of our collective day is spent at either L’école or Alliance.

The evening performances can be a mixed bag. We’ve seen a high-school orchestra play Carnival of the Animals, a brilliant and explosive Zambian dance group, some international (and world class) percussionists, and some French-Zambian jazz fusion. We also started one evening thinking we were going to the Lusaka International Film Festival, however the absence of a Blu-Ray player at Alliance helped the night morph into a Korean dinner with some expats in the audience. For the record, we highly recommend the Korean restaurant (Arirang) on Thabo Mbeki road.

Our new friends Natalie and Carol, lent us the French version of trivial pursuit…well the cards at least. Here’s a couple of questions for the punters (no accents). Send in your answers:

i)                    Que ne peut-on pas faire avec un velo a pignon fixe?

ii)                   Comment s’appelle le capitaine de soirée en Belgique?