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Speaking of Donn and his beret and his faux-French accent (why do you think he has this outRRRageous accent?), I have bad news: the accent is contagious. People, especially males between about 35 and 60, (ok, only males) see the beret and they just go off. “Ah, oui!” they shout at him. It’s getting a bit old.
But yesterday morning, he ran into a friend of ours, an older woman, and she said, “Now Donn, you’re looking very French. Maybe a little too French.”
We love this. We’ve been saying that to each other ever since. “Maybe a little too French,” he says when I ask if a certain outfit looks good, or I say when he asks my opinion on his new business card. But she was serious. And it got me thinking about the propensity of older women to be, well, frank with those younger than themselves about what might be considered personal choices.
This reminded me, inevitably, of our time in France. French older women are unstoppable. They wear black, of course, and high-heeled boots, and they have immaculate silver hair and lipstick and tiny dogs on long leashes, and they have no qualms about approaching complete strangers and telling them what they’re doing wrong with their lives. This happened to us. One Saturday, on the way home from school (children go to school on Saturday in France. That just ended the romance for you right there, didn’t it?) we stopped in at our favorite coffee shop to pick up some freshly-roasted beans (still warm) and the proprietor of the shop gave each child a sucette, a lollipop, as a treat. They wandered happily down the cobblestone alleys, eating their candy , and an older woman stopped Donn and I to tell us off. “It will ruin their teeth!” she told us firmly. “They should not eat hard candy.”
Of course we didn’t think of the good answers till several blocks later. “It helps them quit smoking,” Donn muttered. “It’s just their baby teeth!“ I riposted. But it was too late. She was gone from our lives, leaving us just a little bit flabbergasted.
Another time, we were stopped in the park and reprimanded because Abel’s coat was not zipped. It was a raw March day and he was wearing a t-shirt, sweater, and coat, and running at full steam, since we were (once again) late for school. This was not the same woman, but another one who took it upon herself to help us raise our children, since presumably hers were in prison or living on the streets.
But I was also a tiny bit envious. I want to be like this. I want to be able to tell complete strangers how to live their lives, and do it with such imperviousness, such command, such confidence. I’m just not there. I’m too nice.
My theory is that you are comfortable telling people the age of your kids what to do. I could never be bossy to a 20 year old, for example, but when the kids next door lost their house key and came to hang out till their mum came home from work, I had no problem telling them they could eat oranges but not candy and not to jump on the furniture. Carry that out 20 years, and I could see myself stopping people on the street and telling them that pajamas are actually meant only for sleeping in and look comic and wrong when worn in public.
So when I’m an old woman, I’m not going to wear purple. I shall wear a long black coat and burgundy lipstick, get a small dog, and sail the streets, telling people what to do.
Looking forward to this might make the aging process a little easier to bear.
Because right now, it really sucks. Elliot has been exercising for 4 days now and is already noticeably trimmer and sailing up the hill, leaving me gasping in his wake. It almost makes me want to be 12 again.
almost too French, non?
Yes, that is a word. English is a live language, and as such is continually growing and changing. Take it up with the Oxford English Dictionary if you must.
Today’s topic was inspired by Veronica, who posted on ways she is a snob. I could relate to her post, but I cringed at her number 5, about people who use foreign expressions when an English one would do. Because that is my life.
It’s not my fault. That is to say, nobody forced me to move overseas and have to start trying to think in another language, but I’m not TRYING to be pretentious and impress people. I can’t help it. Sometimes I just can’t think of the English word.
Several weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about CNED (the kids’ schooling). “We finally got Elliot’s…uh…etiquettes,” I told her. I couldn’t think of the English word for etiquette. She tried to help me. Behaviour? Etiquette?
No, no, I waved my hands. “They’re…sticky things…”
“Stickers? Like for work well done?”
This made me laugh. The French don’t do stickers. I kept trying, and finally came up with the word “LABELS.” He had gotten his labels, that he puts on the work he sends back.
She was very patient and I think realized I was being a dork, rather than a schmuck. But it wasn’t so apparent the night Donn and I celebrated our anniversary several years ago.
We’d just come back from spending 10 months in France, and we went out to a nice restaurant for a special treat. The waiter was very helpful, answering questions with “A lot of people are saying the salmon is nice tonight,” or “Several have mentioned they especially enjoyed the crème brulee.” We ordered an appetizer that promised a French cheese. This was before we learned the sad truth that once you have lived or even been to France and eaten the cheese there, all other cheese will ever after be a sad letdown, a mere whisper of what a cheese might have been, and you will move through life discontent, groping for happiness, bemused, like men kissed by goddesses in dreams. And, since this was a once-a-year-if-then restaurant, the appetizer cost something ridiculous like $10 and we split it. And the cheese was rubbery. (I know now that it’s always rubbery, outside of France)
So when the waiter asked how was everything, I felt compelled to actually tell him. I usually don’t do this sort of thing, but I said, “I’ve noticed how often you’ve told me about other’s reactions to things, and it seems you really want feedback.” Lest I seemed to be setting myself up as some sort of pretentious cheese expert, I explained that we’d just been living in France, where we’d eaten rather a lot of cheese, not to mention pastries. I was trying to add colour, to show, not just tell, like they tell you to.
Soon, he came back. He said, “I always tell the chef people’s comments, and he usually rolls his eyes and says they’re wrong, but he tasted the cheese and said you were right. So I took it off your bill.”
Donn said, “Quick! Say something negative about the salmon!”
Then it came time to pay. Donn handed the waiter a credit card, then called him back. “Oh I forgot! I just put our plane tickets to Africa on that one–use this one!” Then I think we both blushed.
Could we have been any more obnoxious? It’s hard to think how. No, we were schmucks, even though we didn’t mean to be. It doesn’t help that it’s all true, not in a yuppie jet-setting sort of way, just in a normal work overseas sort of way.
So yesterday morning, when I was telling Nancy about The Candy Shop in Nouakchott and I said, “And they even have…uh…barbe a papa…what is that?” and Elliot looked up from his work and said, “Cotton candy,” I knew I was being a schmuck. I couldn’t help it.
My name is Nomad; I am a schmuck.
But what is English for goudron again?
When we arrived in Nouakchott in April 2001, we spoke virtually no French. I had taken years of it in high school and college, and had managed to forget nearly all of it. 6 hours of studying completely wasted! I could communicate with taxi drivers and read simple instructions, but that was about it. Nonetheless, after we looked around at the various educational options, we chose the French school for our children.
The decision was unrequited, at least at first. It turned out that we weren’t the only ones choosing the French school. (Its official name is the Lycée Theodore Monod, so I properly should call it LTM, just to keep it clear). Many many families wanted to put their kids in that school, oh probably because it was almost affordable and the best educational option in the country. Mauritania isn’t exactly swimming in good choices for kids’ schooling. There are the local schools, where the teachers may or may not show up to instruct 70+ kids per room, said instruction done partly through rote memorization, partly through shouting, and partly with a large stick. Then there’s the American school, at the American Embassy. They wanted my children, because they are so short on native English speakers that their classes spend a lot of time doing remedial work. They go through Grade 8, and cost a mere $12,000 per year per child. Gulp. Not a typo, a real number. And my kids would basically be helping the teacher?
Then there’s LTM. It’s an official French International School, and as such is subsidized by the French government. Located on the grounds of the French Embassy, it runs from pre-K (moyenne section, for you Frenchies out there) through the Bac, and 6 years ago was about $1200 a year per kid. (It has gone up every year since) It offers a really good education for your child. There’s just one thing: in order to get in, you have to deal with French bureaucracy multiplied by African influence. You are really beneath their notice; it’s good to recognize that from the outset. Your attitude should be humble and willing to do anything demanded, no manner how ridiculous.
The first thing they demanded from my 4 year-olds was that they speak French. How to determine this? Easy—they just swept them away, one by one, into a strange room with a woman they’d never seen before, who fired rapid questions at them in French. I wasn’t allowed to come into the room with them. Abel, shy at 4, stuck his thumb in his mouth and looked sadly at her. Two minutes later, she swept out and told me, “He won’t talk.” Needless to say, the twins were not admitted that first year. Elliot was put on the waiting list but in the first spot for Kindergarten (grande section); although he was nearly 6 and ready for Grade 1 in English, the fact that he did not speak French made him ineligible, in their eyes, to begin to learn to read in French. Sigh. Never mind. We “redshirted” him (I just learned that term yesterday; it means holding your child back a year) and it’s certainly worked out—he’s by no means the tallest in his class, and he’s bi-lingual, which has to count for something.
Getting the twins into LTM was something else. We put them in a jardin d’enfants, a preschool, run by a French woman. Their teacher was Algerian and they were the only westerners in their class. (It’s easy to pick them out in school pictures) I remember their first day. At the time, Abel was the shyer of the two, Ilsa more out-going. But when we entered the sandy courtyard, filled with dusty toys, Ilsa hung back and clung to me, while Abel began to do a funny dance and sing “Veggie Tales” in his husky little voice, and went off to play on the low slide without a backward glance.
The next year, armed with their report cards full of A’s and their ability to rattle off colours bleu, jaune, rouge, rose, vert and numbers un, deux, trois, quartre, cinq, we tried again for LTM. Neither succeeded. We were told that the school was letting the bulk of the applicants into CP, or Grade 1. So they continued at le jardin for another year. In the meantime, LTM got a new proviseur, or principal. So, when the twins tried for CP the next year, the school was letting the bulk of applicants into Kindergarten, and there were 60 kids trying for 5 CP spots. Needless to say, my two American kids didn’t make the cut.
So we went to France for a year! There was more involved, of course, but we ended up spending the next year in a charming town in the French Alps, which solved everybody’s school problems. I remember the first day of school, seeing Ilsa, standing alone and lost, in the courtyard full of French children running and shouting, a shaft of sunlight picking out her blonde head, and then seeing her again at lunch, happy, already with a new friend. We bought éclairs at a local patisserie for a treat that first day, fancifully shaped like mice and hedgehogs, beautifully wrapped up for instant consumption on the cobbled alleyway just outside. All 3 had excellent teachers, and our family loved that little school. After that it was easy; when we returned to Mauritania, they simply transferred to LTM, who had to accept them because they were transferring in from a French school.
Once you’re in the system, you’re in the system.
Several people have asked me what we’re doing with the kids this year for school, and I’m sure you will now understand why we’re keeping them in the French system. There is absolutely no way I’d risk going through all that again, next year, in another new country at another new French International school. I’m no glutton for punishment. (Although I could definitely handle another year in the French Alps…)
The French gov’t has a correspondence option, available for French people or those, like us, who’ve had their kids in French schools for more than 2 years. It’s intended for those living abroad where there are no French schools (if you can imagine such a wilderness with no civilization!), or for kids with extended periods of illness who have to do school at home. The idea of homeschooling is foreign to the French mind, and is met with incredulity.
This system is called CNED and it is what we’ll be doing this year. When I told Elliot I’d be basically homeschooling him in French, his face was a study in disbelief and horror. “You?” he squeaked. I could see his point, since he’s fluent and can pass for a French kid, whereas I still stumble along and forget my verb tenses and spell like a 6 year old. (When we were in France, in public people would hear the kids and think we were a French family, until Donn or I opened our mouths and spoiled the illusion)
I would like to put them into an American school for a year. The American and the French systems are really different, and since they plan on going to university here, it’d be nice for them to have some idea of what to expect, some common ground with their future classmates. But there’s no way I’m risking taking them out of the French system. CNED keeps us in, keeps us current. Next year, they’ll simply transfer to a school in Morocco.
We’re still waiting to get it set up; that’s another topic, a painful one. I’d hoped to have it all done by now but unfortunately it’s still in process. But I’ll let you know how it goes, when the teacher knows less than the pupils and the mom knows less than the kids. Should be a fun year!
Spring: when young men’s fancy turns to love, and the French go on strike. Yes it’s the season for the greve again. The children are excited, hoping that their teachers belong to the unions with the most demands.
Elliot stayed home from school on Thursday because his teacher was on strike, but the twins (in different classes) had school. This is how it goes. There are many teachers’ unions, and individuals join them rather than schools as a whole. You never know when your child will bring home a note announcing a day off. But since the teachers strike individually, usually only one or two out of three kids will have a striking teacher. Usually, each year one child will have a teacher who strikes noticeably more often than the others. The other children envy this child.
Spring is the season though—beginning now through about May, in France, airlines and trains and busses, teachers and nurses, will go on strike. Effects will trickle down here to this former French colony, where travelers will get stuck in Paris en route to Nouakchott, or the school’s nurse won’t be there the day your kid throws up in the corner of the sandy courtyard during recess. I don’t know why the longer days and burgeoning bulbs bring out these tendencies. The only thing I can come up with is that it’s an excuse to get a day off work to enjoy the season.
We lived in the French Alps for a year—an incredibly lovely year. We didn’t have a car so we walked about 6 miles a day, enjoying the changing seasons and the light on the mountains that surrounded our town. Walking so much freed us to enjoy all that France has to offer in the way of good food and drink without gaining too much weight. We found the French welcoming and generous, patient with our accents and limited vocabulary.
Elliot was 8 that year and the twins were 6, learning how to read and acquiring beautiful French accents, the better to mock our sorry attempts at the French ‘r’. For 2 weeks each that winter, their classes had swimming lessons during morning school. Elliot’s class had them first, in early December. We packed his swim trunks and a bonnet (warm cap) for afterwards, when he walked out into freezing air with wet hair. This was following school instructions: the French don’t trust you to come up with this on your own.
He looked forward to swim class for weeks and went off that morning in great excitement, but there was a huge difference in his comportment when we picked him up at noon for lunch. You could see the rain cloud, a la Eeyore, literally hanging over his head. He was depressed and, unusual for him, quiet about it over lunch.
We kept questioning him—“How was it? Did you have fun? What did you do?” He kept not answering, and this from a kid who usually won’t stop talking.
He was so depressed that we, loving and concerned parents, began to get really worried. Finally, in desperation, we asked that question that every parent dreads having to ask—did anyone touch you? Still, he shook his head.
Eventually we got it out of him. Oh the shame, the horror. In France, it transpired, it is the law that males wear Speedo-style swimwear in public schools. As West-Coast Americans, the males in our family all owned baggy swim trunks, or even in the case of the surfing father, board shorts. It had never in our wildest dreams occurred to us that any “free” country would pass an actual law about this—especially a country so relaxed in general on the concept of swimwear or not.
So they did make you wear your underwear? we asked Elliot. “No, they had an extra swimsuit for me,” he muttered, head still down. Did the other kids make fun of you? “No, they were all wearing the same kind of swimsuits.” All this drama for…what exactly? It took us hours to get our heart-rates back to normal, and days to recover from the morbid imaginings we’d come up with.
We had to buy him a new swimsuit and, since it was December, they were only available at the sporting goods store. 22 euros for Speedo brand—ouch. We were able to find fitted shorts, which eased his trauma. When it was Abel’s turn 2 weeks later, they told us Elliot’s were too big on him so we bought him the underwear-style. He didn’t mind—in fact he liked them. He’s a little exhibitionist at heart.
I asked every single French person that I knew the reason for this law. “It’s hygiene,” they told me. According to them, before this law was passed, French men would wear their swim trunks as shorts. They would eat meals, and wipe their hands on their pants, and then go into the pool where bits of lunch would float off into the water. So why not pass laws about manners? Don’t be silly. I asked why that was less hygienic than wearing Speedos as underwear, under your shorts-cum-napkin, but I never did get a good answer.
We have friends who are living in the same lovely Alpine town this year, studying French at the same school we went to. They recently sent us an email—they had tried to go swimming, and the man was turned away because he had swim trunks instead of Speedo-style. The answer for him? He bought a new swimsuit at a vending machine provided at the pool for just this kind of emergency. Hmmm… Are you thinking the real reason for this law is the same as I’m thinking?
