Francophile

Definition: "markedly friendly to France or French culture." -- Webster's Ninth New College Dictionary

J'aime la France, sûrtout la Provence.

Parlez-vous français? Si oui, j'aimerais bien que vous me contacteriez. Voilà mon adresse: ajctravels@yahoo.com

OK, I'll cut the French for now and just let you know that, as my resume indicates, I consider myself highly conversant in this "language of love" -- despite my slightly less-than-impeccable accent. I truly enjoy the challenge of speaking a foreign language. I find that my personality shifts in some indescribable way when I'm speaking French or speaking Spanish. It's as though my "frenchness" resides within a particular partition of my brain that is not accessible to me when I'm speaking English. Really! C'est vrai! If you don't believe me, check out this LA Times' article about the brain's "dictionary." It's quite fascinating!

I enjoy traveling in France. It seems I find myself there on vacation every few years or so. Paris is divine but Nice is nice, too! I love sitting by the big fountains at Place Massena in Nice and visiting Chagall's Musee National Message Biblique. There are still many regions of France that I have yet to visit.
Here's a photo of me with a friend's daughter taken in 1994 in Castres, which is located in the Tarn, about an hour east of Toulouse in the southwest of France. If you'd like travel information, here's a few web locations you might want to browse: Francescape, Les Pages de Paris, or French Places to Visit on the www.

Whether you speak French or not, if you're someone who loves French things, you might want to see how you score on the "Are you a francophile?" quiz. Check it out. You'll have to leave my site to take this quiz, so don't forget to come back when you've got your score.

My ability to speak French is due to having lived and worked in the desert of West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. In addition to total immersion in the French language, I had the privilege of a cross-cultural experience living in a remote part of the world -- the Republic of Niger.

My assignment as the director of a small visual aid studio was a portent of my soon-to-be career in publications:

Director of Interdepartmental Graphics Studio
United States Peace Corps, Republic of Niger, West Africa. Worked in partnership with the Niger government's health and agriculture departments to produce educational materials and visual aids for both French- and Hausa-speaking audiences.

Africa is awesome. There are many different peoples of West Africa: the Tuareg, Bouzu, Fulani, Djerma, to name a few. In Zinder, where I lived, people were Hausa origin (a population divided by old colonial boundary lines: some live Nigeria, previously occupied English; others Niger, former French colony). second largest language group Africa after Swahili.

The country of Niger is almost all desert -- 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade on most days. In the photo below, a village woman is teaching me how to pound millet, a major source of protein in the African diet. And that's me on my first camel ride. Jibo, the guardian, had talked some Tuareg nomads into the idea of starting a small "rent-a-camel business" on market day (every Thursday in the town of Zinder).

As you can see, compared to my passport photo on the right, I had quite a tan after two years in Niger. If you'd like more information about Niger, point your browser to the Friends of Niger website, which features beautiful photos of Niger and its people. If you'd like information on the Peace Corps and how to apply, visit www.peacecorps.gov.

One of my favorite memories was learning to dance the tango with Frenchmen. Yes, that's right -- not with Latinos, but with French men in West Africa. Little did I know that later (in 1994) I would see one of my favorite paintings in the Musee de Beaux Art, Nice: "The Tango of the Archangel," by Kees Van Dongen, circa 1935.

And now, back to our story: Once upon a time . . .

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