My Journey in France - Part 1
I joined my Master's program at EMLV for 1 year. It was an amazing experience. I met very nice friends, went to a lot of parties, and it was fun. I can say I got used to the metro very early because of the night hops we did in bars. It was fun. Châtelet was always our corner — a lot of people. If you put a gun to my head, even with zero bullets, I won't go back there again.
Time went fast, faster than where I come from. Every day was a new marathon, always moving. I don't know how these people do it without getting cramps in their legs. After 6 months, I completed the program and got an internship at Urban Hub. It was my first job in France. With my little French lesson I took in Kenya, plus the one that was offered for free at university, I couldn't understand what my colleagues said. The good thing is, I completed and graduated successfully.
Because of the language, a new personality kicked in. My brain was not able to follow French conversations well, so my default personality was to observe, listen, and react to what I understood — and not to talk much. I have heard many times that the Russian language is the most difficult, but the French language is another beast. The informal and formal ways of talking make the language two in one.
After 4 years of living in France, my French is not yet good enough to work in a French-only environment. Part of it has been driven by my laziness, not working hard enough to learn the language… I know. But if I were to start again, I would have learnt the fundamentals first. My teacher told me that learning French is one thing, and learning with the proper fundamentals is another thing. Getting the basic grammar and spelling and building up from there makes the language flow better. For me, it was different. I heard a lot of words in French; I knew the meaning and how to pronounce them, but writing was difficult. Let me stop the TED talk on French because I can write about the French language for the whole day.
After Urban Hub, I started a project called formalitee.ai — an assistance tool to help internationals moving to France understand the administrative procedures. I put all my time, sweat, and money into it. I faced a few challenges when running the project. Firstly, there are a lot of scams happening in this industry; people are not ready to pay if they do not trust that they will get a good service. Secondly, it is quite a technical field for someone like me, who doesn't have a background in immigration.
To be continued...