My conversation partner is named Kevin Ioic Balma. He is from Burkina Faso. He has been in the US for less than a year.
When we first met and I asked him where he was from, he told me that, he was from “Africa.” I pressed him to tell me where in Africa and he told me, “West Africa.” I smiled a little because I felt I knew what was going on. So, I changed our conversation a bit by talking about my sister telling him that she had always wanted to go to Mali and Burkina Faso to visit the Dogon people and study the art in that region. But she was hampered by the fact that she didn’t speak French. She instead wrote (and was awarded) a Fulbright grant to do research in Ghana, which is the nearest English speaking African country, and just south of Burkina Faso. We both laughed when I told him that she travelled a lot that year.
That broke the ice and we talked about the places we had both visited in Africa and in the US.
His spoken English was very good but he told me that all his years of English instruction in Burkina Faso had been in French. He welcomed the opportunity for conversation.
Since Tuesday, we have had two brief exchanges via email and I have forwarded him the email addresses and phone numbers of my Ghanaian friends in Tallahassee.
I was I last person to leave class on Tuesday and had planned to take the elevator in Kellogg Hall. But when the doors opened on the 4th floor, there was a huge cockroach already riding the elevator. I took the stairs.
Sounds like you guys are off to a great start! Hopefully you guys can attend some Ghanaian parties together!
ReplyDeleteYeah, that cockroach was a chemistry professor from the 80s who used to work in the Kellog building. He's actually a nice guy once you get to know him ;)