This is story #37 in the series “Where Exactly is Home?”. The author recommends you read them in order.
Introduction:
“Where Exactly is Home?” follows the story of my parents, my two younger brothers and me, Susan, who emigrated from war-battered Britain, in the mid-late 1950’s, to Southern Rhodesia, Africa.
The effects of this move on our family were huge, as we struggled to adapt to such a different way of life. Only after further upheaval, and more long-distance travelling, did our family eventually settle in the city of Salisbury, Rhodesia.
However, we did not know then that we would not remain there for the rest of our lives, either.
When the family first went to Africa, I, Susan, was 9 years old. My two brothers, John and Peter, were almost 7 and 4, respectively.
Nowadays, as seniors, John and Peter live in England. I live in Canada. Throughout our lives, we have both benefitted from, and suffered because of, our somewhat unusual childhood.
I, for one, still sometimes ask myself which country represents home to me.
This is a series of stories under the title “Where Exactly is Home?” – I recommend you read them in order, starting with story #1.
37. A Year in Auvergne
I have always enjoyed reading books by Peter Mayle, a British journalist who chronicled his experience of living in Provence, in the south of France. These tales, full of humour, wit, patience and more, are as much a depiction of the French character as of the countryside around. The writer, having purchased and wishing to renovate a villa, records his interactions with the local French. To me, the books “A Year in Provence” and its sequels, “Toujours Provence” and “Encore Provence”, are hilarious because they so truly describe, to my mind, at least, the character of the southern Frenchman: his pride, his passions, his laid-back attitude, and his generally innate distrust of foreigners.
During the year I lived in Murat, Cantal, Auvergne, I, too, experienced much of the typical French character, though I never met with hostility. The difference between my experience and that of Peter Mayle, was that I was in a hard, stony, backwater of a tiny village, very different from the brightly painted stuccoed villas with their red tiled roofs, all set amidst the beautiful countryside in the milder weather of Provence.
To start, I was the only foreigner for miles and miles, and, because I came from Rhodesia, I was considered an anomaly. Very few foreigners came to this part of France, which was high up on a plateau, a difficult terrain to cope with, and, although pretty in summer with the wildflowers, very bleak for the rest of the year, when the weather could be atrocious, and the temperatures drop to minus 25C or worse.
I was contracted to give English conversation practice to small groups of students in their final year of high school, but the headmistress, who had obviously not had previous experience of hiring “assistant(e)s” like me, didn’t permit this. I didn’t know then what she had in store for me, but I was too young, too intimidated, too inexperienced to object. I was almost speechless when I found myself aged 20 with no teaching qualifications at all, no materials, no books, no resources of any kind, nothing except my own ideas, standing alone in front of 30 or more students who had just begun their first year of high school English.
