thoughts on my francophonie

Suddenly pro-French...(7/6/2006)
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

My interest in Africa was born out of my thirst to learn the French language and discover all of the countries in which that language would allow me to communicate, known as la francophonie. That interest in Africa has now grown and eclipsed my interest in the French language and in la francophonie, for reasons that I will discuss here, but I thought that the "francophone situation" in Togo deserved a blog entry.

Why was I first interested in the French language? It was because French allowed me to take part in another culture and exist in the medium of that culture. Well, French only allows me to take part in Togolese culture to a limited, but sometimes suprisingly great, extent. When you speak French in Togo you aren't speaking French as much as you are speaking, what is and what is perceived as, a "white" language. So when you speak French in Togo you don't really get the feeling that you are participating in someone else's culture, rather you may feel that you are just grazing the surface of their culture incapable of fully participating or worse reinforcing French culture at the expense of the local culture. Those facts do not fuel my enthousiasm about the French language, or my ability to speak it, that I have when elsewhere in the francophonie. On the other hand, you are, I fave found, highly regarded by Togolese who have attended school if you speak a French well.

Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop describes la francophonie so well when he says that it is divided into two parts, the areas where it is imposed and is not the language of hearts or minds, and the areas where it is the native language of the inhabitants. That division weighs heavily on my perception of la francophonie now, not because it is bad to impose a language on others, afterall the major european languages like French were only regional languages until being imposed on whole countries, but because a language is really interesting to learn when, as I have said, it allows you to truly participate in another culture, and a language can only do that if it is the language in which that culture dreams and thinks and feels...so bring on Hausa and Kotokoli and Ewe and Tchamba and Ani...the local languages that surround me...languages that inhabit the hearts of the people I live with in Togo.

Maybe one day French will become the language of the hearts of the Togolese, like spanish seems to have done in Latino America and afterall my ancestors surely didn't have English flowing in their vains as I do, but I think a majority of Togolese would say that French will never be the language of their hearts and minds. What is interesting is that when Togolese or Francophone Africans travel away from areas where their native languages are spoken, French quickly sounds much more like the language of their hearts. I believe this is because when they travel away and speak French, they are just trying to transmit their feelings as sincerely and accurately as possible in the language that can be understood. If they were to speak French in their native languages' areas of dominance that would not be the case, they would be speaking their second or third or fourth language, IE French, and thus their words would not be as sincere or as accurate as they could be if their words had been spoken in the languages that their hearts and minds operate in. Outside the areas of dominance of their native languages, French becomes the most sincere and accurate way available for "francophone Africans" to make themselves understood.

La Francophonie is still interesting and French is still an important language to learn, as was proven to me last evening as I translated between two Senegalese and a Ghanean customs officer, but la francophonie and the French language aren't as rich as I had thought them before...

2006-2008 has been an period of change for the Francophonie, in France Jacques Chirac, a mainstay of the old school Françafrique leaders influenced by Jacques Foccart, has left power. In Africa, the African intellectuals that brought French Africa into independence are quickly passing away, both Ousmane Sembène and Aimé Césaire have been buried, and Léopold Sédar Senghor preceded them by a few years in 2001. A few old school Françafrique leaders remain in power however, among them Omar Bongo and Paul Biya. It is also worth noting that Radio France International, a key entry point of France in Africa, expanded its FM coverage in Togo during the period 2006-2008. I am a die-hard listener of RFI and I am not proposing that it has a negative effect but one can be aware of its influence in Africa.