This is the story of my life so far: 68 years and counting.
Prequel: A Brief History of my Family in France
The story starts here
Previous episode: Part 86
When Syrille and Gaëlle arrived in France from Cameroon, they were basically illegal immigrants. The only identity papers they had were their Cameroonian birth certificates. And on these birth certificates, the year of birth of their mother, Madel, has been modified from 1963 to 1968. For Syrille that was supposed to be born when his mother was only twelve years old, this could have seemed suspicious, but nobody ever made any remark about that.
However, that did not prevent them to go to school. At this time at least, the schools would not object to welcome a child that was living in its catchment. So, Gaëlle went to pre-school as soon as she arrived, and the three others, Roseline, Betty, and Syrille went to elementary school.
Gaëlle who knew no French at all when she arrived was very quick to learn, mostly by interacting with her siblings and the other children at the pre-school. Before Christmas 1987, she was able to have an intelligible conversation with us.
For the pronunciation, she had a hard time mastering the 'R' as it is pronounced by most French people. She tried to pronounce it as the 'J' in Spanish. It took her several more months to get the correct sound.
At the dinner table, Gaëlle was sitting on my left. Often, in the middle of a conversation between myself and the other children, she would pull my arm and say "Papa, papa ...". To teach her that it was not correct to interrupt a conversation, I would ignore her, until there was an opportunity. Then, when asked what she wanted to tell me, she would look very sad and tell us: "A cause de vous, j'sais plus c'que j'voulais dire!" (Because of you all, I don't know anymore what I wanted to say!).
There was a small courtyard at the back of the house in Fresnes, with a cherry tree. The children were able to play there after school. And they were climbing on the cherry tree, of course.
Roseline had a desire to grow plants. On the front of the house, she had planted some strawberry plants, and every day, after school she was checking the fruits, that were slowly becoming red.
One day, she was sadly disappointed to discover that the strawberries were gone: Syrille, that has returned from school before her, had picked them and eaten them. More than 30 years later, we are still talking about this incident!
[If my children are reading this, and I hope they will, and I made some mistakes, please tell me before the seven days period]
Continue to Part 88
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Summary
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7
Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14
Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21
Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24 - Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28
Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31 - Part 32 - Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35
Part 36 - Part 37 - Part 38 - Part 39 - Part 40 - Part 41 - Part 42
Part 43 - Part 44 - Part 45 - Part 46 - Part 47 - Part 48 - Part 49
Part 50 - Part 51 - Part 52 - Part 53 - Part 54 - Part 55 - Part 56
Part 57 - Part 58 - Part 59 - Part 60 - Part 61 - Part 62 - Part 63
Part 64 - Part 65 - Part 66 - Part 67 - Part 68 - Part 69 - Part 70
Part 71 - Part 72 - Part 73 - Part 74 - Part 75 - Part 76 - Part 77
Part 78 - Part 79 - Part 80 - Part 81 - Part 82 - Part 83 - Part 84
Part 85 - Part 86