How languages changed my life: I was born near Ypres in Belgium, not far from the French border. I grew up being surrounded by Flemish and French. Flemish is very similar to Dutch. You could say it is Geordie-Dutch.
One of my first summer jobs was working in a hotel in Blankenberge, on the coast. The hotel was used a lot by English school groups coming over for World War I history trips. That is where I picked up my first words of English.
Both French and Flemish were taught in primary and continued until you finished secondary school. At 16, you had to choose a direction. I didn’t have a clue what to choose, but since my mum told me that as a toddler, I was good at copying sounds, I chose Modern Foreign Languages and took on German and English.
From Belgium to Nigeria
I met my husband when I was studying to become a teacher of English, French with History in the university town of Leuven. He had come from Nigeria to study medicine. It was something that his father had arranged. What his father forgot to mention, was that he was going to have to do this in Flemish! After spending a few summer months in an intensive language course, he was allowed to start. I was keen to try out the English that I was learning. At that time, a new trend had started ‘jogging’. My husband invited me to go ‘jogging’. I honestly believed that this was a special kind of running. I was so disappointed to discover that it was nothing but …running.
After graduating, we got married in Lagos, Nigeria. There, I learnt the wonderfully expressive ever-evolving Pidgin English. I also learnt a little of my husband’s native language Yoruba which I find to be a most poetic language. My first job was working in a fashion house, Trinity House of Fashion, ran by a Nigerwife. Nigerwives is a 60-year-old organisation of foreign women married to Nigerians who help settle women who have newly arrived. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Nigeria.
However, my husband wanted to specialise in the UK, but finding a place proved difficult. Instead, we went to the beautiful Zimbabwe. I was lucky to be able to work for the Embassy of Belgium, thanks to my language knowledge. After specialising, my husband did find the opportunity to go to the UK, thanks to a very good English friend and colleague.
Life and work in the North East of England
30 years on – I have now lived in the North East of England longer than I have ever lived in my own country.
After working in various places, I wanted to learn more about business, and I was given the opportunity to do a master’s in Business and Administration at the University of Durham. However, I ended up teaching French and German in a school in Sunderland, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We set up an exchange programme with a school in Guebwiller (France) and Gengenbach (Germany). The young people stayed with the family of their pen pals and so were exposed to the language a lot more. It was no surprise that the school had top GCSE results in languages during those years of the exchange.
Then disaster struck. My husband became very ill and I became a carer overnight. We thank God for his healing, but after that, I decided not to return to full-time teaching and started doing supply teaching in various schools.
During that time, my eyes were opened to the stark differences in education in less affluent areas. Some schools also had a very high influx of new arrivals with English as an Additional Language (EAL). My family and I had become part of African community groups. Speaking to mums there, they too were worried about the education of their children. So, we decided to do something about it, which led to setting up our first Learning Hub, 15 years ago, with the support of Newcastle University. Later we became Success4All, an education charity with an education philosophy based on two African proverbs: ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’ and ‘Each one, Teach One’.
Our Learning Hubs are homely learning environments where children & young people can learn and take part in clubs and Summer Schools. Languages are at the core of what we do. We have devised our own academic EAL-programme for new arrivals. We also enhance young people’s chances of progressing to higher education by preparing them to sit a GCSE or A-level in their home language.
‘Hand on heart’ I can say that languages changed my life, from a ‘country bumpkin’ from Flanders Fields to an international person. I feel very privileged.
Carolinee Afolabi-Deleu
- Chair of Trustees, Success4All
