Parlez-tapaai French?

As I came out of my Nepali language class yesterday I was accosted by the secretary, who asked if I could speak French. There was a francophone gentleman here who didn't speak any English or Nepali, and no one could figure out what he wanted. I said I'd try.

The man turned out to be from Montreal (which surprised me, because both his accent, and the fact he spoke no English, suggested France), and wanted to take pictures of patients in the hospital. He was going to then take them back to Canada and publish a photo book that could raise money for the hospital. A nice idea, but I suspected someone's permission needed to be asked when someone just shows up off the street with a suggestion like this.

But the biggest problem was I was completely unable to say anything in French. I could understand everything he said, but each time I opened my mouth, out came Nepali. Ramro, I mean, bonne ideé. The Nepalis watching were all laughing at my predicament. Eventually, I got my head together enough to get across that I would have to check, and could he come back in a couple of hours, and we could sort it out.

I got permission, and reinforcements in Elle, who, with a name like that, ought to be able to speak French. She was a bit late arriving, so I got more of the story of our mystery gentleman. He's 72, has no family, and is travelling in Nepal because he wasn't allowed to go to Tibet. He was originally from France and used to do filming for the National Broadcasting Corporation there, but had since moved to Montreal. He was just getting going on telling me how much he didn't like Canadians (he did know that was where I was from) when thankfully Elle arrived to change the topic. He re-explained his idea, and when she was able to get a word in edgewise, I was amused to see Elle having exactly the same problem I did. Our foreign language mode right now is Nepali, and it's hard to access anything else.

It was a bit surreal – my French vocabulary is still better than my Nepali – it felt good to be listening to someone speak a foreign language and understand more than I am able to yet with Nepali. Yet I could barely communicate in French - the words I could understand him speaking, I was having trouble accessing whenever I tried to say anything myself. Funny the way the brain works. My spoken French got better with a bit of practice, but then annoyingly all afternoon, I was saying Oui instead of Hajur.