(This interview was conducted in 2022)
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From Ivory Coast to Salluit: A French teacher settles down in Nunavik. Having fallen in love with his community in the Far North, he already knows that he will stay here until he retires!
Mian Bosson teaches Grade 3 French at Pigiurvik School in Salluit. For many children, French is the third language they learn after Inuktitut and English, which are more common in northern communities. When they arrive in his class, French is therefore new to many of his students.
Letters, the alphabet, nursery rhymes, songs . . . with Mian, French is learned through play. He and his wife Maimounata Kamagaté, also a French teacher who ventured north and now teaches at the same school, are responsible for the students’ breakfast each morning. Mian loves this moment when they get to welcome the kids: “Who wants to eat an apple, who wants a banana, cereal?” Mian explains: “without feeling like they are in the classroom, it’s a fun way for them to name fruits, and for us to introduce a little French into their daily lives.”
While the school is at the heart of their lives, Mian and his wife Mouna, as all the children affectionately call her, also quickly became friends with the people of the Salluit community. “We participate in all their activities. The funerals, the gatherings . . . we’re there. There are many similarities between people from the North and people from Africa. Here people live in a community, the same as in Africa.” Although his three sons live in Gatineau, where they are busy pursuing their education, Mian has no intention of leaving the North.
I came north, and I don’t see myself going anywhere else or doing another job. I was born to teach. And I will retire here in Salluit.