our study abroad program plans to immerse students in the languages and cultures of African people. You will review and improve your French language skills and experience some local African languages on a daily basis. To be able to communicate we have teachers for day-to-day intensive teaching. Students will break the language barriers. The activities are focused on two (2) aspects:  language training and cross culture discovery.

These practical aspects of training demonstrate to students the connection between language and culture in a given society. Our program helps students explore the whole life of the community. Your home stay gives you the opportunity to practice local languages. Subsequently, the local language class is the village community as a whole.

An advisor coordinates your apprenticeship and provides the explanation you need about what you see, what you hear, who you meet. Throughout the day, you practice both language and culture with your host family. You begin to use language in a variety of contexts as you immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of cities and villages during your trips through the country. Your courses are focused on your conversational skills, and your active participation in/out of class activities is encouraged in the surrounding African community. Your journey, your excursion, your cruise toward the countryside, your exploration of famous beautiful places is sustained by an active practice of culture and languages.

When it is time to leave your host family, the country and the African land, you will feel that you have experienced a new way of life and learned more about Africa and its cultures.You learned more about yourself as well and that your journey has been wealthy, both metaphorically and literally.

In Africa, as elsewhere, a society is subdivided into subgroups which do not have either the same level of life or consequently the same way of life. It turns out that we will be able to convince ourselves of that, through an analysis of the mask functions in traditional societies, because it plays a fundamental role in the allotment and the handover of power.

It's a question of a double function which is both religious and political:

☻First of all religious function, because wizards, the priests and the elders have at their disposal and they carry out secret retreats, and the ritual dialogue with the spiritual powers: the only ones who can be deposited are as such, the only ones authorized to organize and to conduct the initiation rites.
☻Then, a political function, because during those ceremonies, knowledge and know-how are handed over, and through them, the respect due to the elders and to the powers they personify.

In the sacred forest, masters reveal the elect of the new generation, the secrets of the great fetishes and the worshiped masks that codify the economic, political, religious and social organization of the community. So the social role of the mask is quite central, since it reveals the secret of what is sacred and sets up the divine character of the power: when the masks get out, address the people, the one who speaks is nothing but a spokesman, and the message he delivers, transcends and surpasses him.