If I could go back in time......

If I could turn back the hands of time, It would be to navigate the job staring me in the face.

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I sighed as I typed, I'm sorry Ebuka, you'll need to give this job to someone else.

As much as I hated to disappoint, I felt it was better to turn down the job than to deliver less value than expected. It wasn't a job I couldn't handle, I had just lost the expertise I needed for it.

It was barely 6 am when my phone began to ring. I pressed the power button of my phone to turn off the sound then checked the caller ID to see who it was.

“Hello?” I said when I saw it was Ebuka, my childhood friend.

“Mama,” he called fondly, “You're still sleeping” I groaned as I lifted myself from the bed. I slept by 2 am that morning and the last thing I was expecting was a call from one of my friends that early. I knew for him to call me by that time, something was definitely up and it was going to be important.

“I barely slept at night. What do you want?”

I could hear him chuckle at the other end of the phone. “You're being rude to your destiny helper. Get up. I have a job for you”

That was all I needed to hear to be as alert as someone who just enjoyed a beauty sleep session.

“What's this job about?”

I listened to him talk about being an accountability coach to foreigners and I was just as excited as he was until he told me I had to communicate with them in French.

“But why?”

“That's the requirement for the job. They're francophones”

I stared at my phone for almost a full minute before saying “Let me get back to you Ebuka. I'm not thinking straight at the moment”

When he hung up, I rushed to my carton full of books to get my French pamphlets. My eyes ran through them scanning for the pamphlet that held French conjugations. That was the foundation I needed.

I spent the next 2 hours trying to see if I could still effectively hold a conversation in French. It was a bit rusty but I thought I could manage with it so I called Ebuka back.

“I can do your job. How much is the pay and what are the requirements?”

“You have to work 15 hours weekly and be fluent in French. You'll get paid $19 per hour”

I dropped my mouth. That was a lot of money but there was a problem. My French was no longer fluent.

The last time I did anything french related was in 2015 when I assisted my school daughters in boarding school with their French assignments. And I told Ebuka so.

“Maybe you just need a little brush-up. This job is a huge one and I wouldn't want you to lose it”

I thanked him and went back to my French pamphlets. I remember being awarded second-best at the end of my French program at the French Institute. I had done a full monologue about myself in French and now that I needed it the most, I could barely remember a sentence.

I wanted desperately to believe that the language I loved so much was not completely lost to me so I went on YouTube and began to watch short clips in French. I even downloaded 3 French movies and some French songs that I remembered had been used to teach us at the institute.

When Ebuka called me later that evening, I was stressed, sleepy, and frustrated.

“I still don't have your reply. Please give me some more time” I pleaded. As he dropped the call, the realization of the situation hit me.

I knew at that moment that I needed to take ‘multilingual’ off my bio on Facebook and WhatsApp. I had lost my French because I failed to keep up with it. At the institute, I was too intimidated by the luxury of my colleagues to try to make friends with them.

If I had done so, I would have kept someone who would have made me consistent with the language.

“You can download the Duolingo app and brush your French up mama. I don't think you should feel bad simply because it got rusty, instead this should motivate you to do better” Ebuka said in response to my reply.

I knew he was right but I kept wishing I had a chance to go back and just keep up with my French instead of letting it die out because apart from regretting that I was missing out on that particular job, I was unhappy about losing a skill I had prided myself in.