Les Petits Mots
I spent first through eighth grade at the Milwaukee French Immersion School. Like many (most?) schools in the United States, we had a spring concert every year. Each class sang a song in French and maybe did a dance, and then, as a whole school, we sang a song called “Les P’tits Mots” (Little Words). If there were alums of the school in the audience, they were invited up on stage, too. The gist of the song is that the little everyday words we exchange with people around us in our day-to-day lives may seem small and unimportant, but, in fact, they’re words of love. Words that matter. Here’s an English translation of the lyrics. Here’s a version of the song sung by iconic Italian-French singer and actress, Dalida.
I’ve been thinking about that song a lot lately. A whole lot. I’ve been thinking about human connection. About kindness. About the people we meet for a brief period who in some way make our lives richer. About saying hello and thank you. About learning people’s names. Especially when we travel, but also in our everyday lives.
These are things that I reflect on with some regularity, but they’ve been particularly central and meaningful to me the last 4 months or so. You see, my husband, Patrick, and I just got home to Milwaukee from an awe-inspiring, fun, beautiful, and moving 4-month adventure through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Italy, France, Portugal, Senegal, England, and then across the Atlantic on an ocean liner. I’m still shaking my head in awe and slight disbelief at the journey.
It was charmed. It was everything we could have wanted and more. We were lucky.
But we’re also, ultimately, optimists, and that impacted our trip probably in more ways than I know. I’m an extrovert. Patrick is an introvert. But we both like people. Yes, sometimes things are a bit uncertain when we’re in situations we don’t fully understand. And it’s easy to worry about being taken advantage of. But as Patrick reminded us in 2025 when we went on our second visit to Marrakech and were not looking forward to the bargaining in the medina and souks that is part of the culture, these negotiations are conversations. Conversations that can be friendly. They don’t have to be, and, indeed, shouldn’t be, adversarial. Negotiations in markets are made up of those little words of everyday life that matter and build connection.
Those little words are what I kept coming back to over and over again on our trip. From a conversation with a woman, Evangeline, who was selling her husband's carvings on a rural gravel road in Namibia to the way people’s faces in Mozambique lit up when I said “thank you” in Tsonga, their local language, to the woman I bought delicious (and inexpensive!) baguettes and croissants from across the street from our rented apartment in Nice, France to the men I had a prolonged and laughter-filled negotiation with while buying a gift for a friend in Dakar, Senegal, I was filled with emotion over the importance of these little words of life. I certainly hope these encounters and so many others from our trip made the lives of the people I was talking with a little brighter because they definitely made mine better.
These are the words that remind us of our connections with strangers. Of the fact that no matter our backgrounds, we’re all pretty similar. Of the fact that most people are good. Of course, I don’t speak the language(s) of most places I visit so it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure when I’m in a place where I don’t understand what’s being said around me. But here’s the thing — with a little bit of effort, it’s easy to learn “hello” and “thank you” and to ask people for their names (and remember them). They’re little words. Simple things. And yet so huge and important. So, I now make a conscious effort to do these things when I travel. I hope you’ll join me in that, in speaking these little words of love out into the world.
