A displaced immersion

Hurricane Laura displaced many Louisiana residents, and as it turns out, it also displaced a French teacher from the South of France. Jessica Marie-Capseta and her family had just arrived in the United States when she was told she would not be able to teach French as planned at a school in Lake Charles.
Marie-Capseta is from Carcassonne, a small village of about 500 people in the South of France. She describes it as “a beautiful town with a medieval castle.” There, she was an elementary school teacher. “It’s a really tiny school. There are just two classrooms. So I had in the same time from the 2nd grade to the 5th grade which were 15 students,” she said. Her husband, Adrien, was a truck driver and volunteer fireman in France. They have a son, Ethan, who is eight years old, and a daughter, Jade, who is six.
Though she loves her home, her desire of discovering new people and culture made her want to experience life abroad. “My husband and I thought it would be a great experience for our family to apply to the French immersion program in Louisiana,” she said. They chose Louisiana because “it is a multicultural state and for history, it’s interesting to discover it, the relationships between my culture and yours.”
Marie-Capseta and her husband found coming to the United States a bit difficult because of all the red tape they had to go through because of the pandemic. “It was a bit difficult because of all the papers and administrative steps we had to do, with the pandemic, it’s less easy. But it’s everywhere the same situation. We were not very worried because the pandemic is all over the world, including in France. We just have to respect the security measures and adapt our daily habits,” she said.
According to Evangeline Parish School Board Assistant Superintendent Michael Lombas, Marie-Capseta and her family arrived at the Houston airport right after Hurricane Laura tore through southwest Louisiana. Customs asked the family what they were doing there. She told them she was going to teach in Lake Charles, and they said “No, you’re not,” and then explained the situation with the hurricane. She eventually found out her new school in Lake Charles was damaged, and Calcasieu Parish could not keep her.
Lombas said the family then rented a car, drove to Louisiana, and they contacted CODOFIL which found them a place to stay. “Then it was a matter of finding a place for her to teach, and they knew we were short a teacher,” he said. “We had one who was supposed to come from Belgium, but right before she was supposed to come, she backed out because COVID-19 was on the upswing again, so we didn’t have a teacher. CODOFIL asked if we would have Marie-Capseta, and we said, ‘Absolutely! Absolutely we’ll be happy to have her!’”
When the Marie-Capseta family was finally settled in Evangeline Parish, Lombas said they needed their apartment furnished, so there was a call-to-action put in place, asking for donations of home furnishings. Marie-Capseta thanked the people of Evangeline Parish, saying, “People in Ville Platte and the area helped us a lot, and I would like to take the advantage of this interview to thank them for their generosity. It has really helped us a lot. I am aware we are lucky to have had this amazing welcome. Now we are okay and our house is a cozy home thanks to the community.”
Now that she’s teaching her native language to a group of fourth-graders at Ville Platte Elementary, Marie-Capseta plans to get them excited about French by showing the link between Louisiana and France, giving them positive parallels between the two. “I hope it will produce the desire to discover new culture and new people in their future life. For me it’s an important value to be a good citizen of the world,” she said, adding, “I have a good group of students who are really interested by French language.”
When asked how she and her family are adjusting to life in Louisiana, Marie-Capseta said, “We try to start building relationships with our neighbors or colleagues. We are interested in the culture, we want to discover all of Louisiana’s habits and in French we say ‘terroir.’ For the moment we haven’t had time to do some cultural activities or tourism, but we plan to do them, and of course discover the Cajun cuisine.”