 When you learn a language you really enter a new world, you acquire a new culture, a new value system, you learn to think in a completely different way, so truly learning a new language changes the way you see the world. You get inside the hearts and the minds of the people that you would like to work with or you would like to share experience. If you want to learn a new language, you need to learn a new language. What I like is that you can learn a new language, a new language, a new language. The thing I like most about SOAS is the diversity of the student population. The atmosphere is incredible. I love coming in to work every day and having this place really in the heart of London where I come in and I feel surrounded by people from all over the world. You only really find that out when you visit other campuses and then you come back to SOAS and you realise what a diverse community we have at SOAS. So when I'm teaching them how to, I feel that paying back something to my country. For studying I'm a hurricane, SOAS is really great. I'm half Ethiopian, SOAS has really given me the opportunity to learn my language and go home and be a local. Kas per kas, on kolal, ber geru yehedal. Which means when you're learning a language or anything, despite the difficulties, if you persevere then you'll reach your goal in the end. I first started studying house in 1964 which is 50 years ago, half a century ago. I wanted to give something back to Nigeria to reciprocate the generosity and kindness they showed me by teaching the language, researching and teaching the language I really came to love. The department is truly unique in the world in the range of languages that are offered where we teach six African languages, Hausa, Yoruba, Zulu, Somali, Amhara and Swahili and also in the, I would say, non-orthodox critical approaches that we assume when we discuss issues regarding Africa. It's been a challenging experience. It's forced me to confront issues that I would never have encountered before and to rethink my own sense of self in relation to that. I'm studying African philosophy and we have a great course which introduces you to different ways of looking at the world in philosophical ways. It's also such a privilege to be able to teach exactly what it is that I am passionate about and that I've developed my expertise in, which is African film and narrative screen media. It's really through a lot of SOAS student involvement that we've been able to build up festivals like Film Africa here in London and also the Cambridge African Film Festival. I'm Sarah and I'm finishing my PhD at SOAS in Ethiopian Intellectual History and I've decided to come here both for the resources in the SOAS library and also to learn Amharic. This department is really special and really cares about each individual person and has a good ethos for trying to improve the education system and general people's perceptions. The uniqueness of SOAS is that you can combine both the teaching of the language as well as the culture and everything that's around it. It can be politics, it can be economy. Life are back around. That is, the sky or the fummen above us is big enough for everyone to fly, for birds to fly and flourish without one touching the other. So this is the place where you can flourish.