2051Foreign Language Friday: “A little over a year ago I was in Africa, in Senegal. I was doing a volunteer trip, painting a wall in the middle of nowhere. It was New Year’s Day. A girl from Italy told me this, meaning ‘contextualisation’ – what is the context of what you’re doing now? She was right.

”I felt happy for the first time after a bad period of my life. It was because I understood what the real important stuff was in my life. I was helping others and surrounded by people from Senegal smiling at me. It’s something that could sound weird, but it fit me in that moment.”

Our subject, Emanuela Barbano, runs this travel blog. Taken in Berlin, Germany.