A little taste of Africa

We meet in her small shop in the centre of Wiltz. Despite the address and the help of Google Maps, it takes several minutes to find the right place in a small adjacent street, the shop window being hidden by scaffolding that has been there for a good week. A few customers are there while Epiphanie Negham stands behind her desk, which doubles as a cash register and depository for overseas cash transfers, a new business she has been trying out for a few weeks.

Opening her own shop took a few years, but Epiphanie Negham is sure it's what she wanted. "I come from a family of entrepreneurs, it's a mindset that doesn't suit everyone, but depression and too much stress were waiting for me if I continued as an employee."

Never heard of Luxembourg

The young woman came to Luxembourg directly from Cameroon in 2009 to complete a Bachelor's degree in management at the University of Luxembourg. A friend told her about the Grand Duchy: "Of course, in Africa I had never heard of this country, but I wanted to study in Europe and this friend I knew had come to work there. She told me good things about it, because that's when I decided to study there", she says with a smile. Once she graduated, she looked for work in the insurance sector, in connection with her studies. She even trained to become an insurance agent, but she was soon caught up in languages: "I was asked to speak all the languages of the country, plus English. I learned Luxembourgish, but it's complicated, and I never learned German, so I was stuck."