No.102: Armenia

Word of Mouth

Alex Horne – 19th and 28th June 2007

Four weeks ago, for the first time ever, I went to a restaurant and ate a three course meal plus coffee, on my own. And not just any old restaurant, Erebuni, the best and only Armenian restaurant in London.*

You’ve probably never heard of Erebuni. It’s not an omnipresent chain like Garfunkels or a glamorous draw like The Ivy. There are no celebrity chefs. In fact, if and when you eventually pinpoint the address on the inside corner of Lancaster Gate (apologies for hedging my bets with that ‘if and when’ – it’s probably ‘when’, you’ll almost certainly find it in the end, but you never know), you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d made a mistake and walking on. That’s what Owen and I did on the first of my three pilgrimages. And we forgave ourselves.

Its official address is 36-37 Lancaster Gate. But 36-37 Lancaster Gate is almost entirely a hotel; the London Guards Hotel, one of those London hotels that hasn’t changed a stitch since the war.

When people are modest you say they’re hiding their light under a bushel. Now, I don’t know what a bushel is but I’m pretty sure hiding your light under a hotel is even more extreme. I mean, if a bushel is just a bush, you’d still see a bit of the light – unless it’s a particularly dense plant. And if a bushel is actually a bucket (as some would have you believe), that’s still not nearly as well hidden as in the basement of an obscure hotel in Lancaster Gate.

After we’d called Yellow Pages and convinced ourselves that this at least used to be the right place we went in and asked at reception if he knew anything about a phantom eastern European eatery. ‘It’s in the basement’, said the bored man. ‘Where the hotel guests have their breakfast. But it’s closed now.’ Ah, of course.

We shuffled back out to the rather grandiose square and I dialled the number that the more helpful man from the Yellow Pages had thoughtfully texted me. After a good few rings, someone picked up. ‘Hello’ said what I hoped was an Armenian voice. ‘Are you there?’ I said. ‘Yes’, he said. ‘Are you the Erebuni restaurant?’ I asked. ‘I am Edward, the manager’, he said. ‘Brilliant!’ I shouted, before explaining who we were, what we were doing and why I was so happy. ‘Fine’, he said, taking the whole matter in his stride. ‘I’m normally in around seven’. ‘Great’, I said, ‘we’ll come back at seven sometime soon’.

Very soon in fact. At seven O’clock that very evening I returned, without Owen this time, and bravely descended a tiny creaking staircase into the depths of the hotel to be greeted by an extremely glamorous waitress. She led me to a table adorned with a red tablecloth and a red rose. There were only four other diners, all similarly glamorous girls sitting round a similarly bedecked table in the corner. I felt a bit awkward. It’s odd eating a meal on your own, especially when you’re in a restaurant that makes you feel like you’re in a foreign country. I did pretend to myself – and anyone watching – that I was a spy, on some important mission. But mostly I felt terribly self-conscious.

‘Is Edward here?’ I asked when the waitress brought over a menu. ‘Not yet’, she replied. ‘Will he be here soon?’ I tried. ‘Maybe’, she said. ‘He normally gets here between 7 and 9’. Well I guess I better order some food then, I thought. And said, very quietly.

I’ve never been to a soviet country so everything on the menu was exciting/terrifying. Should I go for the Chicken Tapaka: ‘extremely popular in Armenia: a whole baby chicken flattened and marinated in spices and lemon juice’ – or ‘a fish broth with complimentary vodka’? An impossible decision. Especially when some fairly dynamic eurovision style pop is blaring out of the speaker above your head at an unnecessarily high volume.

In the end I played it fairly safe with some traditional Ukrainian ravioli style dumplings stuffed with cottage cheese and served with sour cream followed by chicken Kiev. Yes, I know that’s not Armenian. But did you know that it’s not Ukrainian either? It’s actually a dish created in New York by restaurants trying to attract Russian immigrants in the early 1900s. It's a bit like Scotch eggs. Not from Scotland. They were originally a pub snack (much better than crisps) designed and produced in England but given a more hearty name. Which came first? The Chicken Kiev or The Scotch Egg? As far as I can tell, they were both invented at about the same time. Good, that’s a whole paragraph about breadcrumbed chicken bits.

Ten minutes later, the food arrived and I instantly knew I’d chosen well. This was my sort of food. Rich, heavy, creamy, garlicky, delicious. By the time I’d polished off the chicken I’d almost forgotten Edward still hadn’t turned up. It was now eight thirty. I had to leave by nine. I decided to ask the waitress to help but she said she was from Lithuania and that Edward was the only Armenian. Probably in all of London I thought, then gritted my teeth, ordered some coffee and determined to play the waiting game (surely one of the most tedious games around).

Half an hour and some serious coffee later, still no sign. I pleaded with my waitress, she went off, made a call and returned to say he might not be here till ten. I was tempted to, not shoot, but at least be sad in front of the messenger. Instead, I held my head high, paid the (not cheap) bill (plus generous tip) and promised to return.

Ten days later, I did. And this time I’d phoned Edward and told him specifically which day I was arriving. He assured me he’d be there. Unfortunately I hadn’t told anyone else I was going so with seven o’clock looming it looked like I was to dine alone in an Armenian restaurant for the second time in two weeks. Once might be unlucky but twice would be careless.

Amazingly, with two quick phonecalls I managed to persuade Mat and Chip, my two brothers, and Morri, Mat’s fiancée, to join me. It seems that people who aren’t trying to locate every nationality in the world in one city have more free time than people who are.

So, as dusk settled in, the four of us trooped down to the Guards hotel, I insisted this was definitely the right place and, to my surprise and delight, we were greeted by a grinning Edward and some real-life euro-pop melodies pumped out by a brilliantly Russian looking young man with a pencil thin moustache and a classic Casio keyboard. This was going to be a good night.

Edward himself, it seemed, was touched not only that I had returned so soon, but that this time I had brought my entire family with me and after poring over the menu once again and plumping for Khachapury (‘cheese bread straight from the oven’), Bliny S. Miasom with Yaitsa Farshirovannie (‘black caviar’) and, at last, the Chicken Tapaka (squashed chicken), I was invited to join him at his table.

Edward used to be a chef in Armenia. ‘I’m now forty two and manager of the only Armenian restaurant in London!’ he proclaimed with pride. He set it up thirteen years ago after he and his wife had come to stay with his mother–in-law. ‘It was a big decision, but cooking was my job. I thought I’d try it. Why not?’

I couldn’t think of a reason why not.

‘We don’t need to advertise’, he told me when I managed to explain that I’d never heard of his restaurant without being too rude. ‘All the former soviet countries come here. We used to advertise in Russian papers but we soon found that word of mouth was better. There are so many Russians in this area – there are Russian and Armenian churches on Bayswater Road. Everyone is here.’

And so its reputation has grown alongside London’s eastern European population and Erebuni, especially on a Friday, is now a flourishing restaurant in a very wealthy part of town; no tourist trap, cheesy themed gaffe, but a real hidden gem, an authentic treat, off the beaten track, a place the guidebooks won’t tell you above, and all those other gapyear clichés. Exactly the sort of place and person we were hoping to discover with this project.

It’s a magnet for celebrities too, with the likes of David Kronenburg and that bloke Viggo Mortensen from The Lord of the Rings paying regular visits, as well as countless famous Russian singers whose faces you can see on the tremendous Erebuni website (watch out for the widest moustache in the world ever).

Edward was proud to explain the democratic approach he takes to his menu. ‘We started off taking what’s good about Russian cooking and putting our own Armenian spin on it’, he told me. ‘Then if (not ‘when’ this time) people didn’t like something we’d take it off the menu and replace it with something else. We did that for years. Now it’s 100% perfect!’ I like this trial and error style of cuisine. I guess it’s pretty much how I do comedy.

What’s the best food, I asked him. ‘Kebab’, he said with a laugh. ‘We do it differently from the Greeks or the Arabs – we use natural charcoal; come and look!’ And with that he whisked me into the kitchens where I felt genuinely honoured to be shown a thoroughly blackened barbecue with, yes, lots of natural coal. ‘Very nice!’ I remarked. Not necessarily the best response but I’d never been in this situation before.

After some awkward introductions to a couple of his chefs (Edward is now strictly the manager and so seems to spend his evenings at the bar, being the perfect host, smiling a lot) I returned to my family to enjoy the food, music and ambience. This was Friday night, unrecognizable from the previous Monday. The tables were full and glasses were clinking and as soon as we’d polished our plates, up trotted Edward with a tray of straight vodkas (except one that was cranberry flavoured – for the lady). We raised our glasses, shouted ‘Kenaset’ (Armenian for cheers), downed our drinks and winced. Edward insisted that we wouldn’t have headaches in the morning because there was no water in the drinks and the vodka was 40% alcohol and that’s the ideal amount which meant we definitely wouldn’t get hangovers but we weren’t convinced.

Not that we cared. We were having a lot of Armenian-style fun that culminated when Edward grabbed the microphone from the moustachioed pianist and sang quite a lengthy song for us in his native tongue. Chip thought it might have been an elaborate Happy Birthday but Edward breathlessly explained afterwards that it was a ‘Prison Song’. I don’t really know what a Prison Song was but apparently ‘all Russians like them’. I liked it too. Except for when Edward loomed worryingly close to the table and I thought I was going to have to join him on stage. Luckily he was just picking up Morri’s fallen umbrella – a particularly slick move mid rousing chorus.

Thinking back, though, if he had asked me to sing I think I would have. I’d have done whatever Edward wanted. He was great. We all posed for photos with him on our out and I’m really hoping we’ll make the ‘friends’ page on his website some day soon.

*As recommended by a man called Peter Pereira who read about us on the Londonist website. Thank you Peter. And thank you the Londonist website. You’ve made someone (me) very happy (and full).

No.100: Hungary

One hundred not out.

Owen Powell - 28th June 2007

I was sitting in the bar of the Soho Theatre when Nedda bowled up quite hungover. She hadn’t been home since the night before. “I would like a tomato juice, please,” she said. She was wearing sunflower earrings and the biggest pair of sunglasses I had seen that month. “You know when you dress up in your mother’s clothes?” she said. “I think they make me look a bit like that.” She lit a cigarette and took a long pull on the tomato juice.

It was Nedda’s sister who had first read about the project, and she sent her the link from where she now lives in Singapore. Nedda had followed her to London originally, where both had started working as au pairs. Both hated it, Nedda only lasting a month. “They were spoilt kids, annoying brats,” she says dismissively. This was three years ago, before Hungary joined the EU, so Nedda worked on an au pair visa – but also managed to get some other work in bars at the same time. “It was totally illegal,” she cheerfully admits, “but people could have checked. I was given proper pay checks, I had an emergency NI code ...” She takes a long drag. “No-one was bothered.”

Nedda is now combining proper bar work – she’s at the American Bistro in Mayfair, whose regular clients include Robert De Niro – with a three year course in Interior Design at the University of Arts, Chelsea. She says she’s a bit disappointed with the course, although she’s learnt a lot, and gets on well with the people she’s doing it with. “A few of us have formed a team,” she says. “We’re from Hungary, Sweden, the US and England, and we plan to stay together after the course finishes, and start working as designers.”

One of her current design projects, although not really connected to the course, is renovating her flat in Budapest. “It has exposed walls, pipes showing – it needs a bit of work, but I want to do it up and rent it out as a holiday home. It’s gone up in value five times in the last seven years since I inherited it from my grandmother.”

Nedda’s grandmother leads us on to a fascinating insight into Hungarian life. “When she was at school, she learnt German as it was the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When my mother was at school she learnt Russian for eight years under Communism. When I was ten, in 1989, that all changed, and we were taught English. In fact, I went to a school run by nuns. Religion came back in a big wave after Communism stopped. These nuns were all 80 years old, and they’d been in exile in Argentina.” However, Nedda didn’t really get on with a religious education. “Whenever we did confession, the priests would tell the teachers everything we had said, it was so oppressive. I was thrown out when I was 14. I still feel religious now, but I don’t go to church any more.” Nedda checks her packet of cigarettes – it’s empty. “I need to go and get some more ...” she says. That’s ok, I say. I’ll get you another tomato juice.

When she gets back, Nedda reminisces about the end of Communism. “Daily life changed a lot. Pioneers, which is a Communist version of Scouts, finished. Suddenly, we went from state TV, where there was nothing at all on a Monday, to Sky, MTV, everything else. But really, it got worse. Before, everyone had good jobs, everyone had money. Then there was more competition, inflation, people lost their jobs. It’s not even what you’d call ‘Westernised’ now, for example, customer service does not exist in Hungary. We are popular with stag parties, though. I once saw a man on a plane complaining about losing his baggage. He was dressed as a beer bottle.”

After three years, Nedda feels at home here, but wouldn’t say yet that she’s a Londoner. “I would say that I am a Hungarian in London.” And are there many other Hungarians here, I ask. “Lots. Some of my friends have plans to work here, save money and buy a flat in Hungary. But they end up sitting in the house all night, buying stuff from Iceland and having a horrible time. It’s hard to save here, there’s too much to do.”

One thing Nedda finds great about London is the ease with which she can travel to the rest of the world. He shows me some photos from her recent trip to Thailand and Singapore (where she saw her sister). She feels much more cosmopolitan now. “One thing I don’t miss from Hungary is understanding all the conversations on the buses. Hungarian people are very negative. If you ask, ‘How are you?’ they will tell you all their problems.” We flick through some more photos. “In fact,” says Nedda, “when I am in Hungary, I miss London. I miss London food.”

Nedda’s going back to Hungary tomorrow, so will miss the start of the English smoking ban. I ask how she thinks she’ll cope when she returns. “Well,” she starts, “The bar where I work is perhaps not too well prepared. The owner smokes even in the non-smoking section, so who knows? They are talking about banning it in cars as well, which I don’t think will be a good idea. If you don’t let people have their cigarettes, they get more angry, and you don’t want more angry people on the roads.”

We head out onto Dean Street and say goodbye. A hundred people, I think. We’ve met a hundred people! How hard can it be to find another ninety-two?

No.101: Tanzania

My Favourite Framer

Alex Horne – 28th June 2007

We’ve stayed in touch with a lot of the people we’ve met over the last few months – far more than I expected when we ventured into the Trocadero on that first rainy day at the end of October. We began looking for numbers. It was as simple as that. Could we find 192 nationalities in 12 months in 1 city? But before long we discovered that finding people was a whole lot more interesting. And keeping them was even more rewarding.

And that’s a pretty saccharine first paragraph.

One turning point for me was meeting Nic from Singapore who seemed to understand our project much much better than I did. Walking away from a breathless chat about the potential of our undertaking I felt more galvanised than ever, determined to create some ground-breaking global thing with him and his visionary friends.

Yes, there’s another gloopy set of sentiments.

But it hasn’t happened yet. Nic is a very busy guy. And, with time ticking faster than us, so are we. We still might create something with his film collective. I certainly hope we’ll find time to at least give it a try. But I haven’t actually spoken to Nic for quite some time now. We may have stayed in touch with a lot of people but I wish it was easier to stay in touch with them all. Maybe I should give Facebook a try.

One thing I did do was follow up one of Nic’s international leads by taking a trip down to Southwark and the shop of his favourite framer (I don’t know too many people who have one of those), a man called Nazir from Tanzania.

Owen and I met up in Borough Market around lunchtime in the hope of quickly snagging a Samoan who Owen knew sold oysters (now, thanks to a revolutionary travelcard system – a true symbol of London) and we spent a sensuous hour wandering around in search of this foreign fishmonger. We passed stalls selling salsa from Chile, olives from Turkey, dips from Greece, Italian parmesan, Indian samosas, Spanish meat and cheese from Wales, France and the Isle Of Wight. But none of these were on our wanted list any more. And some of them weren’t even there in the first place. We found a man flogging Sparrow’s Tea from Korea but, much to our disappointment, it was the wrong one (Korea, not sparrow).

Eventually we did find the Samoan’s shop, only to be told that he was on holiday. Frustrated, I bought an oyster from a man from Taiwan* and we headed south west, a touch dejectedly.

After what was then a longer-than-expected trudge around what is a particularly grey bit of London, we finally found Nazir’s art shop; a gem, casually discarded in a decidedly un-arty corner of town (on a road appropriately named London Street).

We went in. Then hung around suspiciously as a man we hoped was Nazir dealt with a customer. She eventually left. ‘Good afternoon gentlemen’, said the shopkeeper, also suspiciously (it’s one of those words that mean two opposite things – anyone know what they’re called?). We stepped forward, introduced ourselves, dropped Nic’s name shamelessly, and eventually persuaded a rightly guarded Nazir – for it was indeed he – to talk to us. ‘I only have two minutes’, he told us sternly. We promised to be quick, just relieved he wasn’t on holiday.

But, as his story started to emerge and we all started to relax, that two minutes came and went, quickly followed by another two, and a whole lot more after that. Nazir left Africa thirty years ago, before I’d even been born. He hasn’t been back for eighteen years. It felt like now he was remembering things he’d not thought about for really quite a long time.

‘From what I understand, things have changed there’, he began. For the better? we asked. ‘I don’t know. It’s more developed. I guess that’s how it happens everywhere. But when you live in a country you don’t notice the changes. Like here’ – he gestured out at London Road – ‘everything’s changed but you don’t notice. It’s only when you look back five years. The change is great’.

Nazir has been running this shop for the last seven years. He arrived in London as a photography student in 1965 then returned to Tanzania for another ten years. ‘I didn’t plan to come back here.’

‘I don’t have time to do much photography any more. I’m always meaning to do more, but that’s London life. Tanzania was so much more open – so green. That’s how I remember it. More rural, more wild, untouched – more laidback. People have time to indulge their own hobbies there. Now I’m in the rat-race. When I get home I’m exhausted’.

Nazir lives at the other end of the Jubilee line in Harrow with his wife. He originally came from the Indian sub-continent but they met here in England. She’s an artist too. We asked if his kids were artistic. ‘Oh yes!’ he smiled, ‘but it doesn’t bring in the money!’

I tried to ask him what went on in the little workshop I could see, tucked away beneath the stairs, but Nazir preferred to talk about Tanzania and the life he’d left behind. ‘I’ve been to the top of Kilimanjaro’, he said enthusiastically. ‘The view is different early in the morning to the rest of the day. That’s when you should be there. To see the sun rising. Once – and this is a long time ago, over thirty years ago – I saw the other side of the peak. A sheer slope, a white sheet – that’s all I remember’. Owen and I listened intently as he spoke with this mixture of nostalgia and excitement. I was glad London Road wasn’t the sort of road on which an art shop might get busy. No-one interrupted Nazir.

‘Of course people are complaining that the world’s getting hotter’, he continued, as much to himself as to us. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the sheet is melted now. But the wildlife – from what I remember – is just brilliant. We used to camp inside the crater on Ngora Gora…’

Nazir smiled wistfully. I didn’t want to use the word wistfully there but I think it was the only real possibility. He was full of wist. Happy and sad all at once. But then suddenly, it was gone.

‘You have to let it go,’ he said, abruptly turning back to us. ‘I settled here, I had a new life, a family. After eight or nine years I felt a pang for home but then I let go. I mean, how long can you hold on?’ We didn’t know and didn’t guess.

Sometimes we can relate to the people we meet, murmur in the right places and even chip in with our own opinions every now and again. On this occasion we just listened.

Before we left, Nazir told us he’d taken his kids to Tanzania a couple of times when they where growing up. ‘They liked it’, he said. ‘But they are locals here now. They wanted to go to Kilimanjaro and see the wildlife but that’s about it. It was a nice holiday, then it was time to go home’.


*Another addition to our growing list of places that many would argue are countries but which do not figure in the UN’s list. ‘Officially’ it’s a part of China. ‘Unoffocially’ it’s a lot more complicated than that. And I’m not sure a footnote is the place to delve further. If we have time we know an oyster seller who says he’ll tell us more.

No.101: Tanzania

My Favourite Framer

Alex Horne – 28th June 2007

We’ve stayed in touch with a lot of the people we’ve met over the last few months – far more than I expected when we ventured into the Trocadero on that first rainy day at the end of October. We began looking for numbers. It was as simple as that. Could we find 192 nationalities in 12 months in 1 city? But before long we discovered that finding people was a whole lot more interesting. And keeping them was even more rewarding.

And that’s a pretty saccharine first paragraph.

One turning point for me was meeting Nic from Singapore who seemed to understand our project much much better than I did. Walking away from a breathless chat about the potential of our undertaking I felt more galvanised than ever, determined to create some ground-breaking global thing with him and his visionary friends.

And yes, there’s another gloopy set of sentiments.

But it hasn’t happened yet. Nic is a very busy guy. And, with time ticking faster than us, so are we. We still might create something with his film collective. I certainly hope we’ll find time to at least give it a try. But I haven’t actually spoken to Nic for quite some time now. We may have stayed in touch with a lot of people but I wish it was easier to stay in touch with them all. Maybe I should give Facebook a try.

One thing I did do was follow up one of Nic’s international leads by taking a trip down to Southwark and the shop of his favourite framer (I don’t know too many people who have one of those), a man called Nazir from Tanzania.

Owen and I met up in Borough Market around lunchtime in the hope of quickly snagging a Samoan who Owen knew sold oysters (now, thanks to a revolutionary travelcard system – a true symbol of London) and we spent a sensuous hour wandering around in search of this foreign fishmonger. We passed stalls selling salsa from Chile, olives from Turkey, dips from Greece, Italian parmesan, Indian samosas, Spanish meat and cheese from Wales, France and the Isle Of Wight. But none of these were on our wanted list any more. And some of them weren’t even there in the first place. We found a man flogging Sparrow’s Tea from Korea but, much to our disappointment, it was the wrong one (Korea, not sparrow).

Eventually we did find the Samoan’s shop, only to be told that he was on holiday. Frustrated, I bought an oyster from a man from Taiwan* and we headed south west, a touch dejectedly.

After what was then a longer-than-expected trudge around what is a particularly grey bit of London, we finally found Nazir’s art shop; a gem, casually discarded in a decidedly un-arty corner of town (on a road appropriately named London Street).

We went in. Then hung around suspiciously as a man we hoped was Nazir dealt with a customer. She eventually left. ‘Good afternoon gentlemen’, said the shopkeeper, also suspiciously (it’s one of those words that mean two opposite things – anyone know what they’re called?). We stepped forward, introduced ourselves, dropped Nic’s name shamelessly, and eventually persuaded a rightly guarded Nazir – for it was indeed he – to talk to us. ‘I only have two minutes’, he told us sternly. We promised to be quick, just relieved he wasn’t on holiday.

But, as his story started to emerge and we all started to relax, that two minutes came and went, quickly followed by another two, and a whole lot more after that. Nazir left Africa thirty years ago, before I’d even been born. He hasn’t been back for eighteen years. It felt like now he was remembering things he’d not thought about for really quite a long time.

‘From what I understand, things have changed there’, he began. For the better? we asked. ‘I don’t know. It’s more developed. I guess that’s how it happens everywhere. But when you live in a country you don’t notice the changes. Like here’ – he gestured out at London Road – ‘everything’s changed but you don’t notice. It’s only when you look back five years. The change is great’.

Nazir has been running this shop for the last seven years. He arrived in London as a photography student in 1965 then returned to Tanzania for another ten years. ‘I didn’t plan to come back here.’

‘I don’t have time to do much photography any more. I’m always meaning to do more, but that’s London life. Tanzania was so much more open – so green. That’s how I remember it. More rural, more wild, untouched – more laidback. People have time to indulge their own hobbies there. Now I’m in the rat-race. When I get home I’m exhausted’.

Nazir lives at the other end of the Jubilee line in Harrow with his wife. He originally came from the Indian sub-continent but they met here in England. She’s an artist too. We asked if his kids were artistic. ‘Oh yes!’ he smiled, ‘but it doesn’t bring in the money!’

I tried to ask him what went on in the little workshop I could see, tucked away beneath the stairs, but Nazir preferred to talk about Tanzania and the life he’d left behind. ‘I’ve been to the top of Kilimanjaro’, he said enthusiastically. ‘The view is different early in the morning to the rest of the day. That’s when you should be there. To see the sun rising. Once – and this is a long time ago, over thirty years ago – I saw the other side of the peak. A sheer slope, a white sheet – that’s all I remember’. Owen and I listened intently as he spoke with this mixture of nostalgia and excitement. I was glad London Road wasn’t the sort of road on which an art shop might get busy. No-one interrupted Nazir.

‘Of course people are complaining that the world’s getting hotter’, he continued, as much to himself as to us. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the sheet is melted now. But the wildlife – from what I remember – is just brilliant. We used to camp inside the crater on Ngora Gora…’

Nazir smiled wistfully. I didn’t want to use the word wistfully there but I think it was the only real possibility. He was full of wist. Happy and sad all at once. But then suddenly, it was gone.

‘You have to let it go,’ he said, abruptly turning back to us. ‘I settled here, I had a new life, a family. After eight or nine years I felt a pang for home but then I let go. I mean, how long can you hold on?’ We didn’t know and didn’t guess.

Sometimes we can relate to the people we meet, murmur in the right places and even chip in with our own opinions every now and again. On this occasion we just listened.

Before we left, Nazir told us he’d taken his kids to Tanzania a couple of times when they where growing up. ‘They liked it’, he said. ‘But they are locals here now. They wanted to go to Kilimanjaro and see the wildlife but that’s about it. It was a nice holiday, then it was time to go home’.


*Another addition to our growing list of places that many would argue are countries but which do not figure in the UN’s list. ‘Officially’ it’s a part of China. ‘Unofficially’ it’s a lot more complicated than that. And I’m not sure a footnote is the place to delve further. If we have time we know an oyster seller who says he’ll tell us more.

No.99: Malta

From one European island to another ...

Owen Powell - 25th June 2007

The working title of Sharon’s PhD is ‘The race to nation: An analysis of the discourse of race and nation in stories of migration appearing in the Maltese press before and after EU membership’. (I hope I’ve got that right). It’s a topic that Sharon has personal and professional (as well as academic) interest in, as she used to write for The Times, Malta’s leading English-language newspaper, for thirteen years. Now, of course, she has personal experience of being a migrant as well, having left Malta in 2003. “In Malta,” she notes wryly, “all people talk about migration purely in terms of people coming in. They hardly notice that lots of young people are spreading their wings and moving out, but this is less newsworthy.”

Alex and I have spent so long thinking about London as a hot seat of immigration that it’s both baffling and fascinating to hear about another place that has had a dramatic history of diverse comings and goings. Malta seems to have an identity crisis – right in the middle of the Mediterranean, its culture, language, and even climate seem to be a mixture of European, North African and Middle Eastern. “Maltese people consider themselves a homogenous mass,” explains Sharon. “The general myth is that we are descended from the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, whereas our language has Arabic roots but is written in Roman script. Our most recent rulers were the British – we still have red pillar boxes – but the dominant cultural influence now is Italy. Maltese people resent being thought of as Arab, or North African – while I was doing my Masters, which looks at Maltese journalism and how people define themselves, we joined the EU, so everyone is happy now we’re seen as European.”

Malta is a tiny island, about 300 sq km in size, but is responsible for a vast area of surrounding sea – more than a quarter of a million sq km. This means that many of the boat people found trying to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe end up being detained in Malta. “Italy has provided us with armed forces and equipment to help patrol our waters – the cynics would say it’s to stop the boats getting further and reaching Italian waters. The Maltese people – although they can be self-obsessed and see Malta as the centre of the world – pride themselves on their hospitality and charity, so we try to help as much as we can. The first visible boat people in recent times came from Albania – they were welcomed, but, then again, they were white and European. After the Lockerbie bombing, al flights from Libya were banned so the main route out became by boat, via Malta, to elsewhere in Europe. So, fairly suddenly, black faces were more visible through the 1990s, policemen would stop them in the streets. There are now 2000 asylum seekers in detention, including lots of Asian people. It’s funny, when I was growing up, there were only two or three Chinese restaurants on the whole island. Going to one was a special treat, but now Malta feels more diverse.”

Sharon says she had a very privileged childhood, and spent much of it reading – despite Malta’s wonderful scenery and climate, she says she’s “not very outdoorsy”. She grew up a Catholic, as do 98% of Maltese people, which is no surprise given that Catholicism is mentioned in the country’s constitution. But she would describe herself as lapsed now. “I was made to go to doctrine lessons, Mass every Sunday – I consider myself brainwashed even now. It’s hard to get out, really. I was lucky, in that when I became a journalist I had to work Sundays, so I could legitimately avoid it.” Much of her work was on crime stories, and so she had to constantly translate from the Maltese used in court to the English used in the paper. Both are official languages, a legacy of Empire, and the British compromising with the locals in order to ensure that Italian wasn’t spoken. Maltese in now an official language of the EU as well, although it’s proving hard to find enough competent translators to get all the necessary documents produced. “It’s a hard language,” Sharon admits. “It’s only been written down properly since the 1930s, and the Academy of the Maltese Language should do more to standardise it, but the teachers all speak it differently. Also, all new words, bespoke words in areas like technology, science and IT are just English words spelt in a Maltese style, like ‘kompjuter’. Even more embarrassing is the Maltese presence on the internet – outside of any official sites, people use text speak, it’s all wrong. We’re meant to feel positive about citizen journalism, but I have my doubts ...”

Sharon has kept in contact with the Times, and still writes a column for them about migration. Although she’s been in the UK for four years, she spent the first couple of years outside London, doing her Masters in Cardiff, then beginning a Research Masters in Glasgow (“I had a full scholarship there, but I ran away – I didn’t like it,” she says). Now her study is based at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research in Brighton, but she’s currently in the middle of a six month intermission to earn money by temping in London. “I’m supposed to be doing research as well, but London’s so distracting I haven’t managed any in four months. I’m tempted to move to zone four to avoid going out in the evening.” Apart from the distractions, and the expense, Sharon loves London – especially the things that drive many locals mad.

“I don’t like returning to Malta in the summer, as it’s too hot – I much prefer London’s climate to the Med. Also, I love how unfriendly it is here. I like getting on the tube to read my book, listen to my iPod. Actually, that’s not entirely fair – any time I’ve been standing, looking lost with my A-Z someone will always come and help me. The same if I have a suitcase on the tube. I love it here. I really haven’t stopped having fun since I came here.”

But would she ever go back to Malta, I wonder? “Well, I need two more years to finish my PhD, then I think I’ll try to get some teaching work, or some more in-depth journalism, writing longer pieces for a monthly magazine. But not back in Malta – I’d reached my limit there, in terms of my social life and my career. When I left, I was 29, all my friends were married, and I was sick of having conversations about bathrooms. What happens to intelligent conversations when you get married?”

No.98: Estonia

'Nordic with a Twist'

Owen Powell - 21st June 2007

I’ve done some odd things during this project, but I never thought I’d end up standing inside a fountain with an Estonian helicopter pilot.

His name was Karel, and he’s been in London for three years, since Estonia joined the EU. Three friends of his arrived at roughly the same time, and the Estonian embassy reckons there are now three thousand Estonians in the UK. It’s common, says Karel, for Estonians to live here to save up money, then return a few years later and buy a big house, but that’s not his plan. “I only intended to be here for three months, and even though I’ve been here a lot longer than that I still haven’t saved much. I want to enjoy life now.”

But that enjoyment didn’t initially manifest itself in a job. “Oh god,” says Karel. “I had a job in admin, working for TFL. It was supposed to be temporary, just for four days, but I did it for one and a half years. It was the most boring job ever, and I had lots of creative impulses, so I got out.” Now he’s doing a BA in digital photography, whilst working as a freelance photographer. “Photography has always been my hobby,” he says, “so it’s good to be doing it full time. Ideally, I’d like to be a travel photographer, but most jobs I get are less interesting than that. Portraits, events, things like that.” He takes a photo of me, which is far superior to the one I take of him. It’s a nice sunny day and we’re sitting on the South Bank. We hear the laughs of children playing in a nearby fountain. More of that later.

This is Karel’s second BA, though. The first he took in Estonia, in Aviation Engineering, almost by accident. “I only did the course because I wanted to become a commercial helicopter pilot, but they said that if I did it over four years rather than two, it converted to a degree. I haven’t flown in four years now, and you’re supposed to renew your licence every year, so I guess I’m no longer qualified.”

Maybe I look a bit surprised at how futuristic Estonia sounds (I don’t know how many degree courses in the UK allow you to become a fully qualified helicopter pilot, for instance), but Karel quickly puts me straight. “Estonia is one of the most hi-tech countries in the world. We have 100% wireless broadband coverage, and the people that developed Skype are Estonian. All our banks can do money transfers in seconds. If I’m on the phone to my mum, and ask her to send some money over, I can be online while she does it, and bang, it’s straight into my account. I still can’t get used to British banks – why do they take three days?” Karel does a little smile that suggests he knows exactly why they take three days. “In fact, we’re so hi-tech that we’ve just had the first ever cyber-war.” I sit up. Now, this is futuristic. “We’re pretty independent from Russia now, but there can still be problems. Estonia is one of the major routes for goods to be exported to and from Western Europe from Russia, so they could make things difficult for us by cutting off supplies. About a third of people living in Estonia are actually Russians, so there are frequent riots. After a recent riot, hackers from Russia shut down the entire Estonian computer network. If it had been a real war, it would have been two minutes, then it would have been all over. But it lasted for two weeks, with all our experts trying to fix it. NATO sent people to help, but they mostly just watched and learnt.”

It sounds like there is some residual bad feeling between Estonians and Russians. “Well, don’t forget that we’ve had 800 years of occupation from different sides, being forced to speak different languages. We’ve always considered ourselves Western, like all the Baltic states. In fact, once I went with my family to St Petersburg, and we went to a Russian restaurant. When they found out we were Estonian, we were put in a special room with a TV, as we were used to Western things. Today, Estonia is marketed in Russia as a holiday destination – they say we are ‘Nordic with a twist’. That is the phrase they use.” I look quizzical. “No,” says Karel, “I don’t know what it means either.”

Estonian independence came when Karel was ten. I bet that was exciting, I say. “Everything’s exciting when you’re ten,” Karel quite reasonably replies. He studied Russian at school, but claims not to be able to string a sentence together now. “English is now the most popular foreign language to learn, and in fact Spanish and French are overtaking Russian as well.” One of the biggest changes since independence has been the ease with which Estonians can travel to Western Europe. “I came to London when I was very young, and we came by boat, train, bus. One trip we made, to the south of France, we had to get three different boats, via Finland, on the way back. Now, we just jump on a plane.”

Karel tries to go back twice a year, and his cousins come to see him occasionally. What about his parents? “Oh, they’re more keen to go to the Mediterranean. The climate in London is too similar to Estonia, and they’ve been tourists here before. Even for me, it’s easier to get to Europe than the rest of the UK. I wanted to go to Manchester, but it was nearly fifty pounds on the train, so I paid twenty-six pounds and flew to Vienna instead.”

And is living in London something he would recommend to other Estonians? “Well, I would,” he says, “but there are already too many of them here ... What can I say about London? It’s all right. There are good and bad things, it can get really tiring and it’s hard to have your own moments. But it can be liberating as well – there are so many things to do. I was considering moving to Paris, to learn French, but I’ve recently met someone, and it feels like it might be forever.” I poise my pen over my notebook. Can I put that down, I ask? “You can put that,” says Karel.

Karel used to live in Elephant and Castle, but has recently moved to Old Street. “It’s the nicest place I’ve lived in so far, it doesn’t feel so temporary, and the area is very interesting. Two steps one way, it’s beautiful, two steps the other and you’re in hell. Also, a lot of the people there are wannabees. Everyone tries to look for extreme than everyone else – the visual noise is quite strong.” I ask if he misses Estonian food. Karel looks confused. “Well, what food do you eat? British food? In Talinn we have pizza, pasta, sushi – international food as well. I suppose the only things I bring back with me when I go home are sweets and vodka. Estonian vodka is the strongest in the world – we’re in the Guinness Book of Records for one brand that is 98%.” Have you tried it, I ask? “Are you crazy? No. The strongest you can get in shops is 80%, and that burns. You’re not allowed to take it on planes.”

It’s really sunny now. We wander over to the fountain, and discover it’s actually an installation by the Danish artist Jeppe Hein. It’s called ‘Appearing Rooms’, and is a series of crossing lines on the floor, made up of hundreds of water jets that spray straight up, six foot into the air. The jets in one line turn on and off at random intervals, so individual rooms, with water curtains as walls, keep appearing and disappearing. The idea is that you wait for a wall to disappear, then hop in before it reappears again, then move around inside as the internal walls drop and fire up again. Several children have been trapped inside for about fifteen minutes, as we’ve been watching. I suggest we go in. “Why not?” says Karel.

As the curtain closes behind us, I ask if Karel feels like a Londoner. “Hmmm,” he ponders. “Estonian first.” There is a pause. “European second.” Another, longer pause, as we cross to a new room, looking for an exit. “And that’s it. I’m pretty sure that I’ll go back to Estonia eventually. But London is somewhere I’d like to have one of my three houses in.” At last, one of the exterior walls drops and we hop out, glad not to have been soaked by a stray breeze.

Some Half-Way Stats

Owen Powell - 21st June 2007

So. Now we're half-way through the project, it's time to reflect on what we've discovered so far. I was hoping to share some rather profound reflections on life and the world, but I'm currently in the middle of a severe cold (I'm tempted to call it flu) and my head's not quite working right. In lieu of anything meaningful, then, here's a whole host of numbers that might say something about how far we've got.

(Incidentally, it's actually quite hard work dividing up the world. I've gone for slightly more specific categories than just the seven continents, but even looking at the 'UN subregions' for help wasn't that useful. In the end, I've more or less decided on my own categories. I don't know if this is even worth posting now, but it's taken me a whole afternoon with an atlas, the internet and a calculator, so it's going into the blog.)

North America 3/3 countries 100%
Central America 5/7 countries 71%
Caribbean 6/13 countries 46%
South America 9/12 countries 75%

North Africa 3/5 countries 60%
West Africa 5/16 countries 31%
Central Africa 1/8 countries 13%
Southern Africa 5/14 countries 36%
East Africa 4/10 countries 40%

Middle East 8/15 countries 53%
Central Asia 4/9 countries 44%
South Asia 5/7 countries 71%
East Asia 4/5 countries 80%
South-East Asia 5/11 countries 45%

Oceania 2/14 countries 14%

North Europe 6/7 countries 86%
West Europe 6/13 countries 46%
East Europe 5/8 countries 63%
Central and South Europe 10/15 countries 66%

So, there we have it. We're doing quite well in finding people from the Americas, and some parts of Asia, and reasonably badly in sub-Saharan Africa. Europe, interestingly, has been a real mixed bag. The 'West Europe' category (for example) contains several titchy countries that we haven't yet located, so our early expectations that we'd 'complete' Europe first have been challenged somewhat.

Nobody mention Oceania.

------

Of the 96 people we have met, 50 have been men and 46 women*. That seems almost too equal to be true, given how random and disorganised the 'finding people' process actually was. The youngest was 18, the oldest 68 (although we've been a bit shy about asking ages on some occasions). Jobs have ranged from publishers to perfumiers, from architects to butlers, from musicians to security guards. We've met people in shops, cafes and restaurants, interviewed them watching football in pubs, watching American football at two in the morning, working on market stalls and in launderettes. We ourselves have been interviewed on tv, on radio, online and in the papers, and (almost without exception) everyone we speak to gets very excited about the idea. Most people are very optimistic on our behalf, but nobody knows for sure if it's even possible. We don't know if it is.

But all we've got to do is the same again, and we're there.


* Real WIOC enthusiasts might point out at this stage that we met two people for the UK, and two for Canada, but on both occasions the pairing was male-female so if you count the individuals in these pairings as half-people (no offence, George and Iris, and Tara and Chris) the distribution of genders is still the same. I can't help thinking that there's a clearer way to express the sentiment in that last sentence.

Half Way!

Owen Powell - 20th June 2007

We're half way through the project!

In fact, we're over half way! Tonight I met our 96th and 97th people, Loreto from Chile and Marija from Serbia. (Their full interview will follow, probably some time in 2008 at my current rate of writing up meetings. Sorry for the delay, everyone who's waiting...)

Also to come, possibly at some point tomorrow, some fabulous 'Half Way Statistics'. Want to know how many men and women we've found? Which continents have proved hardest and easiest? Whether people live north or south of the river? Tune in soon.

Also, we'll shortly be announcing details of our half-way celebration, 'The World In One Picnic'. Everyone in the project so far will get an email invitation in the next few days, anyone else interested in coming along, drop us an email to the usual address.

Thanks so much to everyone so far who's taken part - we hope you've enjoyed it as much as we have!

Nos.96 & 97: Chile and Serbia

Half-way through!

Owen Powell - 20th June 2007

As I chained my bike up to the railings outside Farringdon station, I was so excited that the lock rattled in my hands. This was it! Yesterday, I’d met Emi (our Zambian), the 95th person we’d found. The next person I met would be the 96th, and we’d be halfway through. I thought back to our first day in October, and all the faces I’d seen and stories I’d heard since then. It was slightly overwhelming. I can’t think of many six-month periods where I’d met nearly 100 new people – maybe the first term of secondary school, or after arriving at University. But at my school, everyone was English, 98% of them were white, and all of them lived in Hertfordshire. Even at University, there wasn’t much more diversity. And now, here I was, going to meet the person that would allow me to say that I’d met representatives of half the countries on earth.

Or, rather, I was about to meet two people. They would have to fight it out amongst themselves for the privilege of being either the last of the first half, or the first of the last half. If that makes sense.

Loreto and Marija (pronounced, more or less, like ‘Maria’) first met five years ago while studying English. Loreto had previously been in Ireland (“It was an Irishman who gave Chile its freedom,” she notes) but found the accents hard to follow. She also fell in love with an Englishman, so moved with him to Watford and continued studying in Harrow (although the relationship didn’t last). Marija had visited London as a tourist, then came over again for a short course in Business English after completing her Economics degree at Belgrade University. Marija also had (and still has) an English boyfriend, who she first met in 2000. Now, they work together, in a marketing company called Momentum in Farringdon.

Marija is still studying every morning, and working part-time in the afternoons. “Loreto is always available for drinks in the evening as well, so the days are even longer,” she says, mock-mournfully. Loreto laughs. “Loreto is my coach. She lends me books and helps me with my exams.” I ask how the studies are going. “Not so good. I have just taken an English test. I passed with the lowest possible score you could get. I hope to go on to further studies – maybe a Masters, or a professional qualification like becoming a chartered financial analyst.” (If I knew the Serbian for ‘chartered financial analyst’, and had just scraped through a Serbian test, I would wonder whether the examiners were setting their pass-rates a bit high.)

Loreto, by contrast, is working full-time. “I’m in a new department. It’s good, as I get to use my Spanish at work, but I’d really like to just work as a translator. For a while I did some translating work at City University, but I need more qualifications to get back into it.” I ask Marija if she gets to use her Serbian at work. “All the time,” she deadpans. “While I am working, I am on Skype with my sister.”

Marija’s sister has visited her a couple of times since she moved permanently to London last summer, and she also goes back to Belgrade a lot. Loreto tries to get back to South America yearly. “My niece and nephew are six and seven – my niece is my god-daughter, so I like to see her grow up. My family are mostly based in Venezuela now. We moved there when I was three, in 1977, after a couple of years of Pinochet. Lots of Chileans I meet in London are second generation – their parents moved here in the seventies for the same reason we moved to Caracas.” But does she feel based in London, now? “In July, I will have been married for two years, to an Englishman. He is from Basingstoke. He says, if you’ve never heard ‘Basingstoke’ said in a Chilean accent, you haven’t lived. So, yes, I feel that this is my home now.”

After two years married, Loreto could apply for British citizenship, but she isn’t planning to. “I am worried that if I become British, I will have to change my name. And I like my Chilean name.” Marija and I try to persuade her that she wouldn’t necessarily lose her original name, but Loreto stays unconvinced. “Chilean names are complicated,” she says, getting her passport out to prove it. “Look! I have four names!” (She does, it’s true). “These two are my two surnames, my father’s surname and my mother’s. I will pass my father’s on to my children, along with my husband’s surname. It causes problems at passport control, quite regularly.” Loreto’s husband is a big Latin American fan, and has visited Venezuela and Chile (“and he has never had an English girlfriend,” says Loreto) but he is currently tied to his job in London so for now they are planning on staying here.

That doesn’t mean that Loreto doesn’t find London life difficult at times. Like Silvana, Valeria and other of our Latin Americans, she complains that she can’t be as spontaneous as she was used to being. “Everyone plans their leisure time so far in advance. Life can be a bit lonely at times, and I miss my family and social life. But there are good sides too – I love Sunday roasts!”

“Of course, there are always things you miss from your home country,” says Marija. “But you have to explore the new place as well. When I arrived in London, I had a phone number of a friend of a friend, another Serbian, but I didn’t call. Just because you are from the same country, it doesn’t mean you have the same interests or experiences.”

“London is a good place to be between your early twenties and about forty,” says Loreto. For us, now, it’s great.” (Loreto and Marija are both 32). “But it’s not for kids.”
Marija chips in. “Ah, but when you’re a kid, you don’t care where you are. Everything’s great. I grew up in Belgrade, and I’m a city girl. It’s worse for the parents, who are always worried about bringing children up in a city.”
“But I think children need to be free,” says Loreto. “My husband has a twelve-year-old daughter, and she stays with us in Paddington one weekend a month. The whole time, she stays in her room – she’s constantly worried about going out.”

But, even so, Loreto would recommend London as a good place to live. “Oh, certainly! You know who it is great for? Single people, who are looking for someone. My parents are separated now, and my father has a new girlfriend, but my mother finds it hard in Latin American culture to find someone new. I want to bring her to London – I’m sure she will find someone here. There is someone for everyone in London.”

(Incidentally, Loreto took 96th place, at the bottom of the first half. “My surname – one of my surnames – begins with ‘Z’, so I am used to being at the bottom,” she shrugged. “Marija can be top of the second half.”)

No.95: Zambia

Zambian warmth in Norwich

Owen Powell - 19th June 2007

I first heard Emi’s voice through headphones. It was a typical May morning in London, I was standing in a wet Trafalgar Square next to a radio car whose detachable aerial seemed taller than Nelson’s column. The BBC London breakfast show was featuring the project, so we’d given them a ‘hard-to-find’ list of ten countries and the appeal was being broadcast capital-wide. (I think the idea of us being in Trafalgar Square was that anyone who heard the show could come down and join in. No-one did, though. Too wet.) Our list was a proper A-Z, starting with Algeria and finishing with Zambia, and we had high hopes of hearing from all of them.

Two hours later, colder, wetter and wiser, the breakfast show had only really taken three calls. One from a woman who claimed there were 250 countries in the world, and who was recorded reciting them (they would occasionally fade her up during our little interviews, as if to tease us with how many more we had to find); one from a guy from Barbados whose details were subsequently lost; and, finally, Emi, from Zambia. Success! We chatted to him about his country’s flag and where he lived, and he promised to email us. And he did! A day later, we got a lovely email which signed off ‘Zambia – The Real Africa’. Intrigued, I emailed back and we set up a meeting in Hackney.

As we settled down into our chairs in the bar of the Hackney Empire, Emi (short for Emmanuel) smiled and said that in his opinion, Zambia is the heart of Africa. Not specifically geographically (I think the Central African Republic has quite a good claim to that), but in terms of its people, its wildlife, and as a beacon for the future. It’s a landlocked country, right in the middle of lots of other regions that have suffered immense problems – wars, human rights abuses, dictatorships – but has survived as a peaceful enclave since independence from Britain over forty years ago. In fact, refugees from places like Angola, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda have found their way to Zambia in recent decades, and it has become a place of sanctuary for many thousands.

So, what was the explanation? Emi thinks it’s a combination of factors. Firstly, independence came early, and without much struggle. Secondly, Zambia is rich with natural resources. It’s the third biggest exporter of copper in the world, and China in particular is investing lots of money in resource-rich African countries. Thirdly, and here Emi smiles again, “people in Zambia are laid-back. We’ve got nothing to fight for.” This friendly attitude is the main thing Emi misses from home. “If you go there, people will take you around. You’re never lost. If you want to go ten kilometres away, people will take you. Sitting on the bus, people talk to you. Not like here.” Emi does a quick but devastatingly accurate mime of a typical Londoner sitting on the bus, reading the newspaper with earphones in. “It’s a brotherly attitude.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Emi found an atmosphere similar to this Zambian warmth not in London, but in Norwich, where he studied for a Masters in International Child Welfare. “Sometimes,” he says, amused by the thought, “ I could go for three weeks or a month in Norwich without seeing another black face. Once, I saw another black man right in the distance and I ran after him, but he disappeared. But the people in Norwich were really friendly. They weren’t suspicious at all, even the older people. People would chat to me in pubs and restaurants, ask me where I was from. In smaller towns, I think, people are more curious. In London, people are more aware of how they’re ‘supposed’ to behave, so they won’t talk about race or nationality. They’re afraid of causing offence, so it’s easier to say nothing.”

During his Masters, which began in 2001, Emi’s life changed in two fairly drastic ways. Firstly, he was offered a job in social work through a London-based recruitment agency. Secondly, he met his wife, who is from Zimbabwe. “She has a passion for foreigners,” says Emi. “Well, we both do, I suppose. It’s good to be with someone from a different culture. Every day is a learning process. We speak English with each other, but we’re trying to learn the different languages as well. There are 73 in Zambia. I speak about 40 of them – although lots of them have similarities. My wife speaks three Zimbabwean languages, and I’m getting quite good at the one she speaks most often. Better than she is at mine.” I ask if that’s because he’s had more experience in learning languages. He smiles. “Possibly. But really, I think it’s because she’s on the phone so much to her family, so I hear it more often.”

Emi’s job offer came at a time when he was considering going on to do a PhD, but he feels that the practical experience is helpful for any future academic work. He specialises in helping care for children with disabilities, and he’s currently putting together a plan to begin his doctorate next year in this field, alongside his day job, but still needs sponsors. He’s been on the Hackney social work team for a year, before that he worked in a similar role in Tilbury. “I look after, usually, more than 20 families at one time. It’s very fulfilling to help a family – they’re often in distress, enduring so much, then life starts coming back to normal.” I expect you make a lot of people very happy, I say. “Yes,” he says, “but they make me happy as well. You really get to know the family – it can be a long process, from birth, all the assessments. And when a family has a disabled child, their whole life revolves around that child. It’s difficult for the family to go to big public events, they can get embarrassed, and it affects the other children. One of my responsibilities is to balance their life, sometimes finding respite care so the rest of the family can do things as well.”

Emi’s ambitions to help people don’t stop here. “I want to improve the lives of people in Zambia as well. I’m liaising with politicians over there, I have meetings. I have to take my skills back home – I feel very strongly about this. I’ve set up a programme to sponsor children through higher education, and further study abroad if possible. The education system in Zambia is very British. Until 1983, all our exams were marked in the UK – they would send the scripts over to Cambridge every year. There was always a long wait for results.” Emi is warming to his theme now. “Who knows? Maybe one day, I’ll be president,” he smiles, tongue in cheek, “and you can say you interviewed me back in 2007!”

But the last time Emi went back to Lusaka, he felt lost. “A lot of my friends have moved away now. Things have changed. I think I feel more of a Londoner, now. I’ve got a long-term visa, a work permit until 2011. Now I’m married, as well ...” He lets the thought hang. I think Emi is pretty settled in London. Not that there aren’t some downsides. He’s been mugged twice, in Peckham, both times at knifepoint. “The first time, it was ten in the morning on a Saturday. A busy day, people all around, and suddenly I feel someone close behind me and a knife sticking in my ribs. I still have a hole in my leather jacket! I had ten pounds on me, I handed it backwards without looking and the knife went away. But apart from the violence, London is a good place to be. It deserves to be the world capital – there’s everything to see, everything to do. I have some friends who’ve been in London 25 years, and there’s still bits of Hackney they’ve never seen.”

No.94: South Africa

Boks and Biltong

Owen Powell - 19th June

Surely we should have found a South African by now, we said to each other. As the cliché goes, every man behind every bar in London is from one of the rugby or cricket nations (Australia, New Zealand, SA). Maybe we just don’t go to many bars, or maybe the cliché isn’t actually all that true.

Conscious that our self-imposed one month exile in Edinburgh was fast approaching, and that we weren’t even half-way through, we knuckled down, did ten seconds worth of research on the internet and discovered that there was a South African Bok Bar in Covent Garden. Bingo. We jumped on the tube.

But before we even got to the Bok Bar, we got distracted by the Bok Shop. Inside, behind the counter, was Sunette. Sunette was from South Africa, and listened patiently as we explained the project. “OK,” she said, “but do you only want people who’ll say nice things about London?”

Our ears pricked up. No, we said. We want all sorts of people. (This was interesting!) What do you want to say about London? “Oh, I don’t really like the London lifestyle,” said Sunette. “It’s too rushed. I mean, I can afford things, I always have money, but I don’t like travelling around. It’s too expensive, and not nice.” Sunette handed us some biltong – dried strips of beef that were tasty and very chewy. “In South Africa, you can just hire a car and take five of your friends around. Here, it’s the tube, and buses. I was on a bus recently, and some kids heard my accent and called me a foreigner, and threw keys at me. In South Africa, if there were men on the bus, they would have stopped it, but here, no-one said anything. There’s no respect. No-one stands on the buses for old people. Respect is missing in this country.”

Sunette was worried about young people back home as well. She clearly loves her country (“It is the world in one country, it has beautiful landscapes, friendly people”) but has lots of concerns about its future. (Alex and I had mouths full of biltong, chewing away). “People who come into the shop, I ask them if they plan to visit South Africa, but mostly they are too scared,” she said. “It’s a real shame, as we have a lot to share with visitors. But I can see why. I read an Afrikaans newspaper every morning, and 80% of it is about crime. My brother lives in Johannesburg, and it’s worse there, but it’s getting bad in Cape Town as well.”

Sunette is 22, so was quite young when Apartheid ended in 1994. She says this is at the root of many of her country’s problems today. “If you ask them, many black people in South Africa say they were happier in the time of Apartheid. They were promised a lot once they were treated the same as whites, but not much has happened. It’s affected everything. Even sport is more like politics than sport these days. There are quotas, so people like Pietersen move to England to play. Even if you have talent, you can’t get into the team because of the colour of your skin.”

The biltong was very chewy and I struggled to ask any more questions. Alex found a jar of ‘Mrs Balls Chutney’ on the shelves, which he brought over to the counter. “I had some of this when I was in South Africa last year!” he said. In turns out that he had been to an Elephant Park that was right next door to where Sunette used to work in a game farm. She then took a degree in tourism, and is in the UK to work to pay off her study loan. “That’s the reason that most South Africans are here,” she told us. She’s worked for a year, partly in the shop, partly doing things like medical trials, but plans to return soon.

“Lots of people are leaving, running away,” she said, “and the attitude now is to give up. But I think it’s important to go back to help, help create jobs, help to stop the crime. It’s really bad. Everyone you know has been affected by it: muggings, hijacks, rapes. Even from a very young age, your mother teaches you not to walk alone. Recently, there was a story about a husband on his wedding night who was shot so the thieves could steal his presents. The country is going to get out of hand. We have to bring back the death penalty. In a country that bad, you need the death penalty. That’s crisis talk, but ...” Sunette shrugged, and smiled.

Both of her parents were teachers in South Africa, and Sunette believes that wages for public servants need to rise to encourage more people into careers in teaching, nursing and policing. Especially when gunmen often come into the schools, as her parents once witnessed. “I am optimistic,” said Sunette. “I’m proud of my country, and my language, and I believe that things will get better. There are people standing together, marching in the streets for peace. I want to go back and live there long term.”

No.93: Algeria

She told me about the Blue People

Alex Horne – 18th June 2007

OK. I’ve got a bit of a confession to make: I’m not sure if this is ironic, typical, foolish or simply awkward, but there’s no doubt about it: I’ve moved out of London.

After five and a half years living in the capital, occupying various addresses in New Cross, Farringdon, Marble Arch, Hammersmith, Chiswick and Kensal Green, Rachel and I have bitten the grown-up bullet and moved to the country. Well, to Chesham – outside of the M25. It’s actually still on the tube, clinging on to the end of the Metropolitan line like a spider on a windy washing line, the furthest station from the centre (Zone 6D – yes, there’s a Zone 6D!), but it’s definitely outside of London. And with house prices high and rising in the capital, we’ll probably never be able to move back in.

So, as if finding a hundred more people from a hundred more countries who live and work in London but not as students or in embassies within the next four months and six days wasn’t hard enough, I now live twenty miles outside of our target area. And thirty miles from Owen. Like I’ve already said, we’re really not going about this in the most strategic of ways.

But the project is supposed to be about real London life and all I’ve done is what most people in London will at some point do – move on. London’s population is incredibly transitory. At least a third of the population were born overseas, another third have come from other areas of Britain, meaning only about one in three Londoners were actually born in London. Most people have ended up there. And most of those people will end up somewhere else.

Like Maryam, our Algerian representative (who was directed to us by Nastya, our Russian friend from the beginning of February). We met by her office in Ealing Broadway, my first commute into town, and she was quick to let me know she’d just celebrated her 19th year on London on Saturday. ‘Actually celebrated?’ I asked. ‘Yes, well, my mum and I went out for lunch’, she told me. ‘That counts’, I said. We were getting on well.

The two of them had actually come from Iran in 1988 when Maryam was fourteen years old. ‘It was just before the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Things were still pretty shitty’, she said matter-of-factly. ‘We’d moved from Algeria to Iran just before the revolution in 1978 – that was quite bad timing.’

So, as you’ll have worked out, she only spent a few very early years of her life living in Algeria. I asked her if she felt Algerian. ‘I’m a Londoner’, she told me. ‘This is where I’ve done my important growing up. This is where I’ve studied and this is where I’ve always worked’.

She does, however, have a huge interest in and knowledge about all things Algerian. I definitely don’t have the latter but after what soon turned into a comprehensive North African geography and history seminar, I do now have something of the former.

Maryam told me about the Blue People who live in the Sahara to the south of the country: they carry swords and wear cloaks with eye-slits cut out to protect them from the sand. She told me about the Carthaginians, Berbers, Vandals and Ottomans who all either used Algeria as a trade route or settled there for some time, swapping language and culture and enriching the land. She told me that the Romans used to call it their ‘vineyard’, because of the fertile soil that would produce the highest quality grapes, but how, thanks to global warming and socialism, the earth has since dried up. She told me a lot of things. I did a degree in Classics but can’t remember any of it being nearly as interesting as this.

I told her that she knew a lot. ‘It’s a lot of retrospective learning’, she said. ‘I’m from Britain and Iran and Algeria – so it’s one of my homes’. Are there many Algerians living here, I asked her. ‘There’s not a huge community in London’, she replied, ‘but I guess most Algerians live in Finsbury Park. Unfortunately there is that association with Abu Hamza’ – the Muslim cleric famous for making speeches advocating violence and having a hook for a hand.

History and geography then morphed into politics as she explained how the leader of the 1992 Algerian elections was annulled by the army, resulting in a ten year civil war during which many Islamists fled to the UK. Ironically, some of these people then became part of Al Qaeda over here. Three of the four 7/7 bombers had attended Abu Hamza’s lectures. At least one of them was born in Algeria.

But that’s enough serious stuff.

Apart from chatting (well, she chatted, I listened, scribbled and desperately tried to learn) about Algeria’s past and present we also talked about her current life which, to be honest, I had a bit more in common with. Particularly relevant to me, for example, was the fact that she’d met her husband at university over here and that they too plan to leave the city soon. As I say, it’s what most people do at some point.

He’s from Marburg in Germany (yes, another cosmo-couple). ‘It’s near Frankfurt – I think there’s a virus called the Marburg Virus because it was discovered there’, she told me. I told her that she knew a lot. Apparently her husband does too. He’s currently finishing his PHD after which they plan to move over to German to start afresh.

‘We’re moving for the slower pace of life’, she smiled. ‘Your quality of life instantly improves outside the city’.

I agreed.

And then I had to say goodbye, rush down the road, run up to the carpark, pay the congestion charge, get stuck in traffic and find another parking spot before getting the tube to Owen in Lancaster Gate…

Maybe the pace and quality of my life will slow down and improve more at the weekends. Or at least when I've found these ninety nine other countries.

No.92: Oman

1man

Alex Horne – 14th June 2007

With Costa Rica safely notched up and two free hours before our next more tangible commitments, Owen and I decided to return to Edgware Road, scene of our most glorious achievements to date back in January. ‘We’ll do a quick sweep’, we thought, ‘and get the Middle East done’.

With just Qatar, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to find, how could we possibly not? We’d probably even have half an hour to spare at the end to drop in on Ahmed from Somalia and sniff a bit more of that expensive perfume…

*****

An hour and a half later we were sitting in a café called Palms Palace, puffing away on a shisha pipe and wondering where it had all gone wrong.

We’d found plenty of foreigners. Everyone knows – and insists on telling us – that Edgware Road is THE PLACE for Middle Easterners. Unfortunately they weren’t the right Middle Easterners for us. Normally I wouldn’t be all that picky but it is a bit frustrating when you go into every single travel agent, news agent and iron agent (well, mongers, but they’ve got to update that word soon) on a street, only to be greeted by people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Kenya and Lebanon. Exactly. I’m glad you understand.

We spent a good twenty minutes in one particular café, painstakingly explaining why we absolutely had to meet someone from Qatar in the next forty five minutes, only for the gentlemen in question to finally shake his head incredibly slowly, mutter ‘no, no, no’ under his breath, and trudge back into his kitchen. It was only later that I realised my t-shirt probably didn’t help our cause. It’s a hard garment to describe but it’s basically an advert for ‘Tulip’, Denmark’s most popular brand of Spam, and features a picture of a pig snuffling away in a tin of the processed ham product. Not all that appropriate in a Halal eatery. Those pesky Danes and their inflammatory imagery!

So with time running out and another afternoon of opportunity slipping through our fingers we found a table outside the Palace, just two doors down from the Oud perfumery, and bravely ordered ourselves a pipe, thinking we’d at least having something to talk about should anyone sit next to us.

No-one sat next to us.

And we couldn’t really cope with the pipe.

Shisha pipes, for some reason, don’t have instructions printed on the side so if, like me, you don’t even really know how you smoke a cigarette properly, an enormous glass and metal pipe is a distinctly daunting prospect.

Not that I was going to appear daunted in any way. As soon as it was deposited before us I grabbed what I hoped was the correct nozzle and gamely sucked away. The water bubbled. I felt pretty cool. It didn’t taste too bad. ‘I could get used to this!’ I said.

Two minutes later, the waiter (igniter/piper/flame thrower?) returned and lit some charcoal on a tiny tray at the top of the pipe. ‘Now its ready’, he smiled. ‘Of course’, I replied calmly. At least in a couple of weeks the smoking ban would arrive and I’d have the last laugh.

Actually, that’s not fair. It was actually this very waiter who finally saved our – not bacon – erm, day. We’d obviously told him what we were doing and asked him where he was from at the first opportunity (to which he confusingly replied; ‘No, I don’t have this idea’ then later, reluctantly, ‘Lebanon’). But after serving us some fairly solid Arabic coffees he somehow salvaged the situation, saying, ‘do you want to meet someone from Oman?’ then letting us do just that.

As it turned out, the only other people sitting outside the café, three tables along from us, were two cousins from Oman; one, Adnan, the First Secretary at the Embassy of Oman - so useless for us, but the other, Hamed, a bona fide Omanian living in London!

Unfortunately, he didn’t speak much English so what followed was less an interview, more a frank exchange of facial expressions, but we did learn that he likes the apple tobacco best, it’s exactly the same here as in Oman, he smokes it whenever he feels like it and he’ll normally get through a pipe in about half an hour. What more could you possibly want to know? And anyway, we were just glad to get any return from a difficult afternoon – especially since by now we were both feeling quite dizzy from a combination of smoke and coffee that our sheltered British lives hadn’t really prepared us for.

Now then, just one hundred more countries to go.

No.91: Costa Rica

A Backwards Story

Alex Horne – 14th June 2006

I don’t think of myself as particularly well-travelled, especially compared to some of the frequent flyers we’ve encountered over the last thirty weeks. But I’ve just worked out from my new ‘Pocket World Atlas’ (which fits neatly into any pocket the size of an enormous book) that I’ve actually been to 32 of the 192 countries on our list. That’s exactly a sixth of the world covered. And probably my favourite country – if that’s not too banal a title – is Costa Rica, where my wife and I spent our honeymoon in January 2005. It’s beautiful and relaxed, there are beaches, rainforests and volcanoes – and best of all, the government did away with the army some time ago and instead ploughed that money into the education system resulting in an almost tangible air of peacefulness across the country.

But though I loved it there, I’m not sure if I ever really got to know it. With the awkward exception of China, I’ve never actually stayed in any one of those 32 countries long enough to feel like anything other than a tourist. Some I stayed in for just a weekend, others a few hours. Gianina, our Costa Rican, on the other hand, has truly lived all over the world and, at the age of just 22, has the self-assurance of someone who is genuinely well-travelled. Although ironically, like me, she’s never actually lived in Costa Rica…

We met for the first time at our Nearly Halfway Party (it’s now a month later and we’re still nearly halfway but are also nearly a third of the way through the year –not a good equation) which, she said, was ‘quite odd’. Today Owen and I met her outside Ladbroke Grove station, which we thought would be convenient for all of us, not knowing that Gianina had come from the hospital on Exmoor Road where she works, three doors down from which was the office in which Owen and I had just had a meeting. Oh well. These things happen. Sorry, that thing happened. We soon got over it, found a pub, Owen bought a round and we settled down to chat.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea for Gianina to tell me her story backwards. Normally people tend to start at the beginning and end up with why they came to London – I guess there’s some logic to that approach – but this time the story would be all about why she calls Costa Rica her home, not London.

As I said, she’s 22 now and arrived in London (Clapham Junction to be precise) a year before Rachel and I landed in San Jose. She came to study history in an international university called Richmond which I was ashamed to say I haven’t heard of, and is now temping while looking for a more permanent job. ‘I moved here from Brazil’, she told me, sticking to the backwards plan. ‘There’s a myth there – well, I’m not sure if it’s a myth yet – there’s a feeling there, that England is the most amazing place to live. So I got carried away and ended up here’.

She told me she’d got bored in Brazil. ‘I lived in the capital, Brazilia, but there are only two million people there and everyone knows everyone so I wanted a change.’ This wasn’t the first time she’d felt that way. For the previous ten years, her home had been Maryland, USA. ‘But I didn’t really like it there either – the people were strange and horrible. Friendly, but in that false American way, always so cheesy. They didn’t really understand that I was from a different country’.

And most recently, that different country had been Guatemala. In fact Guatemala was pretty much where her story ended (and her life began). She was born and grew up in the republic after her parents (both 'international 'functionaries' in her words – her Dad was employed by the World Bank) moved there for work. ‘But I couldn’t get a Guatemalan passport’, she said, clearly worried her Costa Rican nationality might be in doubt. ‘They wouldn’t give me one – I don’t know why’.

Instead, she’s the proud owner of a Costa Rican identity and although she’s never actually resided there, she did once spend almost eight continuous months in the country, albeit in a Russian dolls sort of way - within the confines of her pregnant Mum (apologies if that’s not the most delicate of descriptions), who then lied to the officials so that she could fly despite Gianina’s very imminent arrival.

‘So where is home?’ asked Owen – who had now returned with the drinks, by the way. We all agreed that was a very good question and I was a tiny bit miffed that none of my enquiries had received such praise thus far. ‘Costa Rica’, she replied after thinking for a few seconds, ‘definitely. That’s where my family is and it’s such a beautiful place. My roots are there’. Her parents are currently in the process of moving back for good after her Dad’s recent retirement. They’ve bought some land to the south of the country where they’re planning to build a fittingly eco-friendly hotel. ‘There’s a river running through it which will provide all the electricity’, she told us excitedly.

But for now, there’s a chance she will be happy in London, that the myth will hold true, that she will find it ‘amazing’ – at least for a short while. Unlike Brazilia, everyone certainly doesn’t know everyone else (although she did tell us that just last week she’d found a fellow Costa Rican on the train – ‘but I didn’t speak to him – he seemed quite rough’) and you can do almost anything here. Like designing furniture - which Gianina suddenly announces she plans to do next. ‘Either that or become the first ever Costa Rican modern artist’, she grinned. ‘Have you done any shows?’ asked Owen – not such a good question this time – ‘No’, she replied, shrugged her shoulders and we all laughed. She didn’t seem to think it’d be a problem and nor did we. Like I said, she’s very self-assured and sometimes that’s all you need.

‘I’ve told all my friends I’m going to be Miss Costa Rica 2007’, she told us as we said our goodbyes. So, if you’re reading this and you’re a friend of Gianina, yes, Gianina is officially the Best Costa Rican Girl That We’ve Met This Year.

Then, just before heading off in different directions she called us back saying, ‘Oh yes, there’s one other thing I wanted to say about my country. Everyone always goes on about how good it is that we don't have an army. Well I just wanted to say that it’s not. I think it’s a lot more dangerous there now because there’s no army. My uncle and aunt had their house broken into by men with guns last year and that happens all the time. I’m sure it wouldn’t if there was an army’. Yes, I said, that’s a very good point. I really did love Costa Rica, but if I’m honest, I guess I barely scratched its surface. Perhaps Rachel and I should go back for a second honeymoon and spend a bit more time really getting to know the country. I’ve heard about this new eco-friendly hotel that’s opening up in the south sometime soon…

No.90: Guatemala

‘Why doesn’t your country shake?’

Owen Powell - 13th June 2007

Ian (we’ll come to Patty in a minute) spent a lot of the 1980s travelling around Latin America. In 1989 he wound up in LA to stay a while with an American friend, David, and his Guatemalan wife, Lily. (Ian is English, I should have made that clear at the start). Also staying with David and Lily was Lily’s cousin, Patty, who was in the States to learn English. Fortunately for Ian (and for me and Alex), Ian spoke virtually fluent Spanish, so they started chatting. They clicked. One thing led to another.

Ian had to go to Boston for a while to see another friend, but while he was away from LA, Patty’s parents got wind of this new English man in her life, and weren’t very happy. So unhappy, in fact, that Patty’s dad couriered a plane ticket back to Guatemala to her, and she had to fly home. “Guatemalan society is quite traditional,” explains Patty. “It’s customary for couples to come from families who know each other very well, and mum hated the idea of me in a relationship with a foreigner.”

“At the time,” continues Ian, “Europeans had a reputation as being hippies. It was probably fair – I had long hair then, and I’d been travelling for seven years.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I had much longer hair then.”

David and Lily vouched for Ian, there were phone calls, and Patty’s parents were gradually won round. Ian went to visit them in Guatemala, and by the end of the year, they were married. “The night before the wedding, Patty’s mum came to see me. She sat me down and said, ‘You know, Ian, it’s not to late to pull out now. You don’t have to marry my daughter.’ But straight away, after the ceremony, she accepted me into the family. It’s a happy ending.”

The newly-weds had a brief honeymoon in the UK, and another wedding over here, but then planned to live indefinitely in Guatemala. Just over a year later, however, Ian’s father died, and so they moved back to support his mother. This seems to have been a tough decision.

“The first six months in London were the worst in my whole life,” Patty says, quite definitively. “I had fallen in love with England, I thought, when we came for our honeymoon and I saw all these chequerboard fields out of the window of the plane, but actually living here was horrible. I had six months of intensive language learning, and really felt like I didn’t belong. But then spring came.”

“Guatemala is known as the land of eternal spring,” Ian notes. “They only really have one season.”

“When I saw the flowers come up, I fell in love with England all over again. That is something I’ll treasure forever.”

Ian’s brother-in-law got Patty a job as a waitress, and Patty religiously learnt the names and sounds of every item on the menu. “But every customer had a different accent, and I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I was a computer programmer in Guatemala, but there was a downturn in computer jobs. It was before the internet, so staying in touch with home was also quite hard. I felt distant from my family.”

Patty went to the Guatemalan embassy to ask for advice. Instead, they offered her a job as receptionist, where she stayed for five years. “I’ve been told that there are only 20-25 Guatemalans in the whole country. From the ones I know, it seems like they’re all women who have married British or German men.”

Patty didn’t feel that she had fully settled into London until after she had left the embassy, and had her first child twelve years ago. “When the children arrived – we have a daughter and a son now – I got into childminding work, then child care, and more community work. I’m quite involved now.”

Ian splutters. “Quite involved! When it was the Queen’s golden jubilee in 2002, she came to Walthamstow and Patty was invited to meet her as a pillar of the local community!”

Patty blushes and smiles. “Well, I suppose. I work for the local authority now, developing child care across the whole borough. It’s good work, I enjoy it.”

But does she miss Guatemala? “We go back a lot. My parents have been to London three or four times, but we make a point of seeing them in their home every year.”

“It’s expensive,” Ian says, “as we have the whole family now. But, as I always say to Patty, it’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity. I feel like I dragged her over here, so once a year is the least we can do. The kids go to a Latin American school on Saturdays, and we brought them up in the house speaking both languages, so they fit right in when we’re all over there.”

“But of course, I miss certain things,” Patty continues. “In England, the houses are dull. Where I grew up, everyone paints their house in bright colours. I miss my people, my family. But then when I’m in Guatemala, I miss my London people. You won’t see any black or Asian people in Guatemala, so I miss my London friends too. One thing I do miss? I miss the earthquakes and volcanoes. When I first arrived here, I remember asking Ian, ‘Why doesn’t your country shake?’ This earthquake in Folkestone recently ... Ha! That’s not an earthquake.”

“In 1976, there was an earthquake in Guatemala that still makes it onto lists of the ten worst ever,” Ian points out.

Patty’s eyes light up. “When an earthquake is about to happen, you know it’s near. The dogs go crazy. Even the ants come out of the ground, they can feel it. Then it hits.”

The Media

Alex Horne - 11th June 2006

Owen and I often rely on the idea that words like ‘amateurish’, ‘shambolic’ and ‘late’ can all be taken to mean ‘charming’ if we smile and apologise enough. Our approach to this quest has been decidedly haphazard so far; we’ve bumbled along, pinching (not grabbing or seizing) opportunities when they’ve presented themselves, but rarely having anything approaching a plan or a tactic, let alone a manoeuvre.

We always knew the media could be a useful tool. But as neither of us is very good with any sort of tool we never really talked about it and kept on shuffling up to people in person at random on the street – the equivalent of having a look at every single page on the world wide web instead of letting google look for you.

The thing was, we enjoyed the search and didn’t really want someone else to do it for us. Besides, putting an ad in a newspaper seemed a little bit like cheating.

But then The London Paper got in touch with us and offered to feature this blog on ‘The Web’ section of their thelondonnightin page. Well, we thought, it’s a free paper and their internet page probably wouldn’t be read by all that many people, what harm can it do? We had our picture taken (in the grounds of The Sun, the two of us smiling nervously behind Owen’s globe – thus recreating the universe in Wapping) and the article was published on April 30th. The next day, to our surprise, the floodgates, while not opening entirely, definitely started to leak.

People from around twenty different countries got in contact and our project received the shot in the arm we hadn’t really admitted it needed. Because even now, after that flurry of self-identifying nations, we’re still not halfway to our target but are almost two thirds of the way through the year. Neither of us is talking about it but our mountain’s getting bigger.

Thankfully, the article in the paper wasn’t only noticed by those much-needed nationalities. Various London-based websites also got in touch and published links to our blogs, turning up several new countries in the process. BBC London then got hold of the story with the result that on May 30th at 7.30am Owen and I found ourselves back on Trafalgar Square, in the rain, standing by a BBC London Radio Van with a roving reporter called Rob. We’d agreed to do an appeal for countries live on air. It seemed like another good and harmless idea. We gave them a shortlist of our ten most wanted countries. They duly ‘appealed’. And while much of the breakfast show was then dominated by an enormous and ill-informed argument about how many countries there actually are in the world and Owen and I were encouraged to approach people who were clearly busy/British/not from a country we were looking for, they did eventually unearth Emmanuel, a very nice man from Zambia, so it was all definitely worth it. We may not normally chase members of the public in quite such an antagonistic stunt TV type way, but for a one-off it was interesting and we’re very grateful for the opportunity. We got ourselves a bonus country and learnt that on balance we prefer our more shambolic/charming approach.

Unfortunately, that approach doesn’t make good TV. After our radio slot we were then due to meet Mike from BBC London to do a couple of reports for the lunchtime and evening programmes. Again, this was hastily arranged and we really appreciate the fact that they featured us at all.

We were interviewed in Chinatown and hopefully did a reasonable job at explaining the idea. We also managed to persuade them to show our web and email addresses long enough so that another large clump of people got in touch after seeing us on the midday news. The reporter then said we were off to find more nationalities and encouraged the viewer to ‘come back later to see how they got on’.

Regrettably, if you did come back later to see how we got on, you wouldn’t have seen how we got on. So in case anyone’s still waiting to find out, I can now tell you categorically that we didn’t get on very well.

As expected, our hurried trawl through the centre of London caught us a fair few foreigners, nearly all of whom were tourists. And those that weren’t tourists were from countries we’d already found. We got our hopes up briefly when we found ‘The African Centre’ on Covent Garden, but even they were dashed when the one lady present (from Ghana) said they’d shut a month ago and wouldn’t be open again till next year.

Having scored zero after searching for a couple of hours, the reporter decided to call it quits and the evening piece was pulled. Oh well.

Secretly, Owen and I were both slightly relieved. We’d got a load of extra countries – most of whom we’re still trying to arrange dates with at the moment – and the word was spread to more people who might in turn find us more people. At the same time, we’ve still got enough countries left to find for us to feel like we’re still in some sort of vague control over the project. When I bought a Panini Sticker album for last year’s World Cup, I found the process less satisfactory than when I was little, partly because I now had access to a credit card. The challenge wasn’t as great so nor was the pay-off. We didn’t want the media to be our credit card this time round – just a generous cash donation from a favourite aunt, or something.

And this weekend, with a bit of luck, the Observer will also be running a piece about our search, so we could just be receiving another timely gift…