Hello!

This is a project that Owen Powell and Alex Horne started on October 24th, 2006 (United Nations Day), and finished on October 24th, 2007. Our aim was to prove that London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, by endeavouring to meet and chat to a citizen from every country in the world who currently lives and works in London.

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We managed to meet people from 189 countries. According to the UN, there are 192 countries in the world, so we've proved that at the very least, London contains over 98.4% of the nations of the world!

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We are still looking for people from three countries:

Marshall Islands; Palau; Tuvalu.

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The final encounters during our year appear below, but to follow our story from the start please click on the links under 'How we're doing' on the left-hand side.  The countries appear in the order in which we found their representative. (Any country with an asterisk * next to it has a brief account of the interview - longer versions will appear in the future!)

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To find out more about the project, including our self-imposed rules, then click here.

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Follow this link if you have the urge to see us looking awkward on Channel 4 news.  Or just below you can see us when we were half-way through the project being interviewed by George Alagiah on BBC World.

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Please email us on worldinonecity@hotmail.com if you want to get in touch, or if you know any shy Londoners who are also Tuvaluan, Palauan or Marshallese.

George Alagiah interviews us on the BBC

Friday, 5 October 2007

No.161: Samoa


Full story to follow ...

Owen Powell - 5th October 2007

Pele lived in Samoa until she was twelve, when her father was appointed as the Samoan ambassador the US, and the family moved to Washington for three years. "I had never seen an escalator before," notes Pele. "Oh, and I got to meet the first President Bush."

Later on, she studied Chemical Enginering in Melbourne, and managed oil distribution centres all around the Pacific - Fiji, the Cook Islands, New Zealand. Often, she was in charge of a dozen or so oil workers in an installation in the middle of nowhere. "Some of the men had children who were older than me," she says. "Sometimes it took a year to bring them round."

Then, an epiphany. "I sold everything, packed my whole life into two boxes and a suitcase, left the boxes at my sister's house, and came to London. I don't regret quitting my job. It's not about money - it's about looking back at 60 and seeing what experiences you've had."

See Pele's blog here.
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