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

Tuesday 16 October 2007

No.179: Haiti


Full story to follow...

Alex Horne - 16th October 2007

Both of Kathleen's parents are from Haiti. Indeed, all four of her grandparents are Haitian. But Kathleen herself has never actually lived there, having spent her first nine years in New York, the next nineteen in Montreal and then living in Miami before moving to London in 2004.

On a table outside the same Starbucks on Chancery Lane where I'd met Ohood from Bahrain three months earlier, we chatted merrily away about how different people view different nationalities. In Britain people think she's American, but in America people think she's Canadian. Nobody seems to know how to respond when she says she's from Haiti. 'I have no country!' she laughed.

It's hard to get the tone right in these brief blurbs but I should make it clear that this was a very upbeat conversation about race. She may not fit in to any easy category, but Kathleen has clearly enjoyed her life wherever it has taken her, this 'outsider' status a quirk not a burden.

Still, I did feel quite pleased with myself when, having pronounced her 'genetically Haitian' and eminently qualified to represent Haiti here, Kathleen smiled broadly and said, 'I love that'.

1 comment:

EX-PAT said...

Hi Alex! Since our meeting, I've managed to find 6 other Haitians living and working in London! I met Jeskia in a club last fall and met the other 5 ladies at a viewing of a Haitian film held at the Tricycle Theatre hosted by Jimmy Jean-Louis (the 'Haitian' in the TV show HEROES) a couple of weeks ago. I hope you keep up your search for the remaining 4 countries. I'm sure you'll succeed.

Take care,

Kathleen
k