No.179: Haiti

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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'.