By: Nicholas Neal

This is the first of what I hope will be a regular blog from your friendly neighborhood Englishman, aka Professor Nick. Today, my article is about living in a cross-cultural relationship.

I met my wife Catalina on 24th September 1999. We were introduced by Leonard, a Tanzanian friend of mine. We were on a bus which was just leaving from the University of Bath Campus and heading down into the beautiful Georgian city of Bath. That journey only took about 20 minutes but was the start of a much longer journey for the both of us into the world of trans-national-multi-cultural-relationships.

Our relationship has had its ups and downs but has survived in spite of a number of shocks over the years. My first shock occurred the first time I came to Colombia in 2001. You have to remember that at that moment I had never been to Latin America. We came to Bogota and then later went out of the city to Santa Marta. It was all new. I remember the sooty fog that hit the back of my throat as I went in the taxi from the airport to my parents-in-law´s flat. I remember meeting many uncles, aunties, cousins, friends, and being wholly overwhelmed by the experience. Santa Marta was nice but I felt as though I had to be on all the time – in other words, everything was too new, and I just did not know how to process things. I had not got used to random people shouting “Mono” or “Gringo” or trying to engage me in English conversation as a hook to getting some money out of me. Nor had I got used to the poverty I saw on the streets, the crazy acrobats at the traffic lights or the young children with their parents begging for money or food. For somebody who had spent the first thirty years of his life living a protected life in England, this was more than overwhelming.

Catalina and I had got married on the 16th of December 2000. For those men out there who find it difficult to remember their wedding anniversary here is one retrospective top tip. Get married ten days after your own birthday and preferably in a year with 00 as the last two digits. In my case, this happened purely by accident, but it gives me the advantage that every year I get a ten-day lead-in time to our wedding anniversary, and I know which one it is by simply knowing what year it is which is normally something I can manage to do.

Incidentally, in 2000, for my 30th birthday and Stag-do, I went paintballing with my friends and family. I had five older brothers and one older sister and lots of friends, and there really was no better way to celebrate my last birthday as a free man than firing small pellets of paint at the lot of them. I repeated the same activity for my 40th birthday which was in Colombia and with my friends from Los Nogales Papas Football team.

I have now been in Colombia for seven and a half years. During that time I have worked as an engineer, scientist, businessman, civil servant, speech-writer, consultant, event coordinator, actor, writer, dramatist, and now a teacher. I have been at the school for about 18 months, and my role has changed during that time. I am now working on mainly three areas: Communication – through theatre and sports activities; Innovation – through the 9th and 10th grade Ingenius programmes and; Sustainability – developing and implementing a strategy for the school to become a school recognized for its environmentally sustainable processes.

During my time here I have got to know how the Colombian Culture works and have begun to understand how Colombia and the UK are similar and also very different. Here is a list of a few things. If you want to find out more about this you can go to my blog which is at http://nicknealuseche.wixsite.com/letterfromcolombia. I have not written on this blog for a few years. I have just launched a new blog called INGENIOTS which can be accessed at https://nicknealuseche.wixsite.com/ingeniots.

For now, here is a short review of the main differences between Colombia and the UK in the form of a poem.

The UK, The British, The English, which is it,

You may indeed be severely confused,

But here is some verse to confusion reverse,

The UK means the United Kingdom,

Of What? I hear you cry.

There is England, Scotland,

Wales, Northern Ireland;

Four merry countries mashed up into one.

At the head of our nation, there is no King,

For three-fifths of two centuries

We have had a Queen.

United Queendom we should be,

Or UQ for short if you like, that is free.

Also, you find we are known as

Britain, Great Britain, The British Isles, The Brits

Still confused, if so you should quit.

I myself, I am English, a name that stems

From the Angles or what we would call today Danes.

The Welsh are from Wales which in English means foreign,

The Scots are from Scotland, the land of the Picts,

The Irish from Ireland a land full of ire,

On an island that is called Eire.

The act of union of 1703

Meant the scots unified with the English and Welsh

A hundred years later the Irish joined in,

And a hundred years on the Irish left again

Mostly

For Ulster, dear Ulster did not want to leave

And So Ireland became

The Irish Republic over most of the Isle

Accept Ulster in the north, which was full of scots from Scotland

Which now went by the name of Northern Ireland

Confused? Yes, it is confusing.

In short, we are One Nation State composed of four countries

We are like the United States of Great Britain

In fact, our cousins across the way borrowed the idea directly from us

And called themselves the USA.

Now what about Colombia

Colombia, as we know was at one time called Nueva Granada

Had it remained a Viceroyalty

Then today we could perhaps live in

The United Kingdom of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela.

But it was not to be and gradually the territory contracted.

Today we live in Colombia

More or less the same territory as the Republic of New Granada

Minus Panama and small parts of

Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil.

Colombia by area is 5 times that of the UK

It is divided into 5 geographical regions:

Pacific, Caribbean, Andean, Orinocan, Amazonian

And the smallest of these at about 130,000 square kilometers

The Caribbean is the same size as England.

(POEM ENDS)

What is remarkable for me is that in spite of the fact that the United Kingdom and Colombia should not have much in common, there are remarkable similarities. A People´s idea of themselves I believe is formed from the environment in which they live.

In Colombia we have the Andean Mountains, in the UK we have the Highlands of Scotland

In Colombia we have the Great Plains (Los Llanos) to the East, in the UK we have East Anglia, the small part of England above London.

In fact, you could divide the United Kingdom down the middle and to the South East you would find the flat-lands, and to the North West you would find the bumpy-lands rather like you could do with Colombia (see below)

In Colombia, we have the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. In the UK we have the Irish Sea, North Sea, Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel surrounding our little island.

Colombia is a country with strong regional identities (Paisa, Costeño, etc). The United Kingdom is also a country with many regional identities. I, for example, am a Janner (a prize for anybody who can guess what this means).

Two hundred years ago, the territory called Colombia was at war with Spain. The United Kingdom was at War with Spain from more than four hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago the Duke of Wellington was in Spain helping the Spanish to fight Napoleon. British mercenaries were also in Latin America helping Simon Bolivar fight Spanish forces.

Colombia has great football players but is not very good at winning football tournaments. The UK has some very good footballers also, but we do not travel very well. In 1966 England did win the Football World cup in England and for every World Cup since English people have been waiting for the English team to do the same, but this has never happened and it is the lament of most English people that this has never happened and probably never will. Ask an Englishman about this and he will tell you a long story about how England “invented” football (like many other sports) but is not very good at it……?

Colombia has many great scientists including the person who invented the pacemaker for the heart. The UK has also had many great scientists, going all the way back to Newton in the 17th Century, Darwin in the 19th Century and Peter Higgs (the predictor of the Higgs Boson, the so-called God Particle) which was shown to exist only a few years ago.

Colombians like to party. They often do this with the local tipple of Aguardiente. In the UK we tend to be more of a Beer-drinking nation, although we do also make Gin, Rum, and Whisky and have even started making wine in small quantities (Colombia is also starting to do this).

So there we have it, just a brief guide to the differences and similarities between Colombia and the United Kingdom. I hope you enjoyed it. Maybe I will tell you some more next time. Bye bye for now.

Nick