Conversation with Tatiana

Christine:  So, what is your country of origin?  

Tatiana: Colombia  

Maria: Where specifically in Colombia?  

Tatiana: Tunja, Boyaca  

Christine: Now, what brought you to Ottawa?  

Tatiana: My undergraduate program.  

Maria: What...  

Tatiana: Political Science at uOttawa   

Christine: Perfect.   

Maria: Do you have family here? And, do you see them frequently if you do?  

Tatiana: No.  

Maria: And in that case, how often do you go back to Colombia?  

Tatiana: Um... Every break the university gives me. So three, no, four or five months.  

Maria: Okay. So, would you say like once a year or twice a year?  

Tatiana: I'd say twice a year if I'm lucky.  

Maria: Okay.  

Christine: Do you live in a more Latin region of Ottawa or a neighborhood where people speak Spanish? If so, how do you celebrate special occasions that arise?  

Tatiana: I'm pretty sure Byward Market doesn't have a huge Latin American diaspora. There's a few Latin American businesses, but it's not like a hotspot for the community either. And if I were to celebrate any special occasions, I just go with my personal group of friends.  

Christine: Nice.  

Maria: And do you have any celebrations that are most important to you related to your heritage?  

Tatiana: Usually in December, like say ‘Dia de Velitas’, like the day of the candles, just as a tradition, I'd say. And because we share like good food with people who share my same culture, that's it.  

Christine: Can you describe a typical day in your community?  

Tatiana: I'd say my day is as regular as anybody's. I go to work and then I talk to my friends when I'm free. And then if it's somehow a day I'm meeting them, we just hang around and talk.  It's nothing very culturally specific.  

Maria: So for instance, for days that are special, let's say, how do you celebrate those heritage? Like, what are some, well, maybe let's backtrack. What are some dates that are important for your heritage while you're here that are not December?  

Tatiana: Mmm… that's not December. Trying to think of 1. I don't know… I mean, my friend's birthday, but that's not cultural. Umm … Sometimes in Easter, but that way, I'm not religious as my family is. So, I really don't celebrate it because of culture or whatever. So, if I wanted to celebrate my heritage, I just go somewhere where I can eat my cultural food, you could say. When I'm feeling homesick.  

Maria: How about Independence Day?  

Tatiana: Right! I don't happen to do anything those days. Like I'm aware and I try to read something about it to try to educate myself. Perhaps I have a little chitchat with my friends about it, but it's not like I go and put like the Colombian flag on my window, and I go to the embassy to celebrate. I tried this year, but they were already full, so why would I?  

Tatiana: Interesting. And then would it be another occasion? And I'm thinking more specifically and more culturally speaking for Latin countries. Days like when the soccer team plays, do you find yourself that you might be like celebrating that? As that part of your heritage?  

Tatiana: Well, my family does call me to ask me to put a number on who's going to win. And we bet, which is not really, because we always put less than a dollar on the table.  

Maria: Right.  

Tatiana: But it's just to be like, oh yeah, we're gonna watch the game. And usually more people, like not me, because I'm not a big sucker fan, but like I know my family and I know some friends that play like the Colombian shirt whenever the team plays, because it's like a lucky token. Like, you know, if we did this, the team might win. I'd say it's pretty standard.  

Maria: And also you could say it's nationalism too. It's a way, especially being in away.  

Tatiana: But also a lot of fanatism around football.  

Christine: God, yeah.  

Maria: Especially in Colombia or like in the Latin countries.  

Tatiana: Yes.  

Maria: It's just annoying.  

Christine: Are there specific values that you hold dear as a member of a Latin community that you would say don't necessarily translate into a more Canadian setting?  

Tatiana:
I'd say perhaps collectivism in a way. I feel as if Colombians think of their community first a lot of times before taking a decision that might impact somebody else than them. Out of respect, perhaps, consideration, or just costum, because that's how you're taught to be. And I kind of go by that because I don't find a reason as to why I should oppose. I think it's a nice thing to do. Like Canadians are, or I've noticed, they're more individual-driven. They want to do stuff for them first and then other people come later in consideration, which doesn't necessarily have to be something bad, but it's not something I want to assimilate into.  

Maria: So you prefer having that collectivism mindset?  

Tatiana: Yes.  

Maria: And that's something that you value. I agree. -  Would you say it also extends to like family and friends here, especially like being away and you said that you don't have any family here. Will that sense of family, because I know in Colombia, and again, the Latin American countries, we value a lot family. So how does that translate when you moved here?  

Tatiana:
Well, I was lucky to find people to be friends that I care a lot about. Kind of refer to them like as a chosen family, however long that lasts. And yeah, I try to always consider them if I'm going out, if I'm celebrating something. If I'm taking a decision that I might want to share. Also trying to like, I don't know, hold myself to more rational standards than my own. Yeah, no, I've tried, I try to engage with the people I love here. I don't hold that sense of collectivism with my original family as much. Like I moved here because I wanted to be independent. So I mean, I do have a checkup with them every day, but it's not a I'm gonna do this, or do you know what? Like, I don't do that with them. But I do with the people I care about here.  

Christine & Maria: Right.  

Christine: So is there anything that you'd like to share about yourself or your community that is important for other people, other non-Latin people, like let's say just Canadians who've never really traveled, anything that you think is important for them to know?  

Tatiana: Like important for them to know about my culture.  

Christine: Yeah, anything that you're willing to share really could be more like something you've noticed in the Latin community in general, a more Colombian setting.  

Tatiana: I feel like, I don't know if I want to say something positive or negative.  

Maria: You can say both. It's whatever you think. There's no right or wrong answers too.  

Tatiana:
Well, I feel like Colombians are more spontaneous in what they do with not only friends, but with their family, right? I feel like here you have to somehow craft special outing occasion with people to convince them to meet you. Which I get, like, everybody would like to be entertained like that. Of course. But I feel the comments on, I don't know if overall Latin Americans are like, you know what, I have to do some paperwork.  

Would you accompany to do this tedious ****? you want to go to the grocery store? Do you want to just go for a ******* walk? 

Like I miss that spontaneity. It's not a personality trait of mine, but I miss it when other people did to me. So I know I feel like I have to do it here to try to carry that within me. I don't know if it holds a special meaning, but whatever.  

And I say like a negative thing. I find it silly because, you know, we try to think like as a collective sometimes. I find it that Colombians love to peer pressure you into not heinous stuff. It's like, oh, you know, please take this food. I made it for you. If you don't receive it, I'm going to hate it forever because I offered. So how dare you?  

Or in a more negative context, it might be like, oh, let's go out for drinks. And I am going to convince you for you to drink so you do the same as I'm doing. Just so we feel like we're doing everything together. But then again, that might push some boundaries.  

Yeah. And I feel like we could be more mindful of that as a community. Like, I'm not saying we don't try. Everyone's different, but it's just a pattern.  

Maria: It is.  

Tatiana: Yeah.  

Maria: It's that collective mindset of we all have to do the same thing.  

Tatiana: Yes.  

Maria: And we're all in this together.  

Christine: Yeah.  

Maria: So it comes, it's like a double-edged sword, you could say.  

Tatiana: Yeah, it's kind of like company, but at the same time you're overriding people's own convictions or say, how do you say, comfortability, right? Yeah.  

Maria: You could say that, yeah.  

Christine: So to provide our wonderful interview process, you've mentioned food a couple of times. I'm curious, is there any particular food that reminds you of home?  

Tatiana: I'd say coffee. It's basic, but it's accessible to me. And I can make it. And I bring it home because it's easier to pack. And you know, but I can aside, I mean, in the airport if I bring it. So … Easier to have. Also some like, how do you say galgerias*? Like snacks?  

Maria: Snacks.  

Tatiana: Yeah, I bring some corn chips, spicy corn chips. Some like chocolate with dried fruit inside. And if I were to be more authentic, I'd say like, I don't know, ‘Empanadas’ or ‘Pan de Bono’, but I don't know how to make that myself here. And even though I know the recipe, it's just too...  

Maria: It's too complicated.  

Tatiana: It's too complicated. So if I wanted to eat that, I would just go to like a Latin American restaurant here. Yeah. Although they're not that good here.  

Christine: Now, for your snacks or your coffee, now, if you did run out of the stuff that you brought from home, is there any particular grocery store or just store in general that you would go to try and get some more?  

Tatiana: Yeah, there's one in the corner here. It's called La Latina. It's mostly Mexican. but they do have some Colombian snacks. So I can go there for that. Well, and I've almost never run out of coffee, but the one time I did, I had to go to a restaurant. regular coffee store to look for the Colombian selection. And it was overpriced, ****** things. But I bought it anyway, because hey, it might be better than the average thing this healthier. I don't know.  

Maria: Fair. How often would you say that you get homesick? That you feel like, oh, I want to eat this, and that's why you go and seek the food.  

Tatiana:
I'd say at least once a week. Like the thing I used to love about Colombian foods is like fruits. And my family, at least my mom's side, they have a whole farm to grow fruits. So my house always has them. And here the selection is so limited and it's so tasteless. And I find myself craving like a juice, a lemonade with coconut or with cherry, because we have lemonade at all ******* times. Like it's good, like a good juice, And I found a store here in Byward that kind of sells juices, but it's like $12 for a glass, which I find it's overpriced.  

Maria: Just a little bit.  

Tatiana: Just overpriced. And they, like, they have sweet selection. They have mango and it's a good mango, don't get me wrong. But the one I liked most was like, Lulo. Just kind of acidic.  

Maria: It's a little bit acidic, yeah.  

Tatiana: It's a little bit acidic or Maracuya.  

Maria: Passion fruit.  

Tatiana: Passion fruit, yeah. Like, it's acidic. I like those flavors. And I don't think people like it here, so they don't even bother to import it. Not a popular taste.  

Maria: I think passion fruit is a bit... It's becoming more popular.  

Christine: It's becoming more popular. It's definitely becoming more popular. But I think the general taste profile is sweet.  

Maria: Because when you mix mango and passion fruit, they kind of like that mix because they're both kind of tropical. So it kind of gives them that sense of like… Uh!  

Christine: Exotic.  

Tatiana: And they can also tame the sourness.  

Maria: Yes.  

Tatiana: I really like the sourness. And you don't get that here.  

Christine: No, it's a much more sweet variety.  

Tatiana: I used to like the fruits when they were not even fully ripe. Just… Almost ripe enough so I didn't choke eating them, but that I would feel the sourness.  

Maria: You like that tenseness in your mouth. You're like *salivating sounds* 

Tatiana: Yes…  

Maria: you're brave. Could never be me. What else?  

Christine: Well, at the beginning, before we started this interview process, we mentioned a website that this will be uploaded to called Anthro Harvest. Have you heard of this website before?  

Tatiana: No.  

Maria: It was specifically created by our professor. And it was made to be like a capsule of the stories of people within the Latin American community and also from students around campus. So it's like a project. It's like a little capsule that people can always look back at this time in our life and talk about these things.  

Christine: There's also different organizations that are interviewed on this website. That will allow different immigrants to get access to different resources and programs that these different organizations offer.  

Maria: Yeah. So this is one part of the project, and then there's other parts of the project where they interact with organizations to see how they support the community and stuff like that. Because we have, I think Ottawa is decent with the, we don't have a large community, but we do have large enough, especially if we count the people that come from Gatineau. Because I think there's a lot of.  

Tatiana: There's more there.  

Maria: There's more there. 

Tatiana: It's more affordable to live.  

Maria: Yes. So knowing about this website, how likely would you think, now that you know about it, how likely would you use it?  

Tatiana: I mean, perhaps if they had resources, say, accessing healthcare or some service that it's not readily available for non-Canadians, I would. But in terms of accessing the stories, I'm not necessarily sure if I would go to it. Mainly because I feel like the main public are probably other anthropologist or somebody who might be studying the community. Like I don't find a reason, or at least as a, like as an immigrant myself, like perhaps a first generation kid who didn't got much contact with the culture might, but I grew there. Like I don't need to.  

Maria: You have first-hand experience of what it's like.  

Tatiana: I don't need to go and read somebody else's to know what it's like. I just go and talk to the people I know. So for that purpose, I wouldn't be a user, per se. Not to say that it's useless. Obviously, there's value in holding these records and having people look at them if they're curious. I'm just not saying I'd be the target audience.  

Maria: I see.  

Christine: Okay, of course. So do you have any general comments that you'd like to share, maybe about yourself or your community. Just you mentioned that you're a student, so it could be anything.  

Tatiana: I don't know.  

Maria: Maybe… You said that you're here for your schooling. And coming from Colombia, it's always there's a question of how did you get here?  

Christine: Yes.  

Maria: So how did you land in Ottawa?  Like what was, because you could have other options. You could have visited Toronto, you could have visited Vancouver, you could have gone to Calgary, you could have gone to Edmonton. You could have gone to Montreal too. Why Ottawa?  

Tatiana:
Well, for once I had the reference of a cousin of mine who came here to do his PhD.  

And, you know, I came here when I was 18, but I started considering moving to Canada when I was younger. So he kind of painted the city as something safer for somebody my age who was going to move alone, right? And he says I wanted to learn French anyway, in Ottawa, it's kind of a bilingual city if you seek for it. It's not a bad alternative, and it's also not super huge, like Toronto, where you would get lost. And I thought about French Road, but then again, I'm not fluent in French, so, right? And I didn't necessarily think about the Latin American community when moving here. I was just pursuing, again, education.  

But then again, I've grown fun of it, at least the people I've found for myself in here that are part of the Latin American diaspora. And I might want to go to Montreal since I've noticed it has like a bigger community. And as much as I'd like to think it doesn't matter, and then I can assimilate into Canadian culture, I always find myself gravitating towards people of my, of a similar background as mine, even though it's not like a, like a bias or anything necessarily, it's just what I do, perhaps for my own comfort.  

Christine: Yeah, of course.  

Tatiana:
So perhaps that has some value. I like, especially last year I talked with some freshly arrived international students. And they're like, where did you find Latin American people…I've tried.  

So it doesn't seem to be a need of mine, but in general, somebody who comes from abroad trying to find someone from their same background to find belonging, like community perhaps. Because like even though, I'm not saying, it's impossible, right? But there's not a lot of Canadians out there who are just like happy too.  

Maria: To go to your acquaintance to make your acquaintance and stuff like that. They're not as open.  

Tatiana: Yeah, and you get to chase them a little, which is not, it's fine, you know. You're going to make an effort if you want to build relationships, but it's different. And at first it takes time to get used to.  

Christine: Yeah, of course.  

Maria: Would you say that part of your support group here… your chosen family, as you said, are there more, if you had to put in a percentage? Not that you have to. Would you say they're more from a Latin background like you are, or would you say they're more a mix of a lot of international students? Or would you say it's a more international, my community, Canadians?  

Do you think you have a good balance between the...  

Tatiana: I mean, I think most of them are international, or at least have an immigrant background of sorts. And yeah, most of them are from the Latin American community. Percentage wise, I couldn't tell you. I do have a few Canadian friends that I value a lot. But it's not, I guess they're not the predominant group. If I were to put them in a number scale.  

Christine: That's fair. Yeah. I'm trying to think. Do you have any concerns? It can be about this interview in general. It can be about anything really. It could be just about you being a student in Canada or the way you're treated as such, treated as an immigrant. Just any concern … really that you think is important to voice out loud. So, people are aware.  

Tatiana:
Perhaps I find it funny. I know it's meant to be a compliment when people say it to me. And there's like, oh, you know, you don't look Latin American. You know, I couldn't have told that you weren't born here by the way you speak. And I guess  it's meant to mean like, you communicate yourself well in English and, you know your appearance can pass up as white, which perhaps could be a compliment in their view, but it feels a little bit condescending in the way that it's like, oh, so you expect someone with my background to be less fluent in the language, you expect them to be, I don't know, less eloquent, you expect them to not be able to achieve the same things I have. So you are complimenting me, yes, but complimenting me not because of me, but because you think my people are stupid. And I don't like that.  

Maria: Like the stereotypical thing that you should be loud, you should have an accent, you should have, you should look a little different, you should not have like fair skin or and I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that is what they call microaggressions.   

Tatiana: I guess you could call it that. It's just like, I don't know, it's silly.  I guess there's this presumption, and it's true that immigrants have to work harder to get what they want. And I have a lot of privilege that also has allowed me to be here, which would not have been possible if I had come here in another condition. Still, it's just like, you don't have to put down other people to compliment me.  

Tatiana: And it's just like instead of challenging the stereotypes people have around the Latin American community, it just feels like they're creating a whole different category for you.  

Maria: Interesting. It's like I didn't think about that in that way of like creating that whole new category. You're right. Been there. Yeah, that's all the questions we have for you. Did you want to add anything or are you okay?  

Tatiana: No, I think I'm good.  

Maria: Amazing. Do you want to do anything?  

Christine: No, I think I'm good on my part. Thank you very, very, very much for participating and enduring with us.  

Maria: You get a cookie.  

Tatiana: It's my pleasure.