If you ever came across the former British deputy high commissioner to Fiji, Paul Welsh, you would have realised that he was a different sort of diplomat, serious but with a bubbly and jovial personality.
There are many reasons for that. But the diplomat believes it has to do with his upbringing. Mr Welsh said he enjoyed an ordinary upbringing in a working class family, from a small town in the North of England.
Like any other boy, he spent most of his days playing cricket. His holiday travels were always within Britain. Mr Welsh described him in his younger days as “quite sensitive and serious”, and often “stressed with schooling”.
But how did a small town boy become a career diplomat? Sitting on a couch at the British High Commissioner’s residence in Suva, during an interview before he left the country, Mr Wesh said, “I think many of us simply fall into our careers by accident.”
He was accepted on the graduate training scheme at Sainsbury’s supermarket, one of United Kingdom’s biggest supermarket chains. He was all keen because the idea was “they would train you up to be a store manager” and then “you could progress even further”.
“I think my dad saw a newspaper ad and he said look at this. My dad wasn’t particularly educated. He said ‘what do you think of this?
“I asked how I am going to get into the foreign office with my background in the North of England.
“He didn’t encourage me or disprove me either but I had another look but with no expectation that it would go anywhere.”
His journey in diplomacy started when he was accepted for an interview. Mr Welsh remembered going with his late mum to London and thinking it would just be a great weekend away. Little did he know he would be called back for a final interview, accepted and within two years, posted to South Africa, all without any formal university education.
“I had already taken a conscious decision not to go to university but I was accepted in a few university courses to study German and politics.
“None of my parents and in my family went to university so I said to myself, what if I had gone to university, should I be encouraging them to go or should I say, do whatever you want.”
Mr Welsh said his job as a diplomat has allowed him to live in about 12 countries and visit about 70 countries.
“In the 1980s, my first three assignments were in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Ghana so I developed a passion for Africa.
“Then I kind of did a shift to the former Soviet Union because I’m a Russian speaker and I also went to Central Asia, to Uzbekistan and I spent a lot of time in newly independent countries that had just been born.
“I spent time in Georgia in the former Soviet Union, Middle East, Europe and I met my wife in Portugal and my children were born in Austria. Mr Welsh explained that living in another country helped one see the world from a different perspective. Within weeks of arriving in Fiji, he began his first charitable endeavour by shaving his head for WOWS Kids Fiji. Some of his engagement may have pushed the boundaries of a diplomat but they brought him closer to the hearts of many Fijians.
“But you know the activities to fundraise for Frank Hilton Organisation through that Barrow Battle led me to do some pretty silly things like dressing up as superman and pushing a wheelbarrow around Albert Park.
“In terms of the most memorable experience, it has to be the achievement of raising sufficient money to buy the culpa scope machine for the Fiji Cancer Society because my wife and I drove it ourselves. Mr Welsh said his family raised the money themselves, just by bothering companies and organising a cricket competition, and got other diplomatic missions, the UN and parliament and FEMAT.
“During COVID my wife and I raised quite a lot of money for frontline health workers at CWMH,” he said.
“We were providing food packs on a weekly basis and I’ve done a lot of work with Lifeline Fiji on mental health issues and suicide prevention.
“The Sai Prema Foundation, has been one of my most moving experiences, I was involved with them since I arrived as a special heart ambassador.”
Mr Welsh said one of his favourite places in Fiji was Leleuvia Island. There his family had a vision of what a ‘paradise, tropical, pacific island’ would look like and Leleuvia never disappointed.
“I’ve tried to get to iTaukei villages in the interior, like Namuamua in Namosi. We had to go there by boat because there is no way of accessing the village by road. That was quite an experience, and some of the waterfalls that we’ve been to in the interior in the Ra province.
“I suppose we spent a lot of time at the Outrigger, a lot of time because it’s close to the Sigatoka sand dunes which I enjoyed rolling down on.”
The first time that Fiji ever crossed the former diplomat’s mind consciously was during the 1987 coup and through rugby.
“When I got appointed to the role I started doing a lot of reading on a number of academic books and also a book by the rugby sevens coach Ben Ryan.
“I think I might have been on Facebook quite a bit listening to FBC, I started reading things like Fiji Village and the online newspapers so this is the way I always prepared for a posting.”
As a father, Paul felt for his two children. He was concerned about moving them from one side of the world to another, from a relatively small school in Dublin to a big school in Suva.
“A lot of my diplomatic colleagues send their children to boarding school because we move around the world. It’s the obvious thing to do.
“But I take the view that if you’re going to have children, you might as well spend time with them.”
During his spare time in the mornings, Mr Welsh would often go on casual runs along the Nasese seawall despite a having serious knee injury which led him to get a knee replacement.
“I used to be a marathon runner and would go on 44km runs and I just enjoyed it and it helps clear your mind.
“I used to be play soccer too but it’s not sensible to do that now but I do play a lot of cricket and now tend to avoid sports that risk injury.”
A father, husband, colleague and friend, Mr Welsh had a gift of tongues.
During his stint in Fiji, he was able to catch on different phrases of the dialects used in Fiji apart from his extensive knowledge of Russian, Portuguese, German, Turkish, French, and Spanish.
While many will see him as a British diplomat, with much admiration, the humble and down to down-to-earth Mr Welsh prefers to see himself as an ordinary man on the street, just like everyone else.
“I’m just an ordinary bloke who just happens to be a diplomat,” he said.