Keeping Scots traditions alive overseas

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A weekend of celebrations is under way to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland's bard Robert Burns.

The celebrations will extend beyond Scotland's shores, with Burns suppers across the world linking up for the first time.

Argentinian Monica Loreto has signed up to the Global Burns Supper event. She describes how and why she celebrates Burns Night nearly 7,000 miles away from the poet's homeland.

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A small Scottish community has been present in Argentina since 1825, when a group of settlers arrived to Buenos Aires from Leith Port on board the Symmetry.

Monica, pictured at a recent event, helped form the group

These settlers introduced to Argentina cattle and tools to work the land, they also kept their traditions alive and used to celebrate Burns Night and St Andrew's Day.

Eventually these traditional celebrations started to die out due to the lack of young people.

After travelling to Scotland for the first time in 1992, my friend and I started building the group Scotland in Argentina, to preserve these traditions and adapt them to modern times without losing the Scottish identity.

Today, Scotland in Argentina's main objective is bringing together both descendants and fans of the Scottish culture who have no Scottish ancestry at all.

Strong influence

Burns Night is celebrated because he is a symbol of Scotland and represents the spirit of the country.

We would like young people to get involved and be aware of their ancestor's and their own heritage.

If we don't do anything now, these traditions will be lost forever, because we are so far from Scotland.

Our celebrations of both Burns Night, St Andrew's Day as well as the different cultural events like the Tartan Week have to appeal to both young and old.

We have been celebrating Burns Night for about eight years now and my first trip to Scotland had a strong influence on the way it should be celebrated.

The group had a parade through Buenos Aires on St Andrew's Day

But for us, the first, and perhaps most important, obstacle of the Burns celebration is the language.

We are a Spanish speaking community, many of us speak English too, but our English is not good enough to understand Burns' works.

So besides getting a good Scots Dictionary, we also decided to get an English version of the works of Robert Burns so our friends may be able to understand a bit more.

In our Burns celebrations, we have a presentation on the life of Burns, a recital of his work, including Address to the Haggis in both Scots and in Spanish.

We have a mock haggis, made of cow meat, seasoned with oats, spices and presented in the same way as the original haggis.

Traditional Scottish folk songs will be sung, there will be Highland dancing and of course bagpipe music.

The second obstacle is the weather, in this part of the world summer is pretty hot, with average temperatures of 35C, not so many will dare to have cock-a-leekie soup and wear full Highland dress.