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How (not) to Start an Orphanage… by a woman who did

24/6/2016

 
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Tara Winkler and Linda Delacey: Allen & Unwin $32.99
 
AT THE age of 19 Tara Winkler travels to Cambodia for the first time as an add-on to a roadtrip centred primarily on Thailand and Laos.
It turns out to be a confronting experience. In one of the lesser-known Cambodian cities she encounters apparently parentless children cramped together in sub-standard conditions. That introduction to Battambang occurs in mid 2005.
Soon back in middle-class Sydney, Winkler does not forget the experience, honouring a vow to raise donations for the group. Eighteen months later, she returns to hand over those funds.
The sense of achievement does not last, however. In 2007, on her third visit to Battambang, Winkler is appalled to find the situation has deteriorated markedly. The children are poorly fed and lack medical attention and long-serving staff members have been fired; worst of all, a teenage girl is being sexually abused by the former monk who controls the orphanage. Desperate to help and buoyed by the can-do enthusiasm of youth, Winkler decides on the spur of the moment to create an alternate home. Within days she has secured premises, been granted government accreditation and made herself responsible for 14 physically and psychologically traumatised dependents.
Yet, over time, prompted by public scrutiny of her leadership and her own rising maturity and self-awareness, Winkler begins to rethink her actions. Having been shocked to discover that almost all of her so-called “orphans” have living parents, she questions the practice of institutionalisation. She also debates the wisdom of involving beneficiaries – the children themselves – in fundraising activities and asks why untrained, unvetted Western “voluntourists” are allowed access to attention-starved Cambodian minors and what effect these short-term visits have.
Winkler’s frank, inspiring and sometimes-humorous account of her accomplishments and failures sheds light on the pros and cons of well-intentioned foreign involvement in the developing world.

Ticket to Ride

17/6/2016

 
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Tom Chesshyre: Summersdale £9.99
 
FORTY-NINE individual train journeys covering almost 36,000 kilometres through 22 countries on five continents – surely there must be a story or two worth telling in all that?
There’s an entire book, in fact, presented in colourful, bewitching and often-humorous fashion by British travel writer and rail enthusiast (read “train spotter”) Tom Chesshyre: journalist, raconteur and passionate passenger.
From the station platform at Crewe in England to the endless nut groves of Iran, the nausea-inducing switchbacks of the Andes and the battle-scarred valleys of the fractured Balkans, Chesshyre not only documents the mechanical intricacies of a plethora of locomotives and carriages but captures equally clearly the quirks and lurks of the people who ride them.
In a series of professional adventures that at times verge on tumbling into boys’ own escapades Chesshyre spends a carefully calculated 21 days, one hour and 28 minutes in motion on one track or another.
En route he experiences the Orient Express in two very different incarnations, revels in the refurbished glories of the Tolstoy Night Train, ventures deep beneath the surface – literally – of North Korea aboard the Pyongyang Metro and learns to dodge verbal missiles on the Indian Pacific while traversing the sand-blasted expanse of the Nullarbor Plain. China, Turkey, India, Sri Lanka, Poland, France, Kosovo, Finland, Russia, the US, Peru: Chesshyre’s wanderings cause him to rub shoulders with some of the world’s true rail powerhouses and several of its smallest, most disadvantaged also-rans.
Fittingly, his travels conclude back in Britain, the traditional home of rail technology and site of spectacular, untamed scenery along two Scottish Highland lines.
Ticket to Ride is one book that really can be said to offer something for virtually everyone: an easy blend of good (and not-so-good) food, entertaining (if occasionally obnoxious) company, insightful current affairs, enchanting geographical snapshots and potted histories exploring railroads’ role in society.

The Umbrian Supper Club

3/6/2016

 
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Marlena de Blasi: Allen & Unwin $29.99
 
TAKE five women, one rustic makeshift kitchen and one shared weekly meal. Blend with tenderness, add a liberal pinch or two of understanding and season generously with love. This is the down-to-earth formula behind American expat Marlena de Blasi’s latest instalment from Italy.
In The Umbrian Supper Club de Blasi examines life in the tiny village of Orvieto in rural Umbria – a little-known landlocked region between Tuscany to the west, Marche on the Adriatic Sea coast and Lazio to the south.
In four distinct chapters de Blasi profiles Miranda, Ninuccia, Paolina and Gilda – her four co-conspirators in both convivial conversation and communal cuisine.
Buxom and boisterous Miranda has been celebrating her 76th birthday every year for as long as de Blasi has known her. Widowed, she has no desire to remarry, despite sharing an apparently contented long-term alliance with a man whose companionship she treasures.
Temperamental, take-no-prisoners Ninuccia has returned to her native Umbria after living as a new bride in her mother-in-law’s house in Calabria. She now remembers fondly her time in a community where gang executions were commonplace.
Aged 60, cooking teacher Paolina has just received her first marriage proposal, causing her to hesitate, uncertain as she weighs up changing the delicate daily balance that surrounds her.
And Gilda, with no biological offspring of her own, recalls the painful days of a youth in which she mothered three small children and ran an entire household while still a child herself.
This is Sex and the City without the Cosmopolitans, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants without the teen-girl insecurity, Steel Magnolias without the tears.
For lovers of wholesome, uncomplicated, hearty food The Umbrian Supper Club also contains ample inspiration for experimenting at home: brandy-soaked wild boar, slow-cooked pork chops with cinnamon and prunes, and red-wine-and-butter-braised pasta with a dark chocolate garnish. Buon appetito!

    ' Books are treasure for the spirit and ​the soul. '​
    — VB 2020

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