In A Strange Land

A migrant returns to her homeland; Afghanistan.

This 4 Corners episode follows Nel Hedayat who was 6 years old when her family escaped Afghanistan and moved to Britain.  At 21, Nel returns to Afghanistan in the belief that she will find her identity in the country of her birth.  What she does  find is women living lives where simple things like going to school or not obeying a husband can have terrible consequences.

“I found myself trying to reconcile my Afghan identity and my British one and somehow synthesize something new, an indentity that was a mixture of these two contrasting worlds. Trying to do what is right, but not knowing what right was, often made me confused and angry.”

Click here to read about the episode.

Further reading on the topic of women in  Afghanistan can be found here.

Wilcannia Boomerangs – exclusion and belonging

“All year we played like a family. I bleed for my family and those boys bleed for me…at the end of the day we had to win the game. We had to win it.”

My sister, an online producer for the ABC in Broken Hill, recently filed a story about the rugby league team “Wilcannia Boomerangs” for the ABC Radio show “Bush Telegraph”.   Click on the image above or this link to view video and hear the audio of the story.  Once on the website click on “The Story of the Wilcannia Boomerangs” to hear the full report.

“Rugby is the most important thing to the town at this stage for the simple reason not only does the little people play it and talk about it so does the mums and dads. And you’ll see them decked out with their football guernseys”.

Choir of Hard Knocks – From Isolation to Belonging

Where do you belong when you have no home or are excluded from the mainstream by disability or mental health issues?

The story of the “Choir of Hard Knocks” is the story of an opera singer who was inspired by an old Readers Digest article to work with homeless and disadvantaged people in Melbourne.  Who could have predicted that this would lead to a choir who would go on to sing at both the Melbourne Town Hall and the Sydney Opera House?  Click here to access a video clip of one singer discussing the power of the choir to create a sense of community and belonging:

“A very communal group.  I think that’s what sorely lacks in being homeless or disadvantaged.  That sense of isolation and no sense of belongingness.”