Book Awards

I was very excited to learn that Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering, in which I have a chapter, has won recognition at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. It has been named winner in the Parenting and Anthology categories and is third place Grand Prize winner in the nonfiction category. This is an exciting achievement for all the authors and the editor, Suzanne Kamata.

http://www.indiebookawards.com/2009_winners_and_finalists.php

I can recommend it as a very touching and thought-provoking book. If you are interested you can buy it on Amazon

Odyssey Guide to the Kyrgyz Republic

If you are thinking of visiting Kyrgyzstan I can recommend the Odyssey guide to the Kyrgyz Republic.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kyrgyz-Republic-Heart-Central-Odyssey/dp/9622177913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222266223&sr=8-1

The third edition has recently been put together by dedicated authors Rowan Stewart and Susie Weldon and was launched last week at Daunt Books in London.

I am especially excited about this guide because some of my photographs have been used in it. After years of taking hundreds of photos and wondering whether I could ever do anything with them apart from stick them in my own albums, it's great to see some published.

If you are interested in finding out more, Rowan, Susie and I are speaking about Kyrgyzstan at Stanfords travel bookshop in London on Wednesday 22nd October 2008.

http://www.stanfords.co.uk/events/rowan-stewart-and-safia-farr-an-odyssey-evening-kyrgyzstan,129,EV.html

Life after baby

One reason I hope this baby isn't too late is that I'm speaking at a Kyrgyz evening on Wednesday 14th May.

The event is at Stanfords travel bookshop in Bristol where I will be joining Rowan Stewart and Susie Weldon, authors of the Odyssey guide to the Kyrgyz Republic in talking about Kyrgyzstan. We will be showing photos, selling crafts, displaying our yurt and welcoming you with vodka.

For more information please see http://www.stanfords.co.uk/events/saffia-farr-rowan-stewart-susie-weldon-kyrgyzstan-evening,83,EV.html

Telegraph.co.uk

Great excitement - I am published in The Telegraph. An article which I have written about the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan has been published in The Weekly Telegraph and is on-line at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/01/15/kyrgyzstan.xml&page=1

Radio Star - again!

I'm sorry, I've not written for ages. My only excuse is that I've been busy: busy marketing Revolution Baby and busy preparing for Christmas with my two children, but I'll tell you about that another time.

I was on the radio again yesterday - is this becoming tedious? This time I was on GWR Bristol, on Stuart Elmore's show. Stuart has a feature called 4Play when listeners choose four tunes under four categories and give reasons why they've selected them.

I had fun doing it. For the 'song which gives me goosebumps' I chose 'If You're not the One' by Daniel Beddingfield because this song was being played everywhere when I was getting married so it reminds me of that wonderfully romantic time - the lyrics are so appropriate. For the 'song I mess up my speakers to' I chose 'Saltwater' by Chicane, a great dance song in memory of the carefree days when I used to go clubbing.

It was very exciting to drive Tom and Ben home from nursery listening to songs I'd chosen, and Tom was excited to hear me talking through the radio, although that is a difficult concept for him to grasp. I'm hoping to have a "listen again" facility through my website. My technical advisor (husband) is currently exploring using You Tube as a medium for this - it's slightly worrying that I could soon be sharing a site with wierdos, desperate celebrities and attention seeking murderers.

I've also been on Thornbury FM. This is a community radio, broadcast from a portacabin with boarded up windows, hidden at the back of a carpark on the outskirts of Thornbury. It's not salubrious but I enjoyed the experience; worryingly I'm starting to like the sound of my own voice on radio. I suspect this interview had about three listeners - my mum, the DJ's mum and a frustrated person on Thornbury High Street looking for Radio Bristol.

However, the owner of Thornbury Bookshop told me that a customer had mentioned hearing me on the radio, and as he was ordering more books at the time, this gives me hope that all my marketing efforts are having tiny ripples of effect.

If you'd like to listen to me on Thornbury FM, talking about myself - again - go to the podcast page of http://www.thornburyfm.org/, I'm there under Wed 28 Nov.

Radio Star Reaction

I just listened to myself on the radio - and was pleasantly surprised! I was expecting to cringe but instead felt proud that I actually sounded as eloquent and authoritative as other radio guests. If you are now intrigued you can go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/articles/2007/11/23/revolutionbaby_feature.shtml to listen again, read a feature article and look at some photos. I'll be on again tomorrow night and all this week on Drive, Radio Bristol, just after 6pm.

Radio Star

On Monday I recorded my first radio interview. It's going to be serialised every night next week (starting Monday 26th November) on the Drive show on Radio Bristol. You can listen on-line (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/local_radio/) and I'm told I'll be on shortly after 6pm.

I'm very nervous about how I'll come across. A spoken interview is scary. When you're writing you can re-read, delete and edit. A journalist takes your words and crafts something around it, hopefully positive. But once your words are spoken and recorded they are lodged forever, filed to your detriment or benefit.

Happily my confidence is buoyed today by a fantastic review in Wanderlust magazine. They gave me four out of five stars and said very nice things - you'll be able to read it soon on my website.

But what has really made me feel like a star were flowers sent to me as congratulations for the launch by a thoughtful friend in Abu Dhabi. The house smells of lillies, something luxurious. When the courier unexpectedly pulled up and presented the box of flowers I felt truly special. I just hope that by 6.15 next Monday I'm not cringing about my radio debut.

Report on the launch

The launch of Revolution Baby: Motherhood and Anarchy in Kyrgyzstan on Saturday was fantastic! As we were setting up, the room filling with two yurts and colourful craft stalls, I suddenly felt excited that it was all coming together. I had wanted to create a Kyrgyz festival where people could learn something of the country. And I succeeded. There was a real buzz in the room, people enjoying a different evening, assisted by the shots of vodka. Representatives of the Kyrgyz Embassy were very excited about the interest in their country - the picture is of me presenting a book to Gulbara Abdrazakova, wife of the Ambassador. If you would like to read more about the festival, please look at the Revolution Baby page of my website http://www.saffiafarr.com/. Having thrown a successful party, I am now just left hoping that those who went home with a book are enjoying reading it!

Countdown to the Launch

My mind has gone numb. In four hours I am launching Revolution Baby and yet my mind is empty. I'm hoping that everything I need is packed in the car. I'm hoping that the words I was planning to say will come back to me when the time comes for my speech. I feel out of control, the day drifting by to the inevitability of hosting a party for two hundred people.

Wish me luck.

Well-behaved children

No, not mine, although I’m only able to write this now because Ben is in bed and Tom playing very nicely on his own with cars, trains and a track.

My title refers to the pre-school children who I talked to about Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday. They sat in a neat semi-circle in silence, possibly a stunned silence because I was wearing my Christmas-Cake-hat outfit, traditional Kyrgyz costume. Photo attached for your amusement. But for whatever reason they sat very quietly and listened attentively. If all my audiences are like this I will be lucky. After I’d told them about mountains, yurts (nomadic felt tents) and kalpaks (Kyrgyz felt hats – see my website for pictures) we had an interesting discussion about why Kyrgyz children don’t go to school. The answer for most is that they are too busy collecting water from rivers or they don’t have shoes. For those unfamiliar with the story of my book Revolution Baby: Motherhood and Anarchy in Kyrgyzstan, we went to Kyrgyzstan because my husband Matthew, a water engineer, was working on an aid project to get clean drinking water to remote villages. One amazing result of this project is that attendance rates are up at schools because children aren’t spending all day dragging water back from rivers.

But this was a difficult concept for the pre-school children to grasp. When I said they didn’t have shoes, one boy said, “they should go and buy them.” “They don’t have any money,” I explained. And they sat in stunned silence. Not having enough money to buy shoes is an incredibly difficult situation for our children to comprehend when they are surrounded by comfort and commercialism. It was a difficult concept for me to grasp when we first arrived in Kyrgyzstan. People live by rubbish bins so they can eat the waste. Old women collect acorns from the parks so they can boil them to make a porridge. But amidst all this poverty they made us humble with their generosity. On a site visit Matthew was invited into a home to eat bread and drink tea. The “home” was the one-room guard hut at the chlorination plant and bread and tea was all they had to eat. But they shared gladly.