Happiness is: sweetest when shared.

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These women have been my colleagues for the past seven months and I’m so privileged to have met them and learnt from them. Happiness is definitely sweetest when shared.

“Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.” ― Immanuel Kant

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Share the gift of a smile today

Girls

“It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald

Smile! Life is good! Continue reading

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Don’t slaughter when you can simply kill or, even better, process.

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My email to a rural journalist about the importance of language choice when discussing the livestock industry: Continue reading

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Happiness is:

An icy-pole on a hot, sticky day.

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Never a Dull Moment

Rockshaw 'walla' waiting for a fair.

Rockshaw ‘walla’ waiting for a fair.

I was still in my pajamas when the phone rang. The Sunderbans Courier Service were ringing to tell me I had a parcel that I needed to pick up. ‘The Sunderbans?’ I asked. ‘That’s, like, on the other side of the country. I’m sorry, what did you say?’ It was then that English failed the cheerful woman on the phone. Why oh why hadn’t I put more effort into my Bangla lessons?

Continue reading

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Culture Shock

Roadside village market

Roadside village market

As the bus careens onto the wrong side of the road, the driver simultaneously sounds the horn and turns his head to spit out of the window. We’re zigzagging along a main highway in Bangladesh dodging two lanes of rickshaws, huge, speeding trucks and busses full of holidaying families with rooftop speakers reverberating from too-loud Hindi music. Continue reading

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From Birdsville to Bangladesh

On December 3rd, SARPV celebrated International Day of People with a Disability with games and music.

On December 3rd, SARPV celebrated International Day of People with a Disability with games and music.

I wake up alone in my hard, mosquito net draped bed every morning. I can’t roll into my partner’s arms and listen to the beat of his sleeping heart. I can’t creep out of the room to silently make us a cup of tea in our familiar, homely kitchen.  I can’t know what the day will bring or whether I will achieve anything at all. The only certain thought I have every morning is ‘holy shit – what the hell am I doing here?’ Continue reading

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