This series of seven short form features broadcasts on Newstalk 106 - 108 FMs on May Bank Holiday Monday 2010. Produced by Maud Hand with the assistance of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland's Sound & Vision Fund, each package features a passionate member of our growing immigrant community as they introduce us to their home country from the context of their life in Ireland. An audio portrait of their dual worlds is conveyed.

The approach is inspired by the producer's personal experience of being an emigrant in the UK where often on a crowded tube, waiting tables in a temporary job or in the throes of producing media projects, I’d be arrested in my tracks by a vivid image of my birthplace, the smell of freshly mown hay, an outrageous anecdote of my Dad’s or some do and despite the daily demands,
I’d be immediately transported back home in my mind.

8.45am: Miquel Barceló dubs himself a professional fool and as he dismantles the set following a Galway run of his latest Gombeens Street Show with performing partner, Jonathan Gunning, Miquel muses on his Spanish childhood. Now married to a Galway girl and father of two, he’s made Headford’s Carrnacrow, not Catalunia, his home for the foreseeable future.

12.45pm: Little did Elvis José, a 27 year old Brazilian rapper and casual labourer think that he’d be spending the past two years in hospital healing his leg which had to be amputated folllowing an infection contracted whilst having surgery for a break. After being hit by a horse on the Loughrea Farm where he worked, his destiny has taken an unexpected turn. Rather than be beaten by his confinement, this upbeat Brazilian man has used the time to master computers and a prosthetic liimb. When his thoughts turn to home, they turn to his daughter, Maria-Eduarda, his family and friends and the all-night Brazilian dance parties.

1.45pm: As Aurelie O’Sullivan guides her novice falconers with birds of prey, this French Falconer, married to a Longford man and working in Ireland’s School of Falconry at Ashford Castle, Co. Mayo, is wistful about the life back home in France

2.45pm: Kwa Daniels, DJ, Club promoter & teacher living in Derry, considers his life in Ireland and the extent to which his Ghanaian roots as he experienced them as a child growing up in London continue to inspire and inform him as he goes about his work in Irish clubs and schools.

3.45pm: Marcel & Martha Otten run Man Made Images, the only Irish commercial photographic gallery, from their adopted Co. Donegal home in Mount Charles. As they glance across Donegal Bay, Martha thinks of her Indonesian childhood while Marcel proudly proclaims that he’s absolutely no thoughts of his Dutch homeland and is relieved to have now fixed his roots here.

4.45pm: Beni Karuga Oburu‘s childhood education back home in Kenya at an Irish convent was the perfect preparation for her eventual life here in Castlelyons in rural Co. Cork. Multicultural educator and mother of four, Beni’s thoughts are never far from home, particularly since her elderly mother has retired there from Nairobi and Kenyan food is the order of the day.

5.45pm: Kasia Lech juggles stints as an actor (most recent Irish TV credit House), acting coach and storyteller in her adopted home of Dublin as she completes her PhD at UCD. It’s her all consuming passion for books and her granny's garden that trigger her thoughts of Poland.

Check Home Thoughts From Abroad Facebook Event and Photogallery. Check HTFA Slideshow
 
Special thanks to Keith Tunney, Engineer; Sarah Keating for interviewing Kasia Lech, Storytellers of Ireland for Kasia in action; Jennie Breen for cutting Elvis José, Rory McSwiggan for graphic design, and to everyone else who led me to these eight inspiring people featured in the series.

A Hand Around the World Production for Newstalk 106 – 108FM