My Secret Mother

Available for over a year

Caitriona Palmer was given up for adoption in Ireland in the 1970s. She had a happy childhood and never felt the need to find her birth mother. But when she was in her 20s, she started working in Bosnia exhuming mass graves and the experience moved her to look for her birth mother. Today they have a good relationship, but it is still a secret to some in their family. Colombian seamstress Ederlidia was involved with a right-wing paramilitary group who were fighting against left-wing Farc guerrillas. Along with many others, she was demobilised and today she brings together former combatants from opposite sides of the long conflict in her country to work together with sewing machines. She tells reporter Natalio Cosoy her story. Former British Army captain Harry Parker lost both his legs when he stepped on a bomb in Afghanistan. Seven years later, he has written his first novel, Anatomy of a Soldier, about a fictitious captain who goes through the very same thing. What is unusual about the novel is that it is narrated by the objects of war. Atsuo Tanaka lives in the busy Japanese capital of Tokyo. He wanted people to have more contact with nature and so he started a series of bee hives high up on the rooftops in the Ginza region of the city. (Photo: Caitriona Palmer. Credit: Megan Witt)