The Museum of Antigua and Barbuda invites you to the lecture and multimedia presentation “My Home is Your Home” - A Journey round Syria” by Mary Russell, a famous international travel writer, tonight Thursday, January 12, at 7:00pm in the Museum's upstairs gallery. Admission is $20 and includes wine, sodas, and finger foods.

For the last ten years, Russell has been visiting Syria, cycling along the Euphrates River, trying to make herself understood using very basic Arabic, bedding down with desert dwellers and even taking a taxi across the desert from Damascus to Baghdad. Though there is much unrest in Syria at the moment, "My Home is Your Home" is a celebration of that complex and intriguing country and of its many peoples. 

Syria is a country few people know much about – apart from the political upheavals of the last few months. "My Home is Your Home" will change all that. Equipped with notebook, biro, bicycle and, occasionally, a bus ticket, Russell travelled not only to places such as Aleppo, Homs and Hama but also to some of the more remote parts of eastern Syria taking, unexpectedly, an overnight taxi ride across the desert from Damascus to Baghdad. The result is an enthralling and quite unique account of this complex country.

Russell is well-known for "The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt" her book about women travellers and explorers throughout the ages.  It  told the story of Ann Davison, the first woman to sail solo across the Atlantic, arriving into English Harbour in 1957.

In "My Home is Your Home", Russell employs the survival strategies of the solo traveller, seasoning a devil-may-care attitude with a pinch of common sense when taking on everything that comes her way in Syria be it a pack of feral dogs, an importunate host or a chainsmoking Sufi sheik.

Russell has visited Antigua many times, and her book, "Journeys of a Lifetime", includes three chapters on Antigua and the islands of the Eastern Caribbean.

Proceeds from the event will go to the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda.