Join us for this tour from
Jan 25 to Feb 12, 2021!
Book Details:
Book Title:
Life in the Camel Lane: Embrace the Adventure by Doreen M. Cumberford
Category: Adult Non-Fiction (18 +), 288 pages
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: White Heather Press
Release date: April, 2020
Tour dates:
Jan 25 to Feb 12, 2021
Content Rating: G.
There are no offensive scenes or language
Book Description:
Life in the Camel Lane: Embrace the Adventure is what Doreen
Cumberford, a Scottish author, calls her learnoire! It is a combination of
her story and the stories of other expats learned while living in Saudi
Arabia for 15 years as expat employees or spouses.
The book takes the reader through the four stages of culture shock: arrival,
honeymoon, frustration and adjustment stages to final acceptance followed by
the return journey back to their home country – mostly the USA. From Saudi
weddings, to falconry, to the inability of women to drive at that time, the
book seeks to familiarize us with the Saudi culture, lifestyle, and deep
traditions of hospitality, generosity and tolerance from an insider’s
perspective. There are also chapters on the experiences of 9/11 in the
terrorists’ home country and the “Terror Years” of internal terror tactics
from inside Saudi Arabia designed to drive the expats out of the country and
destroy the Saudi government.
Full of examples, stories and
compelling honesty the author describes their most challenging journey and
many of the lessons learned in the process together. Designed to provide
useful insights and inspiration to anyone considering living abroad, Life in
the Camel Lane shines the light on the subject of building a new identity
and home while abroad, and the difficulties of the journey home.
Buy the Book:
Guest Post
Please Don’t Die With your Story
Locked Inside Your Brain!
I was
shocked and saddened when a friend of mine who has written the Blog: Breast Cancer
Eh! recently revealed that she has received a terminal diagnosis. After struggling and being fully transparent
with her messy fight with cancer, she was in effect saying a farewell and
preparing us all.
Quite
frankly I was stunned by the news, then doubly stunned by something else that
was happening internally. You know that
feeling when it seems like a light bulb literally lights you up? I suddenly felt animated and yes, illuminated,
and somehow lighter as if this idea had beams shining out of it onto some
hidden alter inside my head. Pay
attention! The equivalent of flashing
lights, sirens, alarm bells plus horns all went off.
“Oh no, the stories that will go with
her”!
Stories
provide a conduit for past experiences and sensations to be
re-experienced. They help us make sense
of the world. Just this morning I heard
the story from a fellow who came to Saudi Arabia on business and was housed on
the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM). The University was adjacent to the Saudi
Aramco compound, where I lived in for fifteen years and is the geographical
location where many of the stories in Life in the Camel Lane: Embrace the
Adventure occurred.
This
fellow had come on business to KFUPM to design and build a physics lab for the University
and was there for one week. His
perceptions upon arriving in Saudi and seeing fully covered abaya wearing
ladies, who were not permitted to drive, was disrupted when he peered through
the fence into the Aramco compound. There he witnessed possibly myself or my
friends wearing shorts, driving cars and generally living life as if we were
back in the West.
In the act
of delivering that short story, it took me back to Life in the Camel Lane, but
it also gave me a clear perspective of what it was like to be on the grounds of
the neighboring University looking into our compound as if it were a fishbowl
and how I swam around in those waters so naturally for so many years.
The power
of story connects us and helps us make sense of life on so many levels. This story I heard today immediately
transported me to another time and place and actually revealed another layer
regarding that lifestyle, that up until today I had never examined. Stories help us look at an event and twirl it
like a globe to examine different aspects and learn from them.
If your stories
are not encouraged to step into the limelight and to be reenacted on paper and
shown the light of day, they fail to illuminate or transmit values, opinions
nor history. Please tell your stories. If you have life lessons to communicate then
please by all means do so with all the passion and purpose you can muster. We need stories and they need us, please
don’t leave with them locked inside your brain!
Meet the Author
Doreen Cumberford is a Scottish expat author who has been global traveler
for more than four decades. In her 20s Doreen left her home in Scotland and
drove down to London to become a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service,
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Her first posting was as the youngest
and most junior British Embassy staffer in Cameroon, West Africa. Later she
moved back to London and took a position with an American oil-field
construction company based in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.
After
moving to America, living in Louisiana then California, two extremely
different cultures in the USofA, Doreen and family moved overseas to Japan
then spent the following 15 years in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With 13
major moves under her belt, she understands the value of moving, building a
new life and handling inter-cultural hurdles. One constant has been her
ability to explore through the lens of adventure. Her stories are full of
multi-cultural intelligence, messy multilingual communications and
multi-global perspectives.
Doreen is currently based on Denver,
Colorado although spends most of the year living adventurously in the
Housesitting Lane, which takes her around the globe. Currently she is doing
her best to install Spanish in her brain which previously had French and
smatterings of Japanese and Arabic. She is passionate about cultural
intelligence, global heartedness and life on the road. Featured in the
Anthology: Empowering Women, and a co-author in 2018 of Arriving Well:
Stories About Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering Home After Living
Abroad.
2020 sees the publication of Life in the Camel Lane:
Embrace the Adventure. Honest, compassionate, full of wisdom and
inspiration, Life in the Camel Lane comprises stories mostly from women and
men who lived in Saudi Arabia from 1950s onward. This memoir contains expert
advice sage wisdom and stories that all globally mobile families can use to
navigate their international journey. The principles in this book will also
encourage anyone who is embracing a more adventurous life, or considering
taking the leap to move overseas.
Tour Schedule:
Enter the Giveaway:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please try not to spam posts with the same comments over and over again. Authors like seeing thoughtful comments about their books, not the same old, "I like the cover" or "sounds good" comments. While that is nice, putting some real thought and effort in is appreciated. Thank you.