Original version

BBC World Service Online

Migrated podcast image for: Outlook

Outlook

Factual: Life Stories

True stories of ordinary people and the extraordinary events that have shaped their lives.

Outlook: Octopizzo: From Kenyan Slum to Rap Star

Octopizzo

26/06/2014

Octopizzo: From Kenyan Slum to Rap Star

BBC World Service - Outlook, Octopizzo: From Kenyan Slum to Rap Star

The Kenya slum kid who became an unlikely rap sensation and United Nations ambassador

Matthew Bannister talks to Kenyan rap star Octopizzo about growing up in Nairobi's slums and developing a range of glow-in-the-dark condoms for people living without lighting.

Henry Ohanga is better known as Octopizzo, the rapper from the Kenyan slums who made it big. Octopizzo was brought up in Kibera, a neighbourhood in Nairobi often called Africa's largest slum. Today, he is an ambassador for the United Nations and has his own TV show and clothing line. He even told us about developing a range of condoms that glow in the dark to promote safe sex in areas with little access to electric lighting. 

The American playwright and novelist Bonnie Greer was brought up in the 1950s on the South Side of Chicago. She spoke to us about her new memoir in which she remembers her childhood spent looking after her six younger siblings and living in the city described by Martin Luther King as the most segregated in America.  

Outlook listener, Dr Hamse Ismail wrote to us to tell us how, as a wheelchair user in Somaliland, he needs to work "twice as hard as anybody else" to command respect. Growing up in post-war Somaliland inspired him to become a doctor, but when a car accident left him unable to walk his life was radically changed. 

Four years ago, Joel Hodgeson, was one of London's many homeless. Now, he is waiting to find out if he has been picked to run at the Commonwealth Games this summer in Glasgow.

Photo courtesy of Octopizzo/Henry Ohanga.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Outlook

Octopizzo: From Kenyan Slum to Rap Star

Genres

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service