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

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

Outlook: My New Face, Lambada and Poisonous Frogs

Carmen, Braz Dos Santos, Lucy Cooke composite

27/07/2014

My New Face, Lambada and Poisonous Frogs

BBC World Service - Outlook, My New Face, Lambada and Poisonous Frogs

My new face; dancing lambada around the world; and a passion for poisonous frogs

The chemical attack survivor coming to terms with a new face.  Plus Brazil's lambada star, poisonous frogs, and the Italians united by cycling

In 2007 Carmen Blandin Tarleton was attacked in her home by her former husband with a baseball bat and an industrial-strength chemical which left her with 80% burns. She made a slow recovery, but would never look the same. She had lost her eyelids and her new face was a patchwork of skin grafts. Last year, Carmen underwent a risky and life-altering operation: a face transplant. She was the first person in the world to be given a 'mismatched' donor face - meaning her immune system was different to that of her donor.  

Braz Dos Santos is one of the world's best lambada dancers. He was making a living as a fisherman in the town of Porto Seguro in southern Brazil where the lambada craze was born. It has since taken him around the world. His life story has now been made into a new dance show Brazouka and in a break from rehearsals in Scotland he started by telling me about his early life.

Zoologist and documentary maker Lucy Cooke loves what she describes as 'weird' animals and she is campaigning to save them. She tells Babita how she became passionate about animals, in particular a particularly poisonous Columbian frog.

Last year, Italian nurse and amateur cyclist Luisa Pasini had a car accident that left her paralysed from the chest down and she now uses a wheelchair. But the accident opened doors into a world that Luisa never knew existed - the world of hand-cycling. The sport has become her life - and she recently won the fifth stage of the 'Giro D'Italia' in handbike. But the bikes costs tens of thousands of Euros and during Luisa's fundraising campaign to buy one, she met Luciano Bernini who decided to raise funds for her. Luciano had also been forced to give up cycling for a while and understood her loss.  Alice Gioia met up with both of them to hear their stories. 

Charlie Phillips is a Jamaican-born Londoner. He moved to London in 1956 and witnessed the Notting Hill riots a few years later. He spent his career documenting the black community in North London and the turbulent 60s in Paris and Rome. He photographed many famous faces of that era - and he also took a photo that later became an iconic image of its time - a multi-racial couple in Notting Hill, London.

Photo: Left to right, Carmen Blandin Tarleton courtesy of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Braz Dos Santos and Lucy Cooke)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Outlook

My New Face, Lambada and Poisonous Frogs

Genres

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service