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Factual: Life Stories

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

Outlook: Saving a Cuban Boy Changed my Life

Elian Gonzales and Donato Dalrymple

02/07/2015

Saving a Cuban Boy Changed my Life

BBC World Service - Outlook, Saving a Cuban Boy Changed my Life

The fisherman who plucked a Cuban boy from the sea, starting an international row.

The fisherman who plucked a 6 year old Cuban boy from the sea  - and started an international political row

We meet the fisherman who plucked a six year old Cuban boy from the ocean - and started an international political incident. It started on 25 November 1999, when Donato Dalrymple and his cousin were on a fishing trip off Fort Lauderdale in the Florida Straits. They saw what they thought at first was a doll tied to a car tyre inner tube floating in the water. But then Donato thought differently:  

In 2012, the filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer made an award-winning documentary which exposed the horrifying mass executions of people accused of being communists in Indonesia during the 1960s. In his new film The Look of Silence he examines these events through the eyes of the grieving relatives of the dead. 

Pavel Gaona from Mexico City spends his days listening to other people's love stories. He sets up two chairs in public squares and invites people to sit with him and tell him their tales of love, of anguish and  betrayal. Matthew Bannister asked Pavel why he decided to offer this strange service.

Kenneth Banya was once described as "the main military and technical brain" behind Uganda's rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army. Banya was a pilot in the Ugandan air force before he joined the LRA and was with the group for 18 years, eventually becoming the fourth in command. He was captured in 2004. Today he's a church pastor and he told BBC Focus on Africa's Catherine Byaruhanga what it was like when he first came out of the bush.

Photo Credit AP.

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