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Outlook: Outlook Weekend: Pick of the Week

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Aleksandr Romanovsky and Mahmoud Abusgewa

26/09/2015 GMT

Outlook Weekend: Pick of the Week

BBC World Service - Outlook, Outlook Weekend: Pick of the Week

Mahmoud Abushgewa, the boxer who defied Gaddafi; living in the coldest, remote regions.

Mahmoud Abushgewa, the champion boxer who defied Gaddafi and paid a heavy price; stories of living and working in some of the world's coldest and most remote regions.

In the 1970s, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi banned boxing, calling the sport 'savage'. Overnight, boxing gyms were shut down across the country. At the time Mahmoud Abushgewa from Tripoli was the African champion and had just qualified for the world championships in North Carolina. But the ban ended his career at a stroke. Years later, after the fall of Gaddafi, Mahmoud and some of his former boxing colleagues opened a  gym to train new talent. 

Alexandr Romanovsky - known to his friends as Sasha - thought he had his life worked out. He was living in St Petersburg in Russia, working at the university and in a relationship with a girl he loved. But then, his girlfriend broke up with him - and his future fell apart. So when he saw an advert for a job as a tourist guide at the world's second most northerly town he applied. For the past three years he's been one of only six people living in the former Russian mining town of Pyramiden.

Father Dan Doyle has spent the last 14 summers serving the southern-most congregation in the world. He's one of a select few Catholic priests from New Zealand who've been travelling to the remote Chapel of the Snows in Antarctica for the last 57 years. But a combination of cost-cutting measures and a diminishing population means that the American-run base has decided they no longer need the fathers' services and this year Father Dan won't be serving the ministry at the end of the world.

In April, the earthquake which devastated parts of Nepal killed 22 people on Mount Everest. Ang Kami Sherpa watched in horror as his friends were swept away by the avalanche. But now he is back up the mountain carrying out his work as an 'Icefall Doctor'. He's one of a team of specialist Sherpa mountaineers who prepare the trails for climbers trying to scale the world's highest mountain.

In 1982 Mpagi Edward Edmary, a Ugandan taxi driver, was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of his neighbour. But not only was Edward an innocent man, there hadn't even been a murder. Edward had been framed after a land dispute between families in the village got out of hand. Witnesses were bribed to say they had seen him kill the man and dispose of the body. He spent the next 20 years in Kampala's notorious Luzira prison and was only released when his family proved that the dead man had been hiding out in another part of the country. Today Edward is in poor health - his eyesight damaged from the glare of his cell wall, whilst a recent stroke has left him partially paralysed. But he remains an outspoken campaigner against the death penalty and still makes regular visits  to convicts on death row. 

King Errisson is one of the most respected percussionists in the world. Still playing in his 70s, his musical journey started as a young child in Nassau in The Bahamas where he was born. Then as young man, following an unexpected appearance in the James Bond film Thunderball, he decided to try his luck in Hollywood. He's gone on to play with some of the jazz greats including the saxophonist Julian "Canonball" Adderley, as well as the stars of Motown and has also produced many albums of his own, incorporating his inimitable mix of what he calls 'Gumbo' music. Felicity Finch recently met him in Birmingham where he was on a UK tour playing with Neil Diamond. 

As a teenager Lillian Kelle became famous in her native Uganda as one half of the singing duo Prim N Propa. Now she lives with her family in the United States. But, despite her success, for most of her life Lillian has wrestled with a terrible secret. As a child she was abused in her own home. It was only recently that she revealed her troubled past in a memoir. Now she's written a book for children which teaches them about the issue of abuse.

Arno Michaelis spent his youth preaching hate. He was a member of a white supremacist group and the lead singer of a rock band who sang racist lyrics to their saluting fans. After an incident in 2012 Arno reconsidered the direction his life was heading in and turned his back on his past life and now works to improve race relations.

(Photo Credit: (L) Aleksandr Romanovsky. Credit: Sandra von Egmond. Photo Credit: (R) Libyan boxer, Mahmoud Abusgewa)

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