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The Fifth Floor

Factual: Life Stories

Global stories from the BBC’s 40 Language Services, with Faranak Amidi

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services.

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services

The Fifth Floor: Ghost Stories from Pakistan, Mexico and Uzbekistan

People dressed up for Mexican Day of the Dead

31/10/2014

Ghost Stories from Pakistan, Mexico and Uzbekistan

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, Ghost Stories from Pakistan, Mexico and Uzbekistan

Exploring the oral traditions behind ghost stories from around the world

Ghost stories from around the world; BBC Hausa meets the Chibok girls; Lustration explained; Tanzania's WWI German warship

This weekend people around the world celebrate Halloween, All Saint's Eve, and the Mexican Day of the Dead - a night when spirits, ghosts and ghouls roam the world. Our language Service journalists from Pakistan, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan share their favourite scary stories, as well as their own personal encounters with the reluctant dead. Plus - the hairy vampires of Puerto Rico and Guatemala's demonic hat: BBC Mundo tell us how spooky Latin American folklore has inspired the continent's musicians and writers.

BBC Hausa meets the Chibok Girls 
It's been over six months since more than 200 girls were abducted by the Nigerian militant group, Boko Haram. This week, three of the young women who managed to escape their captors told their stories to BBC Hausa's Aichatou Moussa. Aichatou tells us about meeting the Chibok girls and their families and shares clips from the interviews.

Word of the Week: Lustration
In the build up to last week's parliamentary elections in Ukraine, a peculiar word has begun appearing on the airwaves and in the newspapers - lustration. Historically, a lustration was a sacrificial cleansing ceremony carried out by the Ancient Romans. Today, the term refers to the process of filtering out former communist officials in Eastern European countries. It's a controversial process that was signed into law this month by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. BBC Ukranian's Irena Taranjuk explains what we need to know about lustration and what it says about Kiev's power politics today. 

WWI Forgotten History: Tanzania 
To mark the WWI centenary, our language service journalists have been finding out how the war affected people in their own countries. BBC Swahili's Zuhura Yunus has travelled to Lake Tanganyika to take a ride on the MV Liemba, a passenger ferry that started like as a WWI German warship. In 1916, the boat was deliberately sunk by the German navy but it was raised eight years later and it provides a vital service, ferrying people and cargo between Tanzania and Zambia. Zuhura tells us what it's like to ride on this historic ship that still bears the marks of its wartime past. 


Photo: People dressed up for Mexican Day of the Dead. Credit - Getty

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