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.

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

Outlook: I Survived Boko Haram Bus Attack

Magazines & Reviews

Hafsat Mohammed

09/12/2015 GMT

I Survived Boko Haram Bus Attack

BBC World Service - Outlook, I Survived Boko Haram Bus Attack

Hafsat Mohammed was travelling on a bus in north-eastern Nigeria when it was attacked.

Nigerian activist Hafsat Mohammed has been caught up in two attacks by Boko Haram and has now fled  to the United States.

The Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram carry out attacks almost every day in northeast Nigeria. They have killed at least 17,000 people and left many more displaced. Hafsat Mohammed has been caught up in these attacks twice. She tells Matthew Bannister how she survived a horrific attack on a bus in 2013 and why, since then, she's been working in schools encouraging young people to reject extremism.

In 1975, the American punk poet Patti Smith released an album called Horses. As punk music took off, that album inspired a new generation of musicians. Now, forty years on, Patti's been back on the road performing Horses in its entirety. She's also published a new autobiographical book called M Train, which as she explains was inspired by a dream.  

When Rebeka Member gets ready for work in her village in southern Bangladesh, she changes from her sari into a shirt and trousers and ties a scarf around her head like a turban. She wants to look just like a man. That's because Rebeka drives a cycle rickshaw, ferrying passengers and goods, in what is traditionally seen as a man's job. But, as she explains, she's also defying convention in other ways. 

British designer Stephen Webster makes expensive jewellery for international music and film stars, including Madonna, Jay Z and Christina Aguilera. But, as he describes in his autobiography Gold Struck, A Life Shaped by Jewellery, his current jet set lifestyle is a far cry from his ordinary childhood in a town just outside London. 

Daniel Nel from Cape Town in South Africa, was left paralysed from the waist down after a motorcycle accident in 2005. For a while after the accident he was unable to take part in the sport he'd loved all his life - surfing. But earlier this year, that all changed because ingenious members of the Cape Town Surf School introduced him to a new board they had been designing specially for paraplegics. Reporter Mohammed Allie watched Daniel take to the waves again.

(Picture: Hafsat Mohammed. Credit: Hafsat Mohammed.)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Outlook

I Survived Boko Haram Bus Attack

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service