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Outlook: Outlook Weekend: Do The Hustle

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Squirrel monkeys in Bolivia

26/03/2017 GMT

Outlook Weekend: Do The Hustle

BBC World Service - Outlook, Outlook Weekend: Do The Hustle

Stories of people hustling their way out of tough situation

Hear about an abandoned Afghan boy who survived on his wits, the ex-fraudster who ended up a barrister and the homeless New Yorker who hustled herself a Harvard education

Mohammad Sayed is originally from the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan. A spinal cord injury left him in a wheelchair and when his father took him to hospital, he left Mohammad there. To earn money, he started repairing people's phones and teaching English. Mohammed went on living in the hospital for seven years. Then he was adopted by a nurse who took him to the US. After getting over the initial culture shock, Mohammad decided to create his own comic book hero, based on his own life, called Wheelchair Man.

Gary Bell is one of the UK's top lawyers and specialises in complex fraud cases. It's surprising given he's a man with a criminal record of his own, for cheating fruit machines. Now, he holds the prestigious title of Queen's Counsel.

Liz Murray was brought up in New York in the Bronx by parents who were both drug addicts. From an early age she and her sister Lisa had to learn to fend for themselves. Liz's education suffered terribly and by the age of sixteen she was sleeping on park benches.  Although she seemed destined to become just another tragic statistic she hustled her way into school. By the time she was 20 she was a student at Harvard - one of America's most prestigious universities.

Image: Cheeky monkeys.
Credit: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images.

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