I cycled across Africa for a place at my dream university

Lives Less Ordinary

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.6 • 814 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A handwritten map is all Mamadou Barry had to guide him from Guinea to Egypt.

At the age of 24 he had reached a crossroads in his life. Having failed his final year secondary school exams five times in a row, he set his sights on a different type of education. Mamadou had heard about the prestigious Al Azhar University in Egypt, but could not afford a plane ticket. So he decided to set off on an epic adventure, travelling by bike, and leaving his home in Guinea with only $55, a small bag of clothes and tools, and a map he had drawn himself.

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Producer: Rob Wilson Translator and interpreter: Olivier Weber Voiceover artist: Gaïus Kowene

Archive was from the official YouTube channel for Will Smith

Transcript

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0:00.0	On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.
0:06.9	It was an extraordinary news story.
0:09.1	The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,
0:13.7	mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.
0:18.0	One of the great mysteries in English criminal history.
0:20.7	We're still looking for Lucan.
0:22.1	It's honestly one of the most powerful stories
0:24.4	of my lifetime.
0:25.9	I'm Alex Fontunzelman.
0:27.3	This is The Lucan Obsession.
0:29.2	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.8	Hi, I'm Sophia Smith Gailer,
0:33.8	and I'm Sachi Call.
0:34.7	And we're the hosts of a brand new podcast
0:36.6	from the BBC World Service,
0:38.6	Where to Be a Woman. So what's the podcast about Sachi? We're on a quest to find out where
0:44.4	in the world women are prospering from their physical health to their emotional fulfillment,
0:49.1	all so that we can imagine what a perfect place for women would look like. Yeah, it's fair to say
0:54.0	we're not big
0:54.8	fans of a lot of the content marketed to us as wellness, so you won't catch us mushrooms
0:59.7	stacking or rainwater fasting, but we are here to explore the lived experiences of some
1:06.1	incredible women around the world. In each episode, we'll dig into an important topic that affects all of our
	...

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