Outlook Weekend: Pick of the Week

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When doctor Zizit Abdel Algabbar was trying to get from Syria to Europe with her baby daughter Maya, the two became separated and Zizit was not sure if she would ever see her little girl again. She had no papers and no money left, but, as she tells Jo Fidgen, she was finally reunited with her daughter. In 1988, American Claudia Brenner and her girlfriend, Rebecca Wight, had planned to hike part of the remote Appalachian trail in Pennsylvania. The weekend started wonderfully, but it turned into an unimaginable nightmare when they encountered a stranger, Stephen Roy Carr, who tried to kill them. The emotional impact of violence is something that the award-winning Irish author, Colum McCann, has been thinking and writing about. Last year he was writing a story about a man who was punched in the street with catastrophic consequences, when he himself was punched unconscious on a street in Connecticut. The novella became the central piece in a collection called Thirteen Ways of Looking, which has just been published. Jeppe Garly is a lifelong Viking enthusiast who has recently been appointed a Viking teacher on a Norwegian training course on how to live like a Viking. He teaches his students traditional Viking culture, cooking and crafts such as black smithing. Jeppe told us how he came to embrace all things Viking and what lessons he has in store for his future students. Nairobi recently held a special outdoor film festival to celebrate film makers living in slums. One of those presenting his work was Ugandan, George Nsamba, a 25-year-old who grew up in Naguru, a ghetto in Kampala. He now helps other street kids get the skills to make films themselves. (Photo: Zizit Abdel Algabbar (left) Credit: Eva Bartussek. (right) Claudia Brenner)