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Episode details

World Service,22 Nov 2019,49 mins

Castle in the sky: Ethiopia’s Shonke village

The Fifth Floor

Available for over a year

Shonke is a 900-year-old settlement on the top of a mountain in Ethiopia's Amhara region. It’s a Muslim village, and its remote location is no accident, as BBC Afaan Oromo journalists Yadeta Berhanu and Habtabu Tibebu discovered. What is "quantum speed reading"? “Quantum speed-reading” courses in China claim to teach children to read 100,000 characters in five minutes. Eunice Wang of BBC Chinese investigates. Mexico’s indigenous Muslim community In the southern state of Chiapas is a small community of indigenous Mexican Muslims. Ana Gabriela Rojas of BBC Mundo visited them. Afghanistan's women de-miners Khalil Noori of BBC Afghan met Afghanistan's only all female de-mining squad who are about to complete their mission to help clear the province of Bamiyan. Costa Rica’s centenarians The Nicoya peninsula is a “blue zone”, where people live much longer than average. The BBC's Rafael Rojas joined an inspiring group of people aged 100 plus to find out the secrets of their longevity.

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