Thriving in adversity: tips for achieving the impossible

Mountaineer Omar Samra was ready for a challenge when he set off to row across the Atlantic in 2017. But he and his teammate Omar Nour weren’t ready for what came next.

On the 4,800 km Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, their boat capsized during a storm with 45-knot winds. It failed to self-right and crashed into eight-meter waves. The two Egyptians were hurled into the ocean and left clinging to a lifeboat that wouldn’t fully inflate. For 13 hours they waited for a miracle.

Help finally did arrive in the form of a passing cargo ship, but that wasn’t the end of their troubles. Their rescue was told in Beyond the Raging Sea, a work-in-progress documentary presented at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Samra saw a tiny glimpse of the perilous journeys migrants make each year – risking their lives in search of better ones.


Is there opportunity in adversity, he wondered? Samra teamed up with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to follow their story and draw attention to the plight of refugees crossing dangerous seas. The two experiences appeared to strike a resemblance. Samra says, “I could never have known just how closely our two stories were inextricably linked.”

“People have become desensitised to the refugee crisis,” he says. “It has become faceless and just about statistics. We felt that we could help stir up a different dialogue. We wanted to find creative ways to turn this challenge into something positive.”

This sentiment threads together Samra’s grittiest and most successful endeavours.