← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
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News and current affairs storytelling, context and colour: the Russians contemplating...
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Thank you for downloading the latest edition
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of BBC Radio's from our own correspondent,
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the best in news and current affairs storytelling.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, should I stay or should I go? Agonizing decisions for the Russians who believe they'd be better off abroad. The Indian villagers caught up in a Maoist rebellion, trying to rebuild their lives far from home. We find out what's brought economic recovery to Iceland and it isn't fish. And there's steady progress in relations between Cuba and the us. But in Havana, Miguel's car is still going nowhere. Is emigration the way to go? It's become a hot topic of conversation in sectors of Russian society. A small but significant number of the country's best educated and highly skilled have made the decision to leave. Many are concerned about what they see as an increasingly harsh and intolerant political climate under President Putin. And indeed, a new law comes into force next week, which some see as yet another tightening of the restrictions. This one stipulates that foreign firms or other organisations deemed to be undesirable may find their employees subject to fines or prison sentences. And so some, particularly among the country's liberals and middle class, are packing their bags. Caroline Wyatt's been unpack hers. She lived in Moscow from 1999 to 2003 and has just arrived back.
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Moscow is at its loveliest in May, when the usually forbidding expanse of Red Square is bathed in sunshine and the delicate scent of lilac fills the air around the crazy ice cream spirals of St. Basil's Cathedral. Tourists from across the Russian Federation take smiling family photographs in front of the church built to mark Ivan the Terrible's military conquests. The rocket launchers and martial might on display to celebrate Victory Day in Europe have all gone. And instead of marching bands, the ethereal sounds of an Orthodox church choir fill the square and visitors stop to listen. The only reminder that all is not quite as sunny as it seems is the shrine of flowers on the bridge, the fresh summer bunches left with handwritten notes in memory of the Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, shot dead on this same spot just a few months ago. I meet an old friend for coffee on the terrace of what was once the Soviet department store Gum. Now it's a temple to consumerism that wouldn't feel out of place in Paris, London or Milan. The shop windows bloom with pastel coloured dresses from all the luxury brands. I can hardly conceal my surprise when the waiter wishes me a good day with a smile that even looks as though he means It. I hardly know this place. It feels so different. The streets are no longer potholed, nor choked with traffic. There's a new confidence visible in the way people walk. And despite Western sanctions over Ukraine, the supermarket shelves are still full, and the cafes too. Yet as we sit over coffee, reminiscing about the Moscow of old, I'm suddenly reminded of the past as my friend looks around to make sure that nobody can hear. I've sent my family to live abroad, he tells me. It's better that way. I've sold everything and now I commute. The health service here is crumbling and so are schools. Sanctions have started to bite, but it's not that. It's the political atmosphere. It's stifling and it's getting worse. Nobody knows what will happen next, but it doesn't feel like a good place for the liberals. I resist the temptation to make a joke to lighten the mood. Liberals on the run worries about the health service. It sounds just like home. But my friend isn't laughing, and nor am I, as I remember his optimism about his country's future. Fifteen long years ago, for this highly educated man to send his family abroad was not a step taken lightly. Later, I meet Olya in a park and we sit on a bench, dappled by the early summer sunshine. It's warm, but getting muggier. Wisps of cloud carry the ominous grey tinge of an oncoming storm. Olya, too, has a sadness in her eyes as she talks about preparing to emigrate if she can. She is also eminently well qualified, another middle class Muscovite with a decent job and good prospects. For Olia, it's not economic fears that make her want to leave, but a gathering sense of unease. I don't know if you in England know the story about the frog who sits in a pan of warm water on the top of the stove. He's happy. And then somebody lights a stove beneath and gradually the water gets hotter. The frog is happy, he's comfortable, she says. But soon the water will boil and he probably won't get out in time because he doesn't realise what's happening. I'm scared of being that frog, trapped in a boiling pot, unable to get out. Olya's fears grew as the troubles in Ukraine spiralled into conflict, causing blazing rows that split her family and many others too. Some believe America will use what's happening in Ukraine to attack Russia. And they say we should attack first because that's the best defence, she tells me. All I want to find is a place on earth where everyone knows the law and abides by it, and where there isn't corruption. I'm so sick of it, and I'm tired of arguing about Ukraine. What's happening there is insane, and it's terrifying that it could lead to a full scale war. All I want is a small patch of land where there's peace and quiet. I'm reminded of those conversations when I hear President Putin respond to the corruption allegations against FIFA. He blames America for what he seems to see as politically motivated arrests aimed at taking the World cup away from Russia in 2018. I ask another friend, Tanya, what she makes of it all. That bellicose form of patriotism is everywhere in Russia today, she says, speaking softly as she drags deeply on a cigarette. You hear it all the time on the news. Everything is interpreted as being aimed against Russia. It's absurd. Americans don't spend their lives scheming against us. But the authorities here think and talk as though they do, and many people believe it. The rhetoric today is like something from another era, the Soviet era. I feel as though we're asked every day to make a choice between being true patriots or leaving Russia. I'm not leaving, she says. I'm Russian. I love my country. But sometimes my country is hard to love.
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Caroline Wyatt in Moscow the United States moved a little closer to restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba. Yesterday it formally dropped the Caribbean nation from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. An economic embargo remains in place, but the move will allow the Communist run island some access to American banking facilities and aid. Just six months ago, such developments would have seemed impossible to most Cubans. Now, with diplomatic talks continuing in Washington, the two sides are close to announcing a date for the reopening of their respective embassies. They've been closed since 1961. Most Cubans seem excited about an end to the long Cold war between their country and the United States. But Will Grant in Havana says they're still waiting for the thaw to bring more products onto the shelves, and that includes much needed parts for those famous old cars.
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The drive across Havana took us out towards the city's crumbling sporting arena, Ciudad Deportiva. The country's boxing greats have entertained the masses there since the late 1950s, including Olympic champions Teofilo Stevenson, Felix Sabon and Guillermo Rigondeo. It's in the shadow of this once imposing 15,000 seater complex, which has also showcased everything from international volleyball matches to fencing to that a friend of mine we'll just call him Miguel is trying to resurrect his husk of a car. Miguel works for one of the scores of state agencies in Cuba, the same job he's done now for decades. He's a loyal, intelligent and measured employee who's dedicated years of his life to one particular government body. Now in his 60s, Miguel was a baby when Fidel Castro attempted to storm the Montcada barracks, a child when the bearded revolutionaries rode triumphantly into Havana, and a young man when the Communist leader was at the height of his oratory and political powers. In fact, like many Cubans of his generation, you could say that Fidel was probably the greatest single influence on Miguel's life. When the state run newspaper recently published Fidel's first comment since the thaw with the United States was announced, I I watched Miguel pore over the Comandante's letter to the nation with a fine tooth comb, capturing nuances and subtleties that had escaped most of us. Miguel is probably the finest practitioner I know of a specifically Cuban form of Kremlinology, the product of a lifetime spent honing the art of reading between the lines. But back to his car. Rusting and dilapidated, it has been in urgent need of a service for months, and this being Cuba, Miguel had to source the spare parts himself and then deliver them to the mechanic in person. So I was driving him and his bag of assorted car parts across town. When we eventually tracked him down, it seemed as though car mechanics the world over, whether in Germany, Jerusalem, or the Caribbean, share a certain stance, shake of the head and sucking in air through the teeth. Noise. I dunno, he began as he looked over the new clutch that Miguel had managed to bring into the country to fix his now discontinued 1989 Peugeot 206. The thing is, that is your motor at present, he said, nodding towards a basin on the floor filled with greasy car parts, half of which appeared to be missing even to my untrained eye. I'll save you the technicalities of what was a complicated conversation, but suffice to say that at one point Miguel said, I understand the pistons of a larder can be made to fit. When it comes to Cuban cars, adapting parts from Soviet era vehicles like ladas and moskviches is crucial. Miguel was armed with an impressive degree of knowledge for a man who isn't even that decent a driver, much less an expert grease monkey, his son later explained he'd been reading up in his spare time. The mechanic picked out a cog and tried to explain to the Luddites assembled before him the pitfalls of changing the clutch without also changing virtually every other moving part. Suddenly exhausted with the talk of carburettors, cogs and chains, the heat inside the stuffy garage got to me, and I headed outside for a bit of fresh air. Some blame the US Economic embargo, others the Castro government. But on both sides of the Florida Straits, most would agree that people like Miguel shouldn't have to deal with such stress just to fix a car. He'd done everything asked of him, being a committed employee, worked hard for decades, often without economic incentive, and stayed on the island when others, including members of his own family, had left. Now here he was, spending his time, money and effort on trying to make a car that was built the year his adult son was born move again. Even that might be impossible. During the first flush of optimism about the US Cuba thaw, a group of American congressmen and senators came to Havana to applaud the movement, among them Senator Debbie Stebenow of Michigan. She said she hoped her state, which includes the famous motor city of Detroit, could help get Cuba's fleets of aging vehicles up and running. But while the reopening of embassies may be closer than ever, the US economic embargo is still firmly in place, and the chances of it being lifted soon seem slim. Still, one thing that reviving a discontinued car breeds is loyalty. If I ever manage to get it back on the road, miguel said as I drove him away, that will be the last car I ever own. They can bury me in it will
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grant in Havana now it's not much reported, but a bitter conflict involving armed Maoist guerrilla fighters has been going on for years now in the remote forested hills of central India. Trapped between the rebels, the army and a state sponsored militia group are tens of thousands of what are known as Adivasis, people from Var indigenous groups. Al Pasha has been finding out that because of the fighting, these people have been forced to leave their villages to try to rebuild their lives far from home.
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We had travelled overnight from Hyderabad on the train tracks once laid by the British Raj to ease the process of extracting coal and other minerals from what is now Telangana state. We had walked along dusty tracks through thick forests to the border with Chattisga state and at dusk arrived in a clearing of 20 mud huts. Leela welcomed us into the spotlessly clean courtyard of her one roomed house. She built it herself after escaping the prison. Like refugee camps erected by the Indian police in Chhattisgarh for people fleeing their villages, the thugs from the Selvajudda militia had set fire to their homes. She said there were many stories of rape and unspeakable brutalities. Her husband's whereabouts were still not known. Neither the firelight in the courtyard nor the vivid colour of Leela's rainbow striped sari could brighten the sadness in her eyes. She brought out a plastic wrap studio photo of a 10 year old girl in a starched pink and yellow dress standing against a sky blue backdrop with a white painted cuckoo clock. My daughter Lila said I sent her to a boarding school for orphans to keep her safe. The girl's teachers thought her parents were dead. As the moon rose, the courtyard filled with villagers. But apart from two small babies, I couldn't see a single child. All of these people had also sent their children to state boarding schools or to live with relatives elsewhere. Our choice was bleak, said one man called Ramu. Either come and live here in Telangana or join the Maoists. But after spending two months with the underground armies, Ramu told the guerrilla leaders that life on the move was just too tough to endure. They never stayed more than one night under the same tree. For half a century these Maoist guerrillas, also called the Nakshalites, have been waging an armed struggle to take over the Indian state and create a communist society. The Indian government tend to see them as terrorists. The country's greatest internal security threat in the last decade, Operation Green Hunt, as it is called, was launched to flush out these guerrillas from their strongholds in central and eastern India. In Chhattisgarh, the counterinsurgency operations included arming the Selvajuddim militia who tried to recruit villagers. Turning against those who didn't join, claiming they were rebels, we travelled into the nearby town of Sukma in Chhattisgarh, where the situation seemed tense and polarized. Everywhere there were Indian military barracks, the remains of refugee camps and life size statues commemorating members of the security forces who had died in the fighting. Posters advertised the compensation for surrender. £4,500 for those who came in with a light machine gun, £3,000 for those with an AK47 and so on. So here we are, Ramu said. Across the border. We used to come here only in the dry season to work in the chilli and cotton fields. Now we're stuck. Not one of us dares to return home. Their living conditions were grueling. They earned less than two pounds a day each as agricultural labourers. They had also cleared patches of forest to grow corn to eat. But forest guards harassed them for encroaching on protected land. Ramu said that at least One person from every single household in the village had spent a week in jail at some point. These people had no identity or ration cards to collect the rice distributed to the poor. Their only water source was a hole they had dug themselves in a dry river bed. The people of Telangana state call them the Gutikoyas, meaning those who come over in batches. They belonged to different indigenous groups, Koyas, Murias, Durlas, who for centuries had lived in hilly forests with little state presence away from caste. Divided Hindu societies, foraging, cultivating and sometimes migrating as casual labour. But Telangana wouldn't recognize them as citizens and sought to send them back to Chhattisgarh. Yet despite this extreme oppression, exclusion and poverty, what I found most extraordinary was, was that these people had remade their previous communities, created everything anew from what seemed like nothing. They had not only built their beautiful mud houses, they had also made thatched roof bamboo sheds on stilts for their goats and chickens. They had revived their tribal festivals and were worshipping their spirits in anthills and rocks as though they had been living on this new land forever. To me, Leela, Ramu and the others seemed a powerful example of the human spirit and the ability, even in the face of doom, to create community and hope.
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And that was Alpashar. Now turning to domestic difficulties, it's something we've all suffered. The leak in the ceiling, the flood upstairs, water running down the walls. That's the moment when you have no choice except to call out the plumber sharpish. But what you do when you live in an old block of flats in it keeps on happening. Not once, not twice, but five times in the last two years. That's been the distressing fate of our man in Paris, Hugh Scofield. And it set him thinking about the dire state of plumbing there.
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The first sign of trouble was water trickling down the bedroom door jamb. Water always seeks the line of least resistance, so Nico tells me. He's the plumber. So when it pools under the upstairs floorboards, it'll first find a little nook where wood meets plaster and then it sends in the troops. When the water comes from a leaking pipe and the upstairs owners are away for several days, there can be quite a reservoir waiting to descend. Today, the bedroom walls are still a wreck. Then there was the old lady two floors up with a faulty washer. Slow leak, but she's doddery and didn't see a thing. The water flowed through the building on the outside of the downpipe. My first inkling was when I noticed a huge bulge in My son's bedroom ceiling, it is the was a false ceiling made out of some stretchy material and it sagged down like a balloon with laurel and Hardyesque idiocy. I pierced it with a carving knife while standing underneath. After that, there were rumblings in the actual shower room and a murky miasma began gurgling up from the depths like something in a Stephen King novel. I took to bailing it into the sink until I realised it was just going round in circles and coming up again in the shower. And it would subside for a time and I'd think the blockage had cleared. But then a few days later it returned, debouching onto the floor, buckling the parquet. I called a man who came with a machine parked way out on the street and a 50 metre hose. He drilled a hole in the downpipe and fired the hose down. He looked concerned as nothing happened for a while. And then. Ah, a smile of relief. What was it? A rat? A pair of socks? A human head will never know. I'll bore you if I go on with this litany. Suffice to say that since then there's been the washing machine upstairs and then a week or two ago, another dodgy pipe, both occasioning more pooling in the ceiling, more crumbling plaster work. It's all covered by the insurance, but the problem is that at this rate, the work will never get done. It takes months for the damp to get out of the brick, but every time it's nearly ready, the whole thing gets another dousing. The only good thing to come out of it all is meeting Nico. And through him, I've discovered a host of interesting peculiarities about Paris plumbing. I sort of knew it anecdotally, but it's true. Most leaks in Paris take place in August. Why? Well, it's because the city is half empty. The pressure from the mains is the same, but there are fewer people using taps and thus relieving that pressure, so the chances of a joint popping are all higher. We also had an interesting chat about saniboyeurs, which are still surprisingly common. Now, sani boyeurs are machines that Parisians use when they install lavatories in places where they're not supposed to go, that is, with an outlet pipe of insufficient gauge, like a couple of centimeters. In order for this to function, the material has to be rendered, as it were, less lumpy. So the saniborrieux uses a blade and electricity to chop up the deposits so that they can pass down the tube. But the bigger point about my own Plumbing problems is actually quite telling, because what's really going on is that the state of the housing stock in Paris, or a lot of it, is very, very poor. My building, for example, is a century old, but nothing has been replaced except in utter emergency. When they do take out bits of old pipe, it's frightening how dilapidated they are. Mais c' est la dontelle, one of my neighbours keeps saying. It's like lace. And the reason why nothing's replaced is that there's no money. People are poor, my neighbours. Flats may be worth quite a lot of money, but they have very little. I've seen one of them going through the rubbish. And the cost of building work, inflated by France's notoriously high labor costs and cozy arrangements that keep out new competitors like the polls, is exorbitant. My co propriete, that's the co owner's syndicate, will never vote for major renovation. It's a classic sign of an unhappy economy, work not done and leaks.
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Hugh Schofield in Paris and shame he didn't get that Laurel and Hardy moment on a selfie. Now, in 2008, Iceland, then Scandinavia's financial whiz kid, suffered a massive economic crisis when its three main banks collaps in the teeth of the global credit crunch. The country's krona fell by 50% against the euro. Iceland had to get a 1.3 billion pounds loan from the IMF. Seven years later, its economy is back on an even keel. And the main driver of that recovery has been tourism. Anna Magnusson, who's half Icelandic and has been visiting the country for more than 30 years, has been reflecting on some of the changes that tourism has brought
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on Iceland's south east coast. Under the vast white gaze of Europe's biggest glacier, Vatnajokull, there's a deep glacial lake called Yerkuls, Aurloned. In summer, huge icebergs carve into the lake and float out to the sea. Down on the shore, the black volcanic sands are littered with dazzling shards of ice which the tide has washed back. I was at the lake a couple of weeks ago. It's an unearthly place. Black stony hills creeping to the water's edge, the grey tongue of the glacier away to the north, and the endless lowering Icelandic sky dwarfing everything. The icebergs sit in the water, immense and ancient, some black streaked with ash, others translucent blue. It's a place to stand and wonder. But you won't be on your own. Thousands of tourists come here in the summer from all over the world. The Information centre was absolutely mobbed. I pushed my way to the counter, smiled at the blonde, harassed girl and in my best Icelandic, asked for coffee and cake. She looked puzzled and replied in English, coffee. Assuming my accent was so awful that she couldn't understand me, I blurted out, I'm sorry. I'd just like to try out my Icelandic when I can. Then she smiled. Not on me you can't, she said. I'm Dutch. I should have guessed. It had happened several times before in my journey from Reykjavik. First a Polish waitress, then a Lithuanian hotel receptionist, and then another Romanian waitress, also an Englishman, in the car rental place. Tourism is the booming industry in Iceland, and more and more of the jobs it creates are filled by immigrant workers. Iceland isn't in the eu, but it's a member of the European Economic Area, the Romanian waitress told me. This was her third summer in Iceland. In the winters she works as a challenger in Switzerland. I find it all a bit strange how accessible Iceland has become in the years I've been visiting. In the early summer of 1992, when I travelled around the country by bus, it felt like a frontier adventure. The further I got from Reykjavik, the less English was spoken, certainly by the older generation. There were a few superhuman Germans on heavily laden bicycles, laboring through the lunar bleakness of the highlands. But most of the time I felt it was just me and Iceland. I saw the sweet grassed fields of the south coast grazed not by cows, but by glorious herds of horses. I stayed in remote red roofed farms nestled at the foot of dark mountains. I traveled through miles of twisted gray lava fields stretching to the horizon. I wrote postcards after midnight by the light of the sun. Twenty years ago, that Iceland felt to me like a beautiful secret. Not anymore. Since 2010, the number of tourists has increased by around 18% a year. And this year they expect over a million visitors. That's more than three times the population. This is what's driven the economic recovery. Since the crash of 2008, tourism, not fish, has been the saving of Iceland. And they're very good at it. On the way back west along the coast, I stopped to gaze up at another glacier with an unpronounceable name, Efjtlayurkut. When the volcano under the ice erupted five years ago, it spewed ash miles up into the skies and disrupted air traffic for days. It washed away bridges, caused rivers to flood and covered farmland in ash. And here's something very Icelandic. A year after the eruption, the family who owned the farm at the foot of the glacier built a visitor center. It tells the story of the volcano and shows a rather good film about the eruption and how the farm survived the ash and mud. And of course, it also sells lumps of lava and bottles of ash and products from the farm. That's the secret. Icelanders have always adapted and fought back against disasters, whether natural or financial. Catching fish or catching tourists. The Icelanders are survivors. The day I visited, the sun was pouring down on the red roofs and emerald fields of the farm. And behind the counter of the visitor center, the farmer's wife was selling tickets to the film. I ordered mine in Icelandic. She smiled and answered in Icelandic at last.
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And with Anna Magnussen finally finding someone who speaks the language, we've reached the end of another edition. Two programmes next week on Thursday morning as well as on Saturday. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.