← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC Radio 4
00:28:04
Why is China restoring a British railway in Angola? Justin Rowlatt boards the Benguela...
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- [00:00]
Kate Adie
You are about to listen to from our own correspondent. We make two versions of the program. If you would like to hear the edition broadcast on the BBC World Service, please visit the BBC iPlayer. This is a podcast of the version broadcast on BBC Radio 4, presented by Kate Ady.
- [00:17]
Narrator
Today we board a train at dawn and follow the Chinese to the heart of Africa. The new generation of Afghans determined to play their part in bringing peace and stability to their country. We meet a Kenyan bitten by a black mamba, but still insisting that snakes are essential. And the correspondent who's giving it all up to become a vicar. Up until fairly recently, you couldn't even set out on what used to be one of Africa's greatest rail journeys. The Bengela line in Angola, built at great cost by the British in the last century, was brought to a standstill by the country's civil war, which lasted for more than two decades, up until the early 1990s. But now, in its search for resources in Africa, China is helping to restore the rail service which was built to link the centre of the continent to its Atlantic coast. Justin Rowlatt's just been for a ride.
- [01:10]
Justin Rowlatt
The passengers squatted beside the railway tracks. It was impossible to tell how many there were. In the darkness, their bodies merged with great, shapeless bundles of luggage, but there were certainly hundreds. Then, with the first flush of dawn and bang on time, the bright beam of headlights appeared in the far distance. The crowd immediately began to stir and jostle for position. Even before the train had eased to a halt, they threw up their boxes and bags into the open cattle trucks and scruffy passenger carriages. Then they scrambled after them. Tony, the railway official who was looking after us, urged us to get moving too. It will not wait for you, he warned. He hurried down to the very last carriage and gestured at us to board this battered old compartment. You can leave your things safely here, he said. We did and climbed up the steps and into another world. The contrast with modern Africa could not have been greater. We were in a teak lined stateroom, the windows shaded by slatted blinds. There was a table with a crisp white tablecloth surrounded by four heavy chairs and in the ceiling, a big silver fan. We had stepped back into Edwardian England. Tony laughed at my astonishment. He'd known we'd be impressed. You should feel at home, he teased. This is one of the original British carriages where the directors of the railway company would travel. Our grand accommodation was a remnant of what was once one of the great roots of Africa, the Benguela Railway. It was an engineering triumph. Stretching a thousand miles up from the Angolan coast right into the southern Congo. The railway took almost 30 years to build and cost the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pounds, as well as the lives of many of the indentured labourers who worked on it. But little remains of the glory of the Benguela. Now, until very recently, all but a tiny stretch of line was closed. The railway was one of the many victims of the Angola's 27 year long civil war. Now it is being rebuilt, not needless to say, by the British, but by the Chinese. Back in Luanda, the Angolan capital, I'd heard a lot of anxiety about the Chinese move into Africa. Some people mutter that it's really just another scramble for oil and other resources. It is true that Angola has some of the biggest oil reserves in Africa. But as I looked around at the expensive fittings in our state car on rails, and it looked as if the motives of the men who built this railway were pretty similar. The Bengela railway was not a philanthropic project, but a business investment. It was built to ship out the incredible copper wealth of Central Africa. As soon as the train pulled into the first station, a dusty stop in the middle of dry scrubland, it was clear that the recent Chinese work on the railway is already providing economic benefits. Those huge bundles I had seen by the passengers were thrown open. Inside were mounds of tomatoes, onions, greens, dried fish and great bloody lumps of meat. The hundreds of people waiting surged forward, yelling and rushing from one carriage to the other to barter for the goods on offer. I realised that this train was in effect, a rolling supermarket and the passengers were small businessmen and women. I couldn't do this before the railway was fixed. One large woman selling plump red tomatoes told me before I had to travel by car, which was much more expensive. She giggled shyly and acknowledged she was making better money. Now I am not rich, but a bit richer, she told me. So how did these traders feel about the Chinese helping to refurbish the line? They all agreed that the Chinese were very hard workers and had done a fine job. But shouldn't the work have gone to Angolans? I wanted to know. Our people have been fighting for so long, they don't know how to build anymore, the woman with the tomatoes told me with a wry smile. Now, of course, the Chinese labourers get paid and their wages come out of a cheap loan which the Chinese government made to the Angolan government. And that loan in turn is paid for in oil. So in some sense, oil money is still the motive. But as the train grunted and clanked on through the savannah with its occasional vivid red acacia trees, it seemed to me that what was happening now was very different from what the British had done here. The Angolan oil, which pays off that loan, is priced at the prevailing market rate very different terms from those of the British, who carted hundreds of millions of tonnes of precious African copper down this line without paying anyone a penny for it. So while it may be tempting to see today's China as just another imperial power out to exploit the riches of Africa, it seemed to me that there is a big difference between the Chinese presence and the British one. Though, sitting back in my state car as the train rattled on up the line, I had to admit those British railway pioneers did know how to travel in style.
- [06:14]
Narrator
Justin Rolatt in Angola they are counting the votes in Afghanistan after the weekend's parliamentary elections, the fourth national poll since the fall of the Taliban. The election has come at a time of growing unease. It's been the most violent year since 2001. The Taliban are making inroads in more and more provinces. Yet Lise Doucet sees some hope for Afghan democracy, not least in the number of young people she's met who are determined to try to help the country towards a more stable future.
- [06:45]
Lise Doucet
The teenage girls in white headscarves shrieked and pointed. There he is. Janan Mozazai. He turned to see them sitting in the bright cobble sun outside a Zarguna high school. We saw your campaign poster, they called out. Did you vote for me? He asked. Yes, a bundle of votes, they declared, collapsing in excited giggles. The candidate gave them the big smile he's been flashing for weeks as he walked the streets of Kabul or sat cross legged on village carpets trying to convince Afghans to vote for him, a 30 year old who's come home to Kabul after his studies in Canada. The last time Jenan went to Zarguna Girls school was in January 2002. The then UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was visiting Kabul, a city bathed in the infectious optimism unleashed by the end of Taliban rule and its harsh edicts, including barring girls from school. Zarguna had just reopened its doors. The UN chief was greeted by eager students singing we want peace in English as well as dari and Pashtu. Djannan translated for the secretary general. His language skills had attracted the notice of a UN scrambling to rebuild its mission as it embarked on a reconstruction project it described as one of the biggest in its history. I found myself remembering those heady days this past week during the parliamentary elections, as I spent time with many young Afghans I first met nearly nine years ago when we joined Jenan on his campaign trail. I couldn't help but recall our first conversations in late 2001, when he pondered his future as his country was suddenly given a new chance. The war had led to Kabul University being closed for long periods. Jenan was studying medicine then because like many Afghan men, his father told him to be a doctor. But the fighting meant he was unable to finish his course. Another of the young Afghans I met then had left behind his job selling so called antiques in a hotel in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. He came to Kabul with the high school certificate of a refugee whose meager results were also an indictment of a war which had destroyed his childhood and killed members of his family. And it was also the teenage boy out on the streets of Kabul night and day, shining shoes to try to earn a fistful of notes to feed his large family. Nine years on, they are all still in Kabul. The refugee with Apache high school record managed to talk his way into a scholarship and has just returned home. After four years of university in the United States, the shoeshine boy is now a talented journalist. Like countless young Afghans, he grabbed the opportunities provided by a greater international presence and the sudden availability of English language and computer courses in his city. There are many more stories like this, including many young women. Their decision to take on public roles is a brave one. They fight threats and pressure not just from Taliban, but from within their own conservative society. In my years of reporting for the BBC, the choices of the young generation have always seemed to be a barometer of progress when a country is given a new start. Sadly, all too often, hope founders in Afghanistan. Nine years on, in a country where violence and corruption grow and the world seems to be looking for a way out, some young Afghans are now asking where their future lies. But these parliamentary elections told a more hopeful story. About half of the 2,500 candidates vying for office were under the age of 30. Some are, of course, sons and daughters of the rich and powerful, including the warlords who dominated and destroyed parts of this country. Others are educated men and women, untainted by links to the past, hoping to redefine the future. All of their lives from birth, have been shaped by a 30 year war. This week, as the votes are being counted, I asked Jenan how it went. It was a sobering lesson for all of us, he reflected. It will take a lot longer than we thought to win back the trust and confidence of the people. But there are many on his side in this new war. Seven thousand young Afghan volunteers make up the largest observer mission, the Free and Fair Election Foundation. Its voice has been one of the loudest in pointing to voting irregularities. It's headed by the young Afghans who seized opportunities to play a role. From the day the Taliban was ousted in 2001, as the world focused on Afghanistan, it was often said this was the country's best chance in a generation. Many young Afghans know they're the generation that must take that chance, as difficult and as dangerous as that is.
- [11:43]
Narrator
Lise Doucet in Kabul. Even the best informed correspondent will hesitate before telling you where exactly Russia is headed. The collapse of communism certainly left it a more open place. Yet even now it retains something of an enigmatic quality. It's not easy to read. Our man Steve Rosenberg spent 16 years living in Russia. Much of that time he's been reporting for the BBC. After a spell as our Berlin correspondent, Steve's now returned to Russia, and it seems his feet haven't touched the ground since.
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Steve Rosenberg
After only one week back in Russia, I'm having some very odd dreams. The other night I dreamt I was starring in that Steve Martin comedy classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It's probably because I spent the whole week crisscrossing Russia in planes, trains and automobiles. I've been on a cruise ship, too, which was battered by storms. The reason for such an energetic start to my new posting was an invitation to take part in the Valdai Discussion Club. This is an annual event organized by the Russian authorities, a chance for Western journalists and academics to meet Russian policymakers and political scientists to debate big questions like where exactly is Russia heading? The week began with a car journey. My wife drove me to a Moscow station to catch a train to St. Petersburg. We parked the car outside. There were no signs to say you couldn't, and popped away for a few minutes. When we returned to get my suitcase, the car was gone. Suddenly, a taxi driver appeared. Your car's been towed. I saw them take it, he said. But there are no signs to say you can't park here. I cried. The taxi driver pointed half a mile down the road. There's the sign, he said with a smile. He told us not to worry. He knew exactly where our car had been taken to, and he would take us there for two and a half thousand roubles, about fifty pounds. What a scam. But what could we do? The clock was ticking. The train would leave in 40 minutes. And what a train. It was a sparklingly new high speed affair. It's called the Sapsan or the Peregrine Falcon. Comfortable and quick, it's cut the travel time from Moscow to St Petersburg to a little over four and a half hours. True, it's German built, but as the Falcon whisked me north, the chase for my case back in Moscow was forgotten. And suddenly Russia fell to more modern, more dynamic, more normal kind of country. Until I arrived in St Petersburg. The Valdai Club delegates piled into a coach for what should have been a short drive to the port. But traffic jams had brought the city centre to a standstill. From Peregrine Falcon, we had transferred to Russian Tortoise. It took nearly four hours before the coach limped to our cruise ship, the Kronstadt. We spent the next three days sailing across the stunning lakes of northern Russia. I say lakes, but they were so big, they felt more like oceans, especially when the storms raged and the waves lashed the ship. And while the Kronstadt was swaying from side to side, we were sitting in the conference room discussing whether the Russian state should lean to the east or to the west towards democracy or autocracy. Conditions at sea matched the conversation perfectly. What struck me most about the meeting was just how negative the Russian delegates were about their own country's future. Many at the conference spoke of stagnation, of a Russia stuck in a rut. One historian told me the situation reminded him of the days of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, when the USSR ran out of ideas and lost direction. There was deep pessimism about President Medvedev's calls for modernization, grave doubts that the President has the resources or the power to make a difference. Most of the people on our cruise ship seem to believe that the real captain of the Russian liner isn't President Medvedev, it's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. And all the talk on deck was that at the next presidential election in 2012, Mr. Putin, who's already been President twice, could return to the Kremlin for 12 more years. the end of the week, we got a chance to quiz Mr. Putin about his plans. He invited the Valdai delegates to dinner on the Black Sea. We were flown by government jet to Sochi and bussed to a luxury guest house. Mr. Putin toasted us with vodka. Then it was on with the meal and the questions. What did the Prime Minister think about Russia's future? Mr. Putin was positive. His government, he said, had a clear agenda for modernizing the country up to 2020. And what about his own future? Did he want to get back in the Kremlin? He wouldn't say. But he did point out that in America, Franklin Roosevelt had been elected US President four times in a row without violating the US Constitution. At the end of the meal, we were all presented with commemorative chocolate bars embossed with a picture of the Kremlin, a sign, perhaps, that Mr. Putin does still have the appetite for Russia's top job.
- [17:13]
Narrator
That was Steve Rosenberg. Now. Is there life after being a correspondent? Of course there is. I've seen BBC colleagues move on to all sorts of new lives as MPs and government ministers, authors and academics. One brews beer in the Lake District, another grows olives in Spain. But I don't recall anyone taking the path that Christopher Landau has chosen. He's left us to train to become a priest. After his final assignment for us in China, he reflected on the tensions between his personal faith and his journalistic pursuit of the truth.
- [17:47]
Kate Adie
We'd finished the interview. The students at a church in Beijing had been astonishingly upbeat about Christianity's future in China. One of the students hesitated before returning to her group Bible study. I realized she had a question she wanted to ask me. So, are you a Christian? She asked. Yes, I replied, and before I could say anything else, she punched the air in delight, moved forward as if to hug me before rapidly thinking better of it, and then, oh, that makes me feel so much better. God bless you. I then rapidly gave the answer, which I have long become used to issuing in such circumstances. Yes, as it happens, I do have a faith of my own, but my job is to report impartially about all religions and the role religion plays in today's world. She looked at me slightly less enthusiastically. This moment, too, has happened often when the interviewee realises that this journalist reporting about religion is not there to provide a vehicle for evangelism, but rather to tell the story, to analyse what's going on. Sometimes I've wondered how assumptions about my own faith have affected the course of interviews. When I've met Christians with wildly opposing views in different churches on the same Sunday, I've smiled inwardly when I realise that an assumption I share. Their particular perspective seems to have smoothed my path in both places, and I've had similar experiences with people from other religions. A simple acknowledgement of a shared sense of a spiritual dimension to life has often been met with a relieved smile. What such experiences have shown me is the anxiety in religious circles about how journalists deal with religion. There's constant fear that dearly held views will be twisted or misrepresented of course, it's not to say that a non believing journalist can't report entirely effectively about religion. But what I've come to recognise is that religious people themselves are often fear that journalists begin with a rather dismissive attitude to faith. Mutual suspicion and miscomprehension hardly makes for constructive reporting. The trouble is, whatever our own personal spirituality might be in the present, or indeed whatever expectations come with our job, none of us can suddenly erase our past. When aged 17, I was thinking about studying theology at university and I was rather nonplussed by my English teacher's suggestion that I could discuss the idea with the local bishop. Except that bishop turned out to be Rowan Williams, whose advice I actually found rather helpful. What I could never have imagined then was that in 2008 I would find myself sitting on a sofa at Lambeth palace interviewing the by then Archbishop Williams about his views on Sharia law. What I also didn't imagine two years ago is that now I would be preparing to leave the BBC and having decided to return to the academic study of theology, perhaps it's inevitable that religious believers will sometimes take steps that necessarily defy cold logic. The leap of faith surely comes at the point where the intellect concludes there may not be a clearly rational explanation for a journey into the spiritual unknown. On my recent trip to China, my last for the BBC, I was struck by the number of interviewees who, as well as asking about my own faith and confidently told me it was God's will that we should have met. The Chinese Christians were totally serious about the notion of us all participating in a divine plan. It was another Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who said that when he prayed, coincidences happened and when he didn't, they didn't. However convinced or otherwise, one is by such sentiments, I found the real privilege of reporting about religion. That has been to go beyond the inevitable stories about scandal and to meet people determined to help those around them see beyond the apparent hopelessness in so much of today's world, providing a glimpse of heaven on earth, as they might put it. For me, that's become rather an attractive vision. So as well as leaving the BBC to resume my study of theology, I'll be combining it with training to be a priest, who in the Church of England, I hope to be able to carry on making a case for journalists taking religion seriously. And dare I say it, I'm rather looking forward to being publicly partial about my own Christian faith.
- [22:22]
Narrator
Christopher Landau the United nations set itself some challenging tasks back at the Millennium Summit in Rio, and one that's proved a test too far was the call for environmental sustainability to be achieved. World leaders meeting in New York this week have been told that despite the promises of the great and the good, the loss of biodiversity has continued unrelentingly. Some 17,000 species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction. Despite this, around the world efforts are being made. As Annie Caulfield has discovered, she's been talking to a man doing his bit in the Kenyan coastal district of Kilifi.
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Annie Caulfield
It is not a question of me liking snakes. Daniel, the warden at the small Kenyon park, frowns at me. I am here because snakes are essential. I'd assumed that people who worked with snakes must like them. I was just making conversation. But Daniel, a tall middle aged man with a very lived in look, has no time for small talk or assumptions. This is not some park for amusement. You, he continues, still frowning as he takes my entrance fee. This snake park is educational and essential for the local ecology. Trying to alter what may have been an inappropriately amusement seeking expression on my face, I follow Daniel into the lush green forest of mango and baobab trees where he runs his reptile rescue centre. The weather beaten sign to Reptile Rescue on a dusty street of concrete and corrugated iron souvenir shops led me to imagine a few dusty weather beaten lizards with sticking plasters on their feet, some poignantly tawdry tourist rip off. But Daniel's reptile park is a serious operation and he is an unnervingly serious man. On wooden stands in the shade, he has about 20 large rectangular glass tanks, a snake in each surrounded by comfortable looking dry leaves. The snakes are labelled harmless, semi poisonous or deadly poisonous. There are descriptions of what might happen to you if you were bitten by the latter and what your chances of survival might be. The thing is, Daniel explains, in the villages around here very few people know what snake is deadly and what is a nothing snake. They see a snake, they kill it. If all the snakes are killed, then the rodent population is increased. Rats and things that damage crops will thrive. So now the villagers around here call me. I take the snake away and if it's harmless I release it into the forest. In this way the snake population is kept up, rodents kept down. He encourages locals to visit Reptile Rescue to look at his snakes and learn for themselves which are dangerous and and which could be left. To keep the ecology harmonised, Daniel also serves as an unofficial health service. If someone in the area is bitten, I am called. I can tell them if there is any hope. I keep in contact with hospitals in Malindi and Mombasa to know what antivenom they have, so I know if it's worth the journey or not. Daniel himself has been bitten a number of times. I nearly died last year from a black mamba. I was tingling then paralyzing. I took transport to Malindi where I knew there was antivenom and survived. And I had been bitten by semi poisonous snakes so many times I feel I am immune now. Daniel might be some real life superhero with special immunity to snakebite powers, but not everyone appreciates this. My mother hates me doing this job all the time. She tells me to stop doing this dangerous job and go back to my former work as a policeman. Isn't being a policeman in Kenya dangerous? I ask for the first time. Daniel smiles at me not in the way you'd think snakes poison the body, but the corruption in the police force here. He shakes his head. Doing this, I am free in the forest. I help people. I learn things. Last year a tourist from Cambridge came and sent me an up to date book he has written about snakes. So interesting. We walk beyond the glass cases to a large enclosed pond and rockery full of tortoises. Daniel tells me these are rescued from Mombasa Airport. Someone had them in a crate trying to export them illegally. Many in the crate were dead when they opened it. They will grow here and I will care for them. He also cares for half a dozen chameleons in a large cage, all blending into the color of the twigs they're sitting on. These have to be protected, he explains. People kill them because there is a superstition here that chameleons will spit in your eye and send you mad. But they're harmless like the snakes. They're only attracted to human communities looking for eggs, baby chicks or garbage to eat. If people want to avoid a reptile problem, they should keep their animals and garbage away from their homes. When people's villages were more spread out in the countryside, they knew to do this. But then he sighed, people used to know a lot more. They used to know that there are no useless animals. I did wonder about this when a swarm of tiny flies marauded around me as I left the forest. Maybe they were doing something useful. Who was I to argue with a man who'd survived the black mamba?
- [27:53]
Narrator
And with that from Annie Caulfield on the usefulness of snakes. We've reached the end of another edition. I'll be back with more from our in correspondence around the world on Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us then goodbye.