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From Our Own Correspondent
BBC Radio 4
00:28:06
A corner of old Germany is unearthed in Latin America as Will Grant follows preparing...
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Hi there.
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You've downloaded the BBC Radio programme from our own correspondent. We make two versions and if you'd like to hear our World Service programme, you'll find it on the BBC iplayer. This, though, is the edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's presented by Kate Ady.
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Today, a tragedy, but not a war crime. That's Turkey's view as it starts to fill in some of the blank pages of its history. We discover a corner of old Germany in Latin America as Venezuelans prepare for a crucial vote tomorrow. The hazards of taking an al fresco shower in Yemen, and why Americans seem to have lost interest in a man who collected Rolls Royces and once sported sparkly hot pants. An extraordinary event took place last weekend. In the shadow of an ancient castle in eastern Turkey, priests were allowed to conduct a service in an ancient Armenian church for the first time in nearly a century. It was, according to the government, a gesture of reconciliation towards the Armenian minority and which was subjected to mass killing and deportation during the First World War. Many around the world describe those events as the modern era's first genocide, but the Turks refused to accept that term and make considerable diplomatic efforts to prevent foreign governments and parliaments from adopting it. Jonathan Head was in the province of Van, watching the church service and reflecting on local attitudes towards the past.
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From the vantage point of the ancient castle perched atop a rocky outcrop, you can see the whole city of Van spread out between the dazzling blue of the great Lake and the jagged mountains to the east. It's a featureless sprawl of ugly apartment blocks that you might find in any provincial Turkish city. Nothing suggests that it has any history going back more than a few decades. If you then look to the south, directly beneath you is an area of rough grass crisscrossed by a maze of paths, with just a few fragments of buildings still visible. This is Oldvan, a city that, until its destruction, had been continuously inhabited for more than 3,000 years. And a large part of the people who inhabited it were Armenians. It had once been at the heart of a great Armenian empire. Today, there are almost none. The only two buildings still standing there are mosques. Of the dozen or so churches, there is no trace. The story of how the Armenians vanished from their historic homeland isn't discussed in Van Today. The city proudly describes the waves of invaders who've passed through Parthians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Seljuk, Turks. But the Armenians who dominated the city just a century ago are hardly mentioned, which is not surprising, really, when you consider that the Ottoman Empire's biggest minority was driven out of Anatolia in 1915 on ghastly death marches. At least half, maybe much more, of the original population died in what many historians call the modern world's first genocide. Today, the inhabitants of Van are mainly Kurdish, some probably the descendants of those who killed and seized the property of the Armenians. The current Turkish government is the first one to seek some kind of accommodation with its Armenian past. It needs to if it's to fulfil its ambition to be a regional power and to be part of the European Union. That's why it permitted a Christian service to take place last Sunday in the beautiful little church on Aktoma island in Lake Van. It's the only historic Armenian building still standing in eastern Anatolia and among the most holy for Armenian Christians. I happened to be in a bus with an Armenian choir from Istanbul who'd been invited to sing at the service. They were being treated as VIPs. The municipal government wanted them to feel welcome, and we were being given a tour. Our guide was a young local woman called Fatima. She'd won over her guests by singing some lovely renditions of old Armenian ballads. But when she pointed out the wasteland that is the old city today, all she could say was that the Armenians had, in her words, disappeared. For a few moments, the bus went quiet, then everyone broke into song again. None of the Istanbul Armenians wanted to talk about the past. They are a very small community, acutely aware of their vulnerability. The Armenians who'd come from the United States for the service were more forthright. It's bittersweet coming here, said one man whose grandparents had fled from Van during the killings. We're like parallel cultures. We even look the same, he said, only we hate each other. He said there'd been strong pressure on him from other American Armenians not to come. They saw the one off church service as a cynical publicity stunt by Turkey. At times on Sunday, it did seem like that the local government had invited an army of journalists to witness the service, who threatened to overwhelm the congregation. It also invited local Muslims, who talked and laughed all the way through it. No one made any effort to respect the sanctity of the ceremony. A local boatman told me he was puzzled by the way they were praying. He'd never seen a Christian service before. And why are they crying? He asked. He had no idea. The Turkish government still fiercely defends its version of history, that what happened in 1915 was a tragedy, not a war crime. In Van, it points out, the Armenians took up arms. For a while, they controlled the city, and later they helped enemy Russian forces to occupy it. In the chaos of war, it says, large numbers of Turkish Muslims also died. But the annihilation of the Armenians is simply blanked out of the history that's taught in Turkish schools. There's no discussion, and real dangers await those who try to start one. It is less than four years since the Armenian journalist Grant Dink was murdered in Istanbul by a young nationalist for calling for just such a debate. This church service is pointless, one Armenian journalist told me, if the Turkish government only wants to appear more tolerant. It has to change the mindset of the people, he said, make them confront their past in the dreary avenues of modern day. VAN that process hasn't started yet. Its history is still buried under layers of concrete and by Turkey's uncompromising nationalist
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dogma, that was Jonathan Head. The elections in Venezuela tomorrow are for new MPs rather than a new president. But no one there is in any doubt that the people will actually be giving their opinions on 10 years of rule by their controversial leader, Hugo Chavez. At the moment, the national assembly is made up almost entirely of parties loyal to the president. This is partly because the opposition boycotted the last poll five years ago. This time around, the opposition's taking part and concentrating its efforts on one big issue rising crime. As the campaign reached its climax, Will Grant sought a little peace and quiet in the coastal village of Puerto Maya.
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At times, you just have to escape from Caracas. Venezuela's capital city is a loud, busy, chaotic place, not to mention traffic clogged, dirty and violent. Despite all that, I actually quite like it. But there are times when a breather is needed. This is one of them. Venezuela is in the grip of election fever, and with millions of potential votes available in the capital, the campaigns of both the Socialists and the opposition are at full tilt. Around every corner is another rally, another leaflet being thrust into your hand, another soapbox. The pace of elections in Venezuela is relentless, with more than a dozen since President Chavez came to power 11 years ago. During my time here, this is my fourth. So while it's always a risk heading out of the city to remote parts of the country when the political temperature is rising, I recently made an impromptu exit for Puerto Maya. Puerto Mayer is a tiny fishing village some five hours drive from Caracas, whose population is smaller than your average Chavez rally. A lot smaller, in fact, fewer than 700 people. To reach it, you must first drive up out of Caracas through one of its sprawling shanty towns, passing through the rubbish strewn streets, and during election time several police checkpoints. But once you've emerged from the steep hillsides, you reach a strikingly picturesque village called Colonia to founded in the 1840s, Colonia Tovar has more in common with Bavaria than the Caribbean. It was built by a group of immigrants from Baden and to this day retains the look and feel and the Gothic architecture of a traditional German dorf, or village. The residents of Tovar brew their own beer and next month will hold an annual Oktoberfest beer festival, in keeping with their cousins in northern Europe. Its extraordinary microclimate gives Tovar the crisp, cold air of the German mountains too, something which leaves us shivering a little in our shorts and sandals as we hop out of the car for directions and petrol. Back on the rustic route towards Puerto Maya, the rainy season has left its mark on the roads, and every now and then we have to negotiate a new boulder or small landslide blocking our path. We arrive in the tiny village after midnight and find a group of fishermen laying out their catch on the shore. The tranquillity of the moonlit beach is light years away from the madness of Caracas, and suddenly, with no mobile phone coverage nor working BlackBerry, the parliamentary election seems very distant. The next morning, greeted by a blazing Caribbean sun, we gather supplies from the local shop and head for some proper disconnection on a beach nearby. The young men of Puerto Maya rely more on fish than tourists for their income, which but will still take the occasional group of sun worshippers or amateur divers out on their boats for a handful of notes. The simplicity of life in Puerto Maya is in constant contrast with the chaos of the capital. But the fishermen are voters too, and campaign posters from all sides of the political spectrum are placed in strategic positions around the village. Talking to people, it's clear that they share some of the same concerns as residents of Caracas. Jesus is a middle aged man who sells petrol at inflated prices because of its limited availability in Puerto Maya. Bare chested and pot bellied, he is a friendly character who is quick to share stories about life this far from the constant hum of the city. When Chavis first came to power, this place was 100% Chavista, Jesus says, before quickly adding, well, 99.7%, because I was always an escualidor, using the local term for an opposition supporter. Now, he says, the tide has turned against the president in the village. I'd say 60% or more will vote for the opposition here, he says. Why the swing? I ask. It's not for the village, says Jesus. Things here are fine. It's because of the state of the country. While buying supplies, we had seen a sign outside the shop calling a village meeting over violence from outside. Jesus explains that there was recently an incident in the sleepy community between an outsider and a local involving a gun. At the meeting, the villagers had decided that in future no outsiders would be allowed in except short term visitors like us. Crime has been the dominant theme in this election campaign, and it seems even Puerto Maya isn't immune from the controversial issue. As we return to Caracas, a little more rested and tanned, and more interviews with candidates and noisy political rallies lie ahead of Sunday's vote. In Puerto Maya, the campaign might not be so loud as in the capital, but in the closest race for years, the votes are just as valuable.
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Will Grant back now in Caracas for tomorrow's election? 50 years ago it was on the 1st of October 1960, Nigeria gained independence from Britain. It was a largely peaceful handover and it followed an experiment in colonialism. Because of the country's huge size and the small number of British colonial civil servants on hand, Britain had tried to rule the north of Nigeria through its emirs or traditional chiefs. Ahead of next week's historic anniversary, Anna Hawes Broport has been travelling with a former district officer from Britain to the part of the country where he was working 50 years ago.
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It's late at night outside Kano Airport. John Smith and Suleiman Baffer embrace. John is an 82 year old Englishman, smartly dressed in a cream linen suit and trilby. He first arrived in Kano in 1951 as a cadet district officer. That time the journey took over a fortnight by sea and train. He hasn't been back for nearly 20 years. Suleiman Bafa is a tall, elegant Nigerian wearing spectacles, a long blue robe and a white cap. In 1960, John was running a course in nearby Zaria, training northern Nigerians to take over as civil servants. After the handover, Suleiman was on John's last course after a career in the civil service. He then went on to become a banker, ending up as head of the Nigerian Mint. The two men have remained friends for half a century, meeting often in Nigeria and England. Suleiman calls John his mentor. For the next few days, we drive to the places where John and Suleiman worked around the time of independence. They talk about the enormous optimism of that time and the squandered promise 50 years marred by civil war, military rule and endemic corruption. Perhaps we were over optimistic, says John. Perhaps it was a conspiracy of optimism that the transition would be easy for Nigeria, with its Vast potential. John's first task in Carnot, aged 23, was to tour the thousand square miles under his control. John travelled by horse. His British bosses said he wouldn't learn the local language, Hauser, or get to know the country from behind the wheel of a car. John was only the second white man Suleiman had ever met. He was born in a remote village, the fifth of six sons and his father, a local chief, brought his children to school to set an example to the rest of the village. Just outside Suleiman's hometown of Hodeja, we visit the government residential area where the British administrators lived during colonialism. There would be a GRA outside every town. Here the red brick houses now lie mostly in ruins, with millet growing up through the floors and guinea fowl pecking idly at the sun baked walls. The only lasting legacy of the British that John can point to is the orchard he planted and which the Emir maintains to this day of mango, citrus and eucalyptus. Later, we attend Friday prayers at the Central Mosque presided over by the current Emir of Kano, who's been on the throne since 1963. Ironically, under the British, the Emirs had more real power than they do now in the Republic of Nigeria. But as a figurehead, the Emir's presence still causes a stir. That day, after a long wait in the square outside and amidst lots of excited shouting and shoving, a docile looking and bejewelled white stallion is finally led out. A vast white parasol is held up to shield the Emir from public gaze as he mounts. Dignity preserved, the parasol is lifted. Underneath sits an elderly man wearing a white turban and a long white robe. Half an hour before, the square had been completely deserted. Now we look out onto a sea of thousands of men bent over their prayer mats. On our last night in Kano, Suleiman holds a big family dinner in our honour at a smart Chinese restaurant next to the racecourse. Suleiman's daughters and daughters in law are careful to keep their heads covered as they kneel to greet him. I sit with the women at one end of the large oval table. The men are at the other. When we start to talk, scarves slip a little and brightly coloured mobile phones are placed on the table. Two of Suleiman's daughters run a soft drinks factory, another is a wedding planner. Women are barely visible on the streets of Kano and have to use a separate public transport from men. But these middle class, well educated women said that in the workplace they are still relatively free. As we eat, the light bulbs flicker, and every now and then the power fails, leaving us in complete darkness. Whenever this happens, the women touch their phones and we are enclosed in a circle of dim glows. Before they part again, John and Suleiman discuss Nigeria's future. Suleiman says something intangible has been lost. He calls it the spirit of patriotism, of working for the common good, values he says John had inculcated in him all those years ago. Looking back to 1960, John thinks the British still left at the right time. To stay longer would have embittered relations, he says, and how much better it was to leave Nigeria as friends rather than as enemies.
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Anna Horsbrough Porter and on Monday evening, here on Radio 4, you can hear the programme she made in Nigeria. It's called the Empire's Last Officers. The news from Yemen this week has been of government troops battling for control of a village in the south where more than 100 Islamic militants were said to be holed up. Yemen is one of the world's poorest countries and the authorities in the capital, Sana', A face a number of security threats, including a rebellion in the north and no go areas in the south, some controlled by tribes loyal to Al Qaeda. Paul Harper recently returned from a visit to Yemen during which, happily, he encountered no violence. Instead, he found a people hungry for economic development and at times, distinctly laid back.
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Yemen is not as I'd expected, dry and sandy. As my minibus climbs the twisting Mountain Road towards Ib, about 100 miles south of the capital, Sana', a, the landscape becomes ever greener and lusher, orchards and crops filling every available space as far as the eye can see. The source of all this greenery is not long in making itself felt in Ib itself, a bustling, mostly modern city that sprawls up the surrounding mountainsides. The heavens open reliably every day in mid afternoon, sometimes turning the wide, potholed roads into slippery torrents and sending the population scurrying for cover, hoisting their skirts out of the flood. I'd heard about Yemen's dire water shortage, but here the problem's quite the reverse. One particularly ferocious downpour in the Iberia has taken several lives, including an entire family swept away in their car. The casualties are said to include some who took advantage of the sudden waterfalls cascading from the heights to take al fresco showers, not reckoning on the rocks that were also washed down on their heads. Elsewhere in Yemen, the water shortage is made worse by the national obsession with cat, the small but thirsty bush whose leaves, when chewed induce a euphoria that reconciles people to lives often blighted by unemployment and poverty. Others simply enjoy it. In much of the country, cultivation of cat is draining the water table. But of course, there's no such problem in Ib, where the surrounding countryside produces varieties of the plant much prized by connoisseurs. At midday, the whole town seems to cluster around the cat street dealers who disappear in throngs of men jostling to get the freshest, best, best value leaves before they run out about an hour later. There's nothing furtive about this mass drug taking. Now everyone's dipping hands into thin red polythene bags stuffed with leaves and biting off their stems. Tennis ball sized bulges distend their faces as they gather the pulp between teeth and cheek. The word for cat chewing in Yemeni Arabic means storing up. There's no such thing as a typical cat user, as it encompasses all classes and personalities. Bilal is perhaps unusual for his somewhat chubby physique, as Yemeni men tend to be thin and wiry, perhaps because cat's widely credited with suppressing appetite. But Bala looks the traditional part with his brightly patterned kilt topped by an ornamental curved dagger. And he insists that far from sapping vitality, it's cat that enables him to concentrate on the task in hand and stay up late into the the night chatting with his friends. Be that as it may, a definite calm descends after the lunchtime cat frenzy. Glassy eyed men stretch out on the edge of the street in sheltered spots, raised up on shop fronts or on the floors of half built houses. If you venture up IB's steep roads towards the mountaintops, you find many in their parked cars in the same state, gazing out over the city far below. The rainy highlands of Ib are not just a paradise for cat lovers. The area draws in tourists from across the Arabian peninsula, fascinated by a climate so different from their own. Visitors from neighbouring Saudi Arabia are the most numerous. Maybe they feel comfortable in a city where nearly all the women veil their faces, only the eyes showing. The people of Ib are keen to develop this tourism potential, but they know they have a long way to go. Half an hour's drive outside the city are the thousand year old walls of the palace of Queen awa, a proto feminist Muslim monarch whose homely museum contains small light swords made specially for women. Among Queen Awa's many impressive legacies is what may well be one of the world's oldest surviving mosques. But this beautiful and fascinating site is sadly neglected. The roads treacherous and the hotels a fortitude test. In one of ib's most popular restaurants, diners eat seated on the floor not far from where a flock of goats and sheep nervously await their turn to enter the kitchen. Nor are all foreign visitors welcome. Legislation's been passed outlawing what's known as marriage tourism, whereby Yemen's wealthier neighbours are requiring young brides only to abandon them at the end of their holidays. For much of the outside world, Yemen is synonymous with political instability and Islamic militancy. But for the townsfolk of IB at least, the overriding concern is economic development. And the biggest obstacle to that, they say, is corruption. Even so, it's hard to reconcile the sort of social transformation some in IB dream of with the reality of a city in which most of the population is blissed out by lunchtime.
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Paul Harper now, you couldn't find somewhere more different to IB in Yemen than the American city of Las Vegas, the world capital of glitz and excess. But Vegas has suffered in the recession. And a sign that economic recovery may still be some way off came earlier this week when it was announced that the museum dedicated to the entertainer Liberace is to close. The news has set Kevin Connolly wondering about the attraction of conspicuous consumption and about the transience of fame.
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You could make a good case for arguing that modern America was born in 1954. The hydrogen bomb was tested on Bikini Atoll, giving us both the weapon and the swimsuit. And the Supreme Court heard the case, which resulted in the end of racial segregation in American schools. France gave up its grim struggle to hang onto the colony of Vietnam. And the scientists who unlocked the mysteries of DNA realised it had a double helix structure, whatever that is. Just as significantly, in a way, a flashily dressed concert pianist called Walter Valentino. Liberace earned $2 million. And this was back in Eisenhower's America, where you could still hire a decent piano player for that kind of money. He wasn't just about the tunes, of course. Liberace once described his act as classical music with the boring bits left out. And his act included a version of Chopsticks. But a certain type of modern celebrity invented itself around him. Like Elvis, Garbo and Chaplin, Liberace was recognized all over the world by a single name. Americans enjoyed stories about how he drove his pet dogs around in a limousine and how when he saw a piano he wanted in a museum, he bought the whole museum to make sure he got it. He knew the darker side of celebrity, too. He spent most of his life denying or trying to ignore rumours that he was gay. And once successfully sued The Daily Mirror for a sneering and charmless article which more or less said so explicitly. When he was asked how he felt about first being libelled and then winning in court, he famously declared that he'd cried all the way to the bank. His fans, who cared nothing about the rights and wrongs of the court case, loved him all the more. The truth is that Americans, and plenty of people in the wider world too, were in the mood for the kind of flamboyant fabulousness that was Liberace's stock in trade. The dark uncertainties of the Cold War were beginning to erode the sense of prosperity and stability that America had rebuilt since 1945. If we were going to be bombed back into a nuclear winter anyway, weren't the reasoning, we might as well listen to someone playing Roll out the barrel at 500 miles an hour while we waited. Liberace illuminated a dark age. He liked to drive himself onto stage in a Rolls Royce, which he customised with candelabras and bodywork made of mirror glass. His costumes were all sequins and ostrich feathers in shades of hot pink and crushed purple. And he celebrated the bicentenary of American independence in a pair of glittering hot pants in sparkling red, white and blue. It worked, too. When he was asked how he was doing, he once said simply, remember that bank? I cried all the way to. Well, I bought it. So when the local newspapers out here in Las Vegas reported that the Liberace Museum was closing down, I felt I had to go and see it before it was too late. There was a time when the museum attracted 450,000 visitors a year. Now it's down to about a tenth of that when I stopped by. Certainly, business in the section of the souvenir shop where they sell the diamante waistcoats was looking a little sluggish. In part, of course, the closure is natural enough. Fame doesn't last forever, and even the brightest flames of celebrity eventually flicker and die. But it seems to me there's something more profound at work here, too. Just as Liberace once felt like an adornment to the anxious but prosperous age which he lit up, so he feels like a jarring presence at a time when America's boundless sense of optimism has been badly dented by the grim persistence of recession. 70% of the homes in Nevada are worth less than the loans that were used to buy them, and 10% of them are empty. Add in unemployment in double digits and an American dream which seems less affordable with every passing year, and you can sort of see why people have stopped going to worship at the shrine of the man who collected Rolls Royces. It's a pity, in a way, Liberace was such an improbable figure that once the museum is closed, it will be hard to believe he ever existed at all. There is fighting talk among the fans that the museum could make a comeback one day if the mood of the nation changes again. In truth, it's hard to imagine, although it is an engaging thought. After all, there are already plenty of ways of measuring the American economy. But this would be as good as any if the country were ever to rediscover its taste for ostrich feathers and Rolls Royces decorated with diamonds, then you'd know for sure that the recession was over.
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And with Kevin Connolly among the fading memories of Liberace, we've reached the end of another edition. I'll be here next week with more from our own correspondence on both Thursday and Saturday, so please join us then. Goodbye.