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From Our Own Correspondent
A Million Smartphones
00:27:49
The Bulgarian establishment under threat from a million smartphones - Nick Thorpe on...
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Hello from the. From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest
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edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, a million smartphones mobilised as protesters in Bulgaria call on their government to resign. There are happy audiences but painful memories. At a circus in Cambodia, we find out why two canoes caused great excitement in the sleepy Cook Islands in the South Pacific and are told that baseball's not just a metaphor for life in the us, it's also a way of preparing Americans for failure. Police are this morning out in force in cities across Bulgaria, where demonstrators say they're stepping up their demands for the government to stand down. For the past month, thousands have turned out every day in the capital, Sofia, to protest. They maintain their politicians are corrupt, in league with dodgy business interests. But the Prime Minister insists he won't resign. New elections, he claims, would destabilise the country and ruin its economy. He says he is listening to the protesters trying to ease poverty and unemployment and boost economic recovery. But Nick Thorpe, who's in Sofia, tells us the demonstrators are determined to see change.
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You could say that we Bulgarians are experts at leapfrogging, says Durin. I study the laughter lines around his eyes to find out whether or not he's joking. This is admittedly a nation of sportswomen and men. The airport, no matter how many times I arrive here, is always awash with tracksuited athletes. We leapfrogged from slavery to capitalism, Darien explains. Then from cash to credit cards, missing out chequebooks. Then again, thanks to our late development, we went directly from copper lines to fiber optics. In communications, that means we have one of the deepest penetrations of smartphones in the world. He rapidly checks the latest Eurostat figures on his phone. 1.5 million by the end of this year, he announces, in a population of just 7.2 million. Handy devices. When hostile media blame you for delays to an ambulance journey which cost a patient his life. A video shot on a mobile phone proved that allegations in a pro government newspaper that the ambulance was delayed by protesters were false. Other statistics come thick and fast. 33% of the population have access to high speed broadband Internet. I recently did a TV broadcast from a petrol station in the mountains of southwest Bulgaria just by plugging my laptop cable into the grubby looking router behind the desk. The result was studio quality. Durin is in advertising. So is his friend Gerd Garner, while Michael is in telecommunications. We sit together in a Sofia cafe as the Evening protests kick off accompanied by a musical menagerie of whistles and drums and sirens. All are 40 something. All happily admit to organizing some of the host of daily protest actions, keeping the crowds entertained and the authorities guessing. They also attend clandestine meetings of protest activists. But we're not leaders, they insist. We're situational activists, and there have been many situations. One stunt they organised was the launching of 240 Chinese lanterns into the night sky to symbolise the 240 parliamentary deputies they want to resign. I personally emailed the director of air traffic control at Sofia airport and his deputies to warn them because we were launching the lanterns close to an air corridor, says Darin, when no one replied. I checked all the airlines with flights at that time and warned them directly. When several of the lanterns got lodged in trees, activists climbed among the branches with fire extinguishers to put out the flames. I'd met Gagana the evening before, pushing her four year old son alongside the marchers, just as she pushed her older son Sarva through the streets in what looks like the same push chair in the 1997 street protests against the government. Sarva, now 19 and preparing to study in Britain, takes me to see the early morning cyclists outside the Presidency building. A dozen or so people on bikes with Bulgarian flags are preparing for their morning tour of strategic buildings, blowing horns all the way. We often get a police motorbike escort, says one of them. I heard about the action on Facebook and join it. Every morning before I go to work, there's a mood in the streets, like in Prague during the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Then students toured the country, giving impromptu talks in village squares and factories, explaining to doubtful peasants and workers that communism was over. Now daughters and granddaughters patiently explain what's going on in the capital to their parents and grandparents in the countryside over Skype. In Prague, protesters vied to come up with funnier and more cutting slogans. In Sofia in 2013, they circulate photo montages of the politicians they love to tease. One with his face on a vodka bottle, another's head on the body of a ferret, another superimposed on a rat. One way the protesters try to keep the police sweet is to ply them with flowers and constant cups of coffee and cold drinks. The speed of communications, the international exposure, the knowledge that this particular generation is gathering is going to enable some form of direct democracy, says Darin. Call it an online discussion, another form of a system of checks and balances, whatever. But this is going to lead to an enormous change in the society. If not, this is going to be a wasted generation. The last image he and his friends offer is the old story, common to many cultures, that the higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his tail. Each new appointment by central and local government is scrutinised by protesters and details of corruption cases are circulated to show if a person is not deemed appropriate. The grey economy is dissolving in the cold light of a million smart telephones.
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That's Nick Thorpe in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. The Cambodian opposition leader Sam Ranci is due to return home tomorrow after 11 years in exile. But unless Parliament steps in to change the rules, Mr. Ranci won't be able to run as a candidate in the country's general election later this month. That's expected to result in another victory for the long serving strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen. Annie Caulfield says that although more than 30 years have passed since Cambodia was ruled by the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, memories of that era still dominate life today.
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Thank you for coming. If anyone would like a photograph with our performers, here they are. Flower petals showered from the roof of the big top as brightly painted young acrobats, clowns, jugglers and musicians came to take a final bow. A school party of 8 year olds scampered from their seats for photographs, along with an exuberant flock of tourist children and my laughing, applauding Cambodian friend Arun, who just turned 50. I was the same age. I'd loved the show too, but I wasn't racing the 8 year olds for a photograph. Arun was usually intimidatingly sophisticated and urbane, but she had pieces missing from her experience. When she was 8, there'd been no school, no excursions to circus shows. Childhood had ended abruptly with a war, a stumbled exodus from Phnom Penh, brutal years working in the fields for Pol Pot's regime and then a long struggle to rebuild a life. The happy audience left the circus tent, braving the hot rainy season downpour outside. I watched Arun, elegant with an umbrella, pick her way across a plank walkway to find transport. She didn't want to wait with me to interview the circus people. I don't want to break the images, she said. I don't think their real lives are so magical. She was right. The company was formed from a charity that rescued young people in difficulties. No happy childhoods here either. San, the 25 year old clown, all mischievous glee in the ring, told me his father had been a violent alcoholic. When Sam was 10, he saw his mother taking a suitcase to a taxi. She was abandoning him and his four brothers. San ran out, clung to her, screaming until she had to take him with her. Mother scraped a living selling rice porridge at the roadside. But there were days when depression kept her in bed and San had to take over. Mother met a new man, had another baby. Things looked up, but the man left. Mother completely broke down. San took the baby out on the street begging for milk and bread. Gradually, Mother's mental health improved and she could care for her baby. But San remained on the streets, developing a taste for alcohol and glue sniffing. He was rescued by charity workers who provided a home rehab and a professional training in circus arts. I've never seen my father again or managed to find my older brothers. But now I earn good money to help my mother and the new brother. And when I make people laugh, that feels great. Close to the big top, through dense green forests are the famous temples of Angkor. Among the stone carvings on the walls of ancient battles and ceremonies, there are some of entertainers, including circus acts. As San explained, what we're doing isn't new. It's something coming back that was lost. Arts and entertainment disappeared in Cambodia under the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime. That regime is the reason the country's so full of young people. There aren't many over 50 under the Khmer Rouge, most of a generation of parents went missing or ended up too damaged to cope with parenting. When sand told me the story of his family, he was still wearing his lurid clown makeup. He'd suddenly stopped talking, on the verge of turning into a song title as tears filled his clown painted eyes. That's enough. I don't like to talk about the past. There are still poor kids all over the streets. I want to teach them what I know, tell them things can change. My friend Arun, childhood lost to the Khmer Rouge, does talk about the past. I think about it every day, she says, because there's no justice and years keep going By Pol pot died in 1998 in 2006, a trial of Khmer Rouge leaders began. There's been one conviction. Two defendants died of old age and one was released suffering from Alzheimer's. That's it. There are now just two people on trial. Arun clenches manicured fists. Those two defendants left. They'll die like Pol Pot in comfortable beds. The circus show had a story devised by the performers. Comically scary villains hound a dysfunctional family in a magical dream sequence. The lights become like starlight and a girl twirls on a high rope to haunting music. Soothed by their dream, the family stop bickering. Help each other as frenetic juggling and trapezing, rallying together, the family find love, happiness, and the bad characters are thoroughly punished. Not wishful thinking or anything like that at all.
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And that was Annie Caulfield. Zambia has a reputation for political stability and a relatively efficient government. Economically, it's doing rather well. It's Africa's biggest copper producer and its farmers also contribute to an annual growth rate of some 6%. But nevertheless, this is a country where social conditions are tough. Poverty is widespread, life expectancy amongst the lowest in the world. Diarrhoea is a major problem. It kills more Zambian children than hiv, aids, malaria and measles combined, largely because of contaminated water supplies. Peter Day says that while medication is effective, getting it to remote villages still presents a huge challenge.
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It's not really a main street, just a wide, dusty track between a scatter of huts and little stores that make up the village of Cancele in southern Zambia. At one end, a cluster of lively market stalls. At the other, the men are playing pool. Hens and tiny chickens scratch the red earth. It's a long way off the main road from the Zambian capital Lusaka, to Livingston near the Victoria falls, bumping down 30 miles of increasingly rough tracks across the bush. Eventually reach. The village is pretty basic. No power supply, water fetched on foot from the river, no television, of course. I came to this remote place in Africa with a British campaigner called Simon Berry. Now in his 50s, I'd met him for the first time in May in rather different surroundings. It was a triumphant evening in London at the Design Museum Designs of the Year awards ceremony. His small, not for profit organization called Kola Life, had won one of the top awards. Simon Berry and his wife Jane had come up with a strikingly simple idea. A package for medicine that slotted into the empty space at the top of a crate of soft drink bottles fitting neatly in between the bottlenecks. A dazzling idea to piggyback the delivery of diarrhea medicine for babies onto one of the most efficient distribution systems in the world. Go anywhere and you'll find a shop selling Coca Cola. And the plastic packaging is ingenious. Once opened, it becomes a measuring device. Clever stuff. The berries are not doctors, but they are people of conscience troubled by the stubborn incidents of child diarrhea in Africa. Most cases could be easily treated with a combination of zinc and rehydration salts costing pennies or cents. But the medicine needs to get to the babies. The kola crate brainwave seemed to have done the trick. The berries Looked for partners and then they started to have doubts. The berries are not commercial minded people. They've been involved in development projects. But when they took their brilliant idea to the Coca Cola distributors, they were asked a perplexing and commercial question that at first they didn't really. What is the value chain of your product? Said the soft drink people. It was a harsh business question for anyone schooled in the economics of aid. But what the soft drink experts wanted to know was at what point in the distribution chain would the various people who took part in it be able to make a small profit out of their involvement. In other words, clever, award winning stuff with the packaging was only the start. To get the medicine delivered to every distant village, the berries would need to do what the soft drink people did. Make sure that anyone who handled each local bit of the distribution got a little bit of financial reward. Piggybacking on the crates was clever, but it wasn't enough. District clinics that serve rural Africa are not close enough to most villages to get the treatment into many mothers hands. It's often a day's journey there and back when women need to work in the fields so they take risks. With infant diarrhea, the Berrys realise that the profit motive could be the missing link. A small margin for the manufacturers, the distrib across Zambia to local bases and then a profit for the shopkeepers who would sell the product to mothers, not give it away. It is this value chain that gets soft drinks into the remotest villages and that's how the diarrhoea medicine is now being launched. It's called Kit Yamoyo, which means something like life in several African languages. There are radio ads, volunteers to teach mothers how to use it and thousands of vouchers have been distributed to give the scheme an initial push. And Simon Berry says he has learnt quite a lesson about effective health care action. Even poor people will pay for treatment that saves their babies. That's what they told me the other day. The ingenuity of the pack that fits around the necks of cola bottles is almost immaterial. The medicine now goes out using the soft drink distribution channels done up in conventional cardboard boxes. All of this makes the design awards festivities in London just a little bit irrelevant. But the Berries have now got a powerful insight into getting medicines into the poorest villages in Africa. They found out how to turn a chain of profit points into healthy babies. I saw it myself in Cancelli.
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Peter Day back now from Zambia. Two ocean going canoes have returned to New Zealand after an epic voyage to easter island. The 10,000 mile journey was seen as a major challenge for a new generation of Polynesian navigators using traditional craft. A revival in the region of ancient boat building and navigation skills continues to gather momentum and it has great cultural and indeed political significance for the indigenous people of the Pacific. John Pickford was in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands when the canoes made landfall there on their way home to New Zealand.
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They waded ashore from their canoes through the luminous turquoise water of the lagoon. The captains, festooned with garlands of flowers, led a procession of around 20 men and women. Cook Islanders, Tahitians, New Zealand Moris and three sailors from Rapa Nui, better known to most of us as Easter Island. Then the band played, waiting dignitaries made speeches and girls from the high school, still in their uniforms, danced. The two vessels that had brought such excitement to sleepy Rarotonga rolled at anchor in a gentle swell just off the beach. They looked like ships from a dream world. Blink once and they'd be gone. They were ocean going, double hulled canoes, big catamarans with two masts and capable of carrying a crew of 14 1. The 20 year old Teorerere has no nails or rivets. It's entirely lashed together and all the stronger for that, I was told. The speed, seaworthiness and size of traditional vessels like these astonished early European navigators. But over 3,000 years, the Polynesians had been using their great canoes combined with near miraculous navigation skills to explore and settle a vast stretch of the Pacific, from Hawaii in the north, to isolated Rapa Nui in the east and down to Aotearoa in the southwest. The land of the long white cloud. Renamed New Zealand after its discovery by Dutch navigator Abel Tasman in the 17th century. Renaming is the first act of possession. What followed for Polynesia has been summed up in the phrase fatal impact. Deadly introduced diseases, raids by slave traders, the arrival of missionaries, colonisation, the nuclear testing era and now globalization. A mixed blessing for remote islands with little to offer that can't be produced more efficiently elsewhere. In the face of all that, it's been a huge morale boost for the indigenous people of the Pacific to be once again building their oceangoing canoes and sailing them on long voyages using ancestral navigation skills. One man who arrived in Rarotonga with the canoes had a quiet charisma, an air of authority. He was a handsome, weather beaten 51 year old New Zealand Maori, Jacko Thatcher, the master navigator. He it was who brought the canoes safely to this Landfall. With no modern navigation aids, he was having to give up rugby after a knee injury that led him into voyaging. And this evolved into a deeper quest to find his roots. He told me of the 66 stars whose rising and setting positions a navigator must know. And an affinity with the ocean is crucial. You must learn, he said, to be attuned to changes in wind and wave direction, cloud formations and the passage of birds. So the canoe itself, in his words, becomes an instrument for you. These ancient wayfinding skills were nearly lost at the end of the last century. There was only one man left alive with a complete grasp of them. He was MAU Piolo from Satawal in the Caroline Islands. Mao was already middle aged when the Polynesian voyaging society asked him to teach a new generation of navigators. Mao invited apprentice voyagers to Suttawal where he would be their mentor. For men like Jacko Thatcher and Tewa Pitman from Rarotonga, this was a life changing experience. We realized, Tewa told me, that the ancestral knowledge would bring big responsibilities and a leadership role. By reliving the connectedness of the islands, he said, we'd be helping keep alive our identity as an oceanic people. One surviving example of that old connectedness came up during the recent voyage from Easter Island. At first, the Spanish speaking Rapanuans, French speaking Tahitians and the English speaking Cook Islanders and Maoris on the canoes and had difficulty understanding one another through weeks at sea. They solved this by using their distinct but closely related native languages to communicate. There's no denying that in today's Polynesia, most interisland travel has become more difficult even than it was on my first visit in 1978. And the remoter places are becoming more isolated and depopulated. The crippling cost of airfares and poor job prospects mean that many young people leave their islands never to return. The choice is stay at home or emigrate. And perhaps that helps explain why the master navigators and the double hulled canoes are held in such awe. They're a powerful reminder of a heroic age not so long ago when those mythic islands of the South Seas were more connected and the ocean really was a highway rather than a barrier.
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That was John Pickford in the Cook Islands. Professional baseball players in the United States have been taking some rare time off this week. This is among the most gruelling of professional sports with more than 150 games a year and a punishing touring schedule. The so called All Star break each July gives the players a chance to rest weary bodies halfway through a season that lasts from April to September. Our man, Simon Wilson has become something of a baseball fan. During his posting in Washington, he's been taking the opportunity of the All Star break to reflect how the sport has helped him understand what makes America tick.
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Even living here in Washington, D.C. it's a rare thing to see two U.S. presidents together at the same time. So imagine the excitement for my young daughters on a recent family night out to watch our adopted Washington Nationals baseball team. In between innings, we're treated to the sight of no fewer than five previous presidents. And they aren't making boring speeches or shaking hands. They're chasing each other around the edge of the field like wild kids on a playground break, pushing and tripping until one emerges victorious. Now, of course, these aren't the actual presidents themselves, just giant bobble headed mannequins depicting Messrs. Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson and Taft. It's all part of the slickly packaged razzmatazz you get at an American sporting event. At baseball, the crowds are constantly on the move, buying beer, hot dogs and popcorn. Except, of course, when they stand motionless together, caps over their hearts for a belting rendition of the Star Spangled Banner or God Bless America. On the surface, this is the America of my imagination, loud, proud and in your face. But there is another, less obvious side to baseball that says perhaps even more about the country. And the secret lies in statistics. Now, there are many statistics in baseball, but the single most astonishing one is that this is a professional sport where the very best players in the world only actually hit the ball successfully a third of the time. The other 2/3 they miss completely, are caught or thrown out, and then face the long, humiliating walk back to the team dugout. Imagine this in any other sporting context if two times out of three, David Beckham slipped on his backside as he ran up to take a free kick. Or if Andy Murray, serving a key point at Wimbledon, whiffed completely 66% of the time. It's unthinkable, but this I've come to realise over six years of intense study. And it has to be said, the occasional pitch, side beer and hot dog is the key point about baseball as a sport. It's really all about failure. Or more precisely, how the players psychologically handle failure, the fact they're going to miss the ball more often than they actually hit it. And as I've sat in the stands over the years, I've begun to realize why there is such a rich tradition of treating baseball as a metaphor for life in America. This is indeed the land of opportunity, where children grow up being told what a good great job they're doing, how they might all be president one day. Which is all fine, of course, except that for many, perhaps for most Americans, success never really comes. For much of the half decade I've lived here, this country's been struggling economically. All across the land, in previously well off towns where half the high street is now closed down, you meet people fighting to make ends meet. It's also been arguable in recent times that America itself is failing, losing prestige and influence around the world while new powers such as China are on the rise. But just as their baseball players do, Americans are adept at picking themselves up when the market fails. Economists have long admired the capacity of workers here to move huge distances to wherever the jobs are, something that's made the US economy so robust in the past. And it does seem to be happening again. In remote places like North Dakota, where new energy discoveries are creating modern day boom towns. In Silicon Valley, in California, young computer entrepreneurs are actively encouraged to take risks, even to embrace failure. The theory is that in the fast paced world of high tech, they'll come back stronger, perhaps with the seed for the next Facebook, Apple or Google. Failure will breed the next success. So back at the baseball game in what's been a disappointing season so far, Washington are once again losing. It's late in the game and 20 year old batting sensation Bryce Harper comes to the plate. One big hit from him and our team could be back in with a chance. He swings and he misses and starts that long walk of shame back to his teammates. But tomorrow, Harper, the rest of the baseball team and millions of their fellow countrymen will dust off the failure, pick themselves up and start being American all over again.
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Simon Wilson There, that's it. I'm here again with more from correspondence far and wide on Saturday morning. Do join us. Goodbye.