← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
A Parisian merry-go-round
00:28:05
Kate Adie presents despatches from reporters across the globe. Lucy Ash travels to she...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, reflections on a tumultuous year in Greece. All the fun of the fair in Paris. We're in India, where the introduction of international supermarkets is causing great controversy and why Christmas needs to start so early. In St. Helena, President Obama's recent visit to Burma was aimed at extending a hand of friendship to a nation that he said had embarked on a remarkable journey of reform. Although he acknowledged that it still has much further to go. Burma's now open to foreign investment after being cut off from most of the world by two decades of sanctions. There's been much excitement about the rich pickings in what some call Asia's last frontier. But it's the Chinese who are well ahead of the game. The world's largest exporter has long helped keep Burma afloat through trade ties and arms sales. In return, China got easy access to the country's oil, gas and other natural resources. But China has started to lose some of its leverage and a number of its investment projects have sparked social unrest. Lucy Asch travelled to the northwest of the country where she found a Chinese venture has caused splits between neighbours and even inside families.
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Just after dawn, the dusty road is filled with people hurrying to work. Young men and women scramble aboard a bus carrying their lunch in tiffin boxes and plastic baskets. They're off to their jobs as cleaners, cooks and maintenance staff at a Chinese run copper mine. The company has built its Burmese workers a brand new village with identical, neatly spaced houses with corrugated metal roofs. They all have running water and electricity, a rarity in rural Burma. In the pink morning light, the village might look like an advert for the new Burma. This former British colony used to be the world's biggest rice exporter before five decades of military misrule turned it into Southeast Asia's poorest nation. The generals rechristened the country Myanmar and pocketed the profits from its rich resources. Now, though, are there signs that at least some of that money is getting to the people who really need it? Appearances can be deceptive. We find dozens of empty homes with paper seals on the doors. 48 families were supposed to move here from the nearby village of Wetme. They were told to leave their homes to make way for the billion dollar expansion of the which is a joint venture between the business arm of the Burmese military, and Wambao, a subsidiary of a large Chinese arms manufacturer. But the families are not budging. The main refuseniks are two cousins whose faces are now famous across Burma. A local poet calls them the Iron Ladies because of their uncompromising stand against the copper mine. The farmers daughters have led thousands of villagers, monks, environmental campaigners and other activ in protest against what they say is the unlawful seizure of their land. The younger one, Twe Tuiwin, has a round face, a husky voice and a manner as pungent as the garlic she sells in the market. We want the mine closed down immediately, she says no one should colonize our land. In their fields, which lie in the shadow of a towering waste dump, I meet her cousin Einet. She complains crops are much sparser since the mine expansion started. We don't want compensation. We just want to grow our beans and sesame and live here as we have done for generations. Yet some of Einet's cousins have gone to the new village, lured by higher wages. One is a security guard at the mine. We don't speak to them anymore. Her mother told me Anet's grandmother moved with them. Now she regrets it. In the old village, she shows me the empty space where her house used to stand and thumps her chest. She complains there's not enough shade from the sun in the new village and far too much noise. She preferred life in Wat Mei, which means sleepy pig in Burmese. At the mine, managing director Gang Yi is incredulous. I'm sure the majority of Burmese people want development. They want a better future for themselves and their children. Mr. Gung is aware that strip mining will damage the environment, but he speaks at great length about minimising what he calls the unfavourable aspects. He wants to show us the company hospital and its classrooms filled with Burmese students, the next generation of engineers and other specialists. Whambau is under unprecedented scrutiny. Things turned ugly recently when police cleared the protest camps which had brought the mine to a standstill. Nearly 100 villagers and monks were injured and many suffered horrific burns. Now the opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San SUU Kyi is chairing a parliamentary investigation into whether the mine expansion should be allowed to go ahead. The brutal crackdown was a stark reminder that the country's transition to democracy remains fraught with difficulties. Many suspect the government acted to avoid angering China, the country's powerful northern neighbour and biggest investor. President Thein Sein's popularity shot up last year after he suspended a hydroelectric dam. Another controversial Chinese megaproject. But perhaps he was warned not to make the same mistake twice. Whatever the case, latent sinophobia has exploded in recent weeks. At a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in Rangoon, one banner said, this is our country, Dracula. China, get out. A newspaper editor said many Burmese bitterly resent Beijing for its cosy relationship with the former military junta and are now determined China's unchallenged dominance should end. As we drive down into the quarry, we pass two huge dumper trucks, a Chinese made Terex and an American Caterpillar. My colleague Andy suggests the trucks are like a microcosm of what's happening in Burma now, with everyone rushing in to invest. Mr. Geng flashed a nervous smile. Yes, he agrees, but no crash. If we follow the right way and everyone is disciplined, safety is assured and cooperation can be realised.
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Lucy Ash Eurozone finance ministers have finally agreed that Greece can receive its latest tranche of bailout funds, funds the country has been waiting since June for the 49 billion euros needed to help the government pay its debts and to support the country's banks. It's one positive chapter in what has been a traumatic year in Greece. Mark Loewen arrived to begin his stint as BBC Athens correspondent in February. Here he reflects on what he's seen over the last 11 months.
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There's no menu, of course, just a sort of heated display cabinet where you select the culinary delights of the day. Veal in lemon sauce, stuffed aubergines, grilled sardines or whatever else Madame Khrysula has prepared when she arrives at half past four in the morning to start cooking. It is a perfect little Greek taverna next to my Athens apartment, Tomorpho. It's called the Beautiful One. Once Grisula finishes cooking, the service starts, her husband Vasilis in charge, their son the chief waiter. Seven days a week, noon to midnight, and so it has been for 30 years. Politicians, businessmen and actors have all sat at one of the dozen little tables every day that I pass. Vasilis and his son wave and stop to chat. Sometimes we share a drink, sometimes a joke in my pidgin Greek. Whatever is happening on the protest filled streets of the city to Amorpho will be open. Vasilis and his family calm, hard working and good humoured. It is a reassuring constant, as so many other small businesses are. And yet, while they toil away as normal for their country, this year has been anything but. 2012 will surely go down as one of the most turbulent years in Greece's modern history. Two elections, three governments, dozens of strikes and demonstrations and seemingly endless moments of crisis. I have lost track of the number of times I have read and reported myself of a country nearing the edge, facing bankruptcy and just steps away from crashing out of the euro hyperbole. It doesn't feel as though it was. Greece has aged terribly in the past 12 months. In February, shortly after I arrived, I stood on a rooftop overlooking the main square during the worst night of rioting in years. Acrid smoke billowed from 40 buildings set ablaze, including bookstores, banks and a cinema. A few weeks on, I paused at the spot where an hour earlier an elderly man had shot himself after his pension was cut. Almost every month, sometimes more often, I've watched the protests getting angrier. I feel I could almost write the script for them now. At what stage the first petrol bombs are thrown, when the police charge where the tear gas is fired? And then the extraordinary political upheaval. An election in May that produced no clear result, days of futile wrangling to form a government, an interim cabinet named and a second election called six weeks later. Barbed words came from Brussels and Berlin. Vital loan money was delayed. The sense of despair here grew. It seemed that for Greece, the game was nearly up. A very senior financial figure told me he had genuinely thought at that stage that a euro exit was imminent. While the June election did just produce a government, Greece awoke to a shocking new reality that arguably the most right wing party in Europe had now won enough votes to enter Parliament. Golden dawn boasted that it would remove non Greeks from kindergartens and hospitals. Its leader made Nazi salutes. Members are widely accused of beating immigrants, political opponents and homosexuals. A country that was occupied by the Nazis and endured a far right military dictatorship just 40 years ago had lurched into dangerous new ground. And all the while, Greeks have been strangled by austerity, salaries and pensions slashed as fast as homelessness, and fear have grown. Over one in four are without work, one in three below the poverty line. A nation known for its hospitality and warmth, for its magnificent cultural legacy, for its breathtaking scenery, has lost its way. Covering Greece's gruelling year has been almost as exhausting. I spent the early days rushing between protests, bailout talks and flat hunting. I would be live on air all day before catching the last hour in a bed shop to choose a mattress. It felt as though the foreign press corps were immersing ourselves in a crash course in economics as we pored over deficit figures and bond yields. There was no time to settle in. The appetite for the story was and remains immense. It is hard to watch what is happening here. But I hope it is not crude to say that journalistically it is utterly fascinating. On the main square in Athens, Christmas lights are draped over the trees and festive songs blare out from speakers. There is little cheer among Greeks, and yet perhaps a tiny glimmer of hope has been lit as reforms have been rushed through, Greece has finally got its bailout money, and the rhetoric from the EU has significantly softened the message that the country will stay in the euro, at least for now. But nobody is holding their breath. Next year will be tough, too, and the flicker of light could yet be extinguished. But maybe, just maybe, a little corner will be turned as Greece bids a tired farewell to 2012 with a glass raised in homes across the country and at tables in the Tomorfo Taverna.
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Mark Loewen in Athens well, you don't need me to tell you that there are only three more sleeps until the big day. If you're shopping for your Christmas meal this weekend, chances are you'll be doing at least some of it in one of the big supermarket chains. Things are more complicated for Andrew north, who's making his Christmas preparations in Delhi because there are no international supermarkets. But as he explains, that may be changing.
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The first thing Devindra, the manager of my regular grocery store, does when he opens up each morning is tend to two small statues of his guru on a shelf above the cash drawer. He lights two tiny clay dishes full of ghee, placing them in front of the statues, and then adjusts the flowers around them. Then he reaches for a bottle filled with holy water from the Ganges and flicks it over the floor and shelves. It's the one calm moment in his day. Already the pace around him is quickening. The first customers are arriving, his assistants greeting every one and then doing their shopping for them. You just stand back and say what you want. When I finish, the assistant presents my basket to Devendra to work out the bill, who's now like a conductor, keeping four rhythms in his head at once with pen and notebook. No electronic cash registers here. He's totting up my bill while simultaneously taking another order by phone. He turns to shout the cost of an imported Christmas cake to another assistant and then starts on another customer's basket even before he's finished mine. It looks like a recipe for chaos, but it's cramped family run shops like Devendra's that supply most people's groceries, and they're a cornerstone of Indian life. Devindra has been running his store for 30 years. I've watched our Customers grow up, he says proudly. But this Christmas, Devindra is worried because of a government decision to allow foreign supermarket chains like Tesco and America's Walmart to invest here. Like millions of other small shopkeepers, Devindra fears the same fate as his counterparts in Britain or anywhere else where big supermarkets have taken root. Yet with no sign of India's economic downturn ending and swirling corruption scandals, the government is desperate for something to put the shine back into its international image. Walmart and co may not be too popular elsewhere, but letting them set up shop here has become the centrepiece of the government's revival strategy. It seems a curious approach to some when tens of millions of Indian children still go hungry every day, and when most people won't be able to afford to shop in such stores. The government is gambling that foreign retailers will shake things up where Indian companies can't or won't, raising prices for farmers, but lowering them for consumers and helping boost the wider economy. And it has plenty of support, especially among India's middle class. Some of Devendra's customers admit they'd go to a Tesco or Wal Mart if they could, just to spend less time in the Delhi traffic. Says one. It's true. The odd supermarket would make our shopping less time consuming, too. Devendra doesn't have everything and he's often expensive, so we buy most of our vegetables from the man who pushes a cart laden with fresh greens round our neighbourhood every morning. Depending on what meat we want, we choose from several butchers. You get a personal service like this, but the quality is not always reliable. As much as a third of the food grown in India rots before it even gets to market because of a lack of cold storage facilities. The government says chains like Tesco will have to help fill this gap if they want to come here. And it argues that in a market as vast as India's, there'll still be plenty of room for smaller shops.
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Andrew north in Paris, 130 streets and boulevards have been decked out with lights and Christmas trees. There are outdoor markets and skating rinks, including within the great glass canopy of the Grand Palais. And for three weeks only, France's largest ever ice rink. In the Place de la Concorde, there's a Ferris wheel, and from today, each arrondissement has free carousels for old and young. And as Joanna Robertson has been finding out, the Parisian lover fairgrounds goes back a long way.
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Sunday afternoon in Le Champ de Mars, a long green park running down to the Eiffel Tower. Dazzling winter sun in a clear blue sky. Parisians stroll with their dogs. A lady feeds the sparrows a bit of baguette. And from a small, dusty corner comes the jangling of a brass bell. Attention. Au des pares. Look out, we're off. 20 carousel horses plunge forward, each with a child strapped to its wooden ears, pricked hooves raised in charging gallop. Painted eyes, brave and bold. Round and round they whirl, spurred on by the joy of the children and the force of one Frenchman's left arm, that of Monsieur Daniel, who's breathlessly turning the hand crank. This Carrousel will be 100 years old next month. HE LAUGHS Allez, les enfants, allez. Go, children, go. HE CRIES. The children clutch wooden batons in their right hands whilst gripping the red and yellow carousel poles with their left. They're playing le jeu de bag, the ring game, a children's version of the medieval tournament where galloping knights speared rings with lances. Popular since the 18th century, it's still played on several merry go rounds in Paris. Metal rings dangle tantalisingly from a suspended block as children spinning past on wooden steeds try to catch them on their batons. The carousel whirls, the rings chink, the onlookers cheer and the score mounts up. J' AI huite, I've eate. A boy cries. Mais moi, j' AI dis 10. Shouts a little girl. Le jeu de bag fascinated the German poet Reine Maria Hilkey, who, whilst living in Paris in the early 1900s, would sit for hours in the Jardin de Luxembourg watching the carousel turn, its horses, a stag and an elephant, Rilke's favourite, carrying children round and around, playing the ring game. He wrote his famous poem, das Carrousel in 1905. It begins beneath an awning and its shade revolving. There passes every little while, the stand of dappled horses hailing from the land, which lingers long before at last dissolving. At the age of 134, this carousel's the oldest in Paris, but its stand of dappled horses still turns almost daily and the children still play. Rilke's beloved elephant, once Snow White, is now grey. At the front left foot of the Eiffel Tower, on the bank of the River Seine, turns the city's newest carousel, a French blue, red and gold double decker confection in the belle epox style, with horses, wild animals, fairytale carriages and spinning teacups. Just 18 months old, it's designed to run on renewable energy. Beneath their rearing hooves, the horses have bicycle wheels passengers can pedal to boost power. Atop the colourful canopy lined with solar panels, a windmill whirrs, garnering every last drop of energy from the passing river breeze. Carousels have always been about the latest technology, says Jean Paul Favon, owner and curator of one of the world's most significant collections of fairground art. They ran on steam, then electricity, he explains. They brought the latest inventions, the most glamorous experiences to the masses. On a carousel. You could ride a bicycle back in 1848, drive a motor car as early as 1890 and fly an aeroplane in 1905. Monsieur Favon collects, restores and displays his extraordinary acquisitions through his museum, where all the exhibits are there to be touched, played and ridden on. Pull aside the rich red velvet theatre curtains that shroud its doors and enter an enchanted world of great beauty and fascination, of genuine Belle Epoque fairgrounds and Tournais travelling shows with carrousel salons where hundreds would gather to dance, drink wine and take a turn on a glittering carousel to be whirled far away from the humdrum. Every day, be it on a dashing steed, a farmyard pig or a biplane, the museum throws open its doors to all in the days between Christmas and epiphany, thronging the antique carousels with crowds of curious visitors. A favourite's always the Velocipede, a bicycle carousel from 1885, which tears round at breathtaking speed, the riders pedalling furiously. Monsieur Favon's enchanted merry Go round world lies within another the city of Paris itself lit with hundreds of thousands of holiday lights and with a big wheel glittering on the Place de la Concorde, Paris has just added 20 more carousels to its 35 permanent ones. A Christmas gift from the mayor to citizens and visitors. Free rides from chill winter dawn until long after dusk for adults as much as for children. 55 carousels set like whirling jewels throughout the city, each one filled with laughter and imagination.
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Joanna Robertson now what you know about the island of St. Helena, a tiny outcrop in the South Atlantic best known as the place Napoleon Bonaparte was imprisoned. But dramatic change is coming to one of the most remote communities in the world, as Horatio Clare discovered on a recent visit.
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Spare a thought this Christmas for The population of St Helena, who live on an extinct volcano in the middle of the South Atlantic. Their only link to the world is the last Royal mail ship, which takes two weeks to make the return journey to Cape Town. So the islanders, known as Saints, planned their festivities months ago. Christmas Post closed in mid November. When I was Amazed to hear Jingle Bells in surreal contrast to the sunshine and white tropic birds of Jamestown, the island's tiny capital. But you get used to amazement on St Helena at the bottom of Main Street, a thousand miles from the coast of Angola. Britain's Union Jack flies over the castle. The office of the British governor who wields ultimate authority here as governors have since 1834. Because half the island's working population are overseas, many children are raised by single parents or grandparents. For them, the excitement of Father Christmas can't compete with the return of Mum or Dad on the Royal mail ship. Ship days are special. Everyone pours down to the wharf to meet family and see whether their cargoes have arrived. Relatives and friends are transferred from ship to shore by small boat. St. Helena has no harbour, so you land the same way Napoleon did in 1815. Many Islanders cry tears of joy. You can't imagine how it feels when you've been away, said Lilla Oliver, a saint who works in Wolverhampton. Your family come down to meet you, there'll be a party and you see all the changes. For decades, it took a sharp eyed saint to see any novelty in Jamestown. When I visited, I assumed nothing had changed since someone wrote, we welcome you, Prince Andrew. 1984. On rocks above the town, a wild and higgledy piggledy crumple of volcanic ridges rearing ferociously from the sea. This natural fortress has all but repelled the modern world. There are no mobile phones, no cash points. The Victorian prison and British policemen deal with very little crime. With an average wage below 5,000 pounds and a per capita GDP of around 2 pounds a day, the island has been subsisting on heavy subsidies from the British government for saints coming home. This Christmas, however, the island has a dramatic surprise. There are workers from South Africa driving new trucks emblazoned with the logo of a South African construction firm. A new road is being built, occasioning the first appearance on St. Helena of a traffic light. My taxi driver had not encountered one before. Fortunately, he'd been briefed by government memo. Green light means go, he said to himself. And we went. Watched by all the road builders from the south eastern corner of the island. Explosions boomed. Because after decades of false starts, work has begun on an airport due to open in 2016. The prospect of this transformation is the talk of the island. Will there really be 30,000 visitors a year, as is projected? Can St Helena become self sustaining, as the government hopes? Will investors really build luxury hotels? Will hordes of Brits and South Africans come snapping up holiday homes and what will happen when, in exchange for the airport, the government takes away the funding for their beloved Royal Mail ship, which has served the Islanders for 20 years? Everyone's saying we've got to be ready, got to change our whole mindset, says Aaron Legge, the young owner driver of Aaron's 4x4 Adventure Tours. But it's hard for people to imagine. At the top of Jamestown, a little shop boasts that it sells everything from pins to anchor chains. Mae Young is in her 80s. She remembers the age of the Union Castle liners, which used to stop on their way from Cape Town to Britain. She saw the rise and fall of the flax industry, which ended in 1966. I asked her how she felt about the airport, and her reply might stand for dozens of similar opinions I heard on the island. I don't say we won't have a few visitors, she said, but not the amount that is quoted. I hope they do come for us to improve, but I do have mixed feelings. I fancy we still need a ship regardless, she said. On Christmas Day, May will sit down with four generations of her family to a traditional dinner of island pork. The Queen's speech will be listened to with great attention, though Saints are often sceptical about the government which manages and, they say sometimes mismanages their affairs, and the airport, should it arise in conversation, will get one unanimous vote in favor on that day of all days. If and when it does come, it will make it easier, hopefully much easier, for all those Saints working overseas who could not gather the time and the money this Christmas to go home.
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Horatio Clare and whether you're making it home or not, enjoy a peaceful Christmas. We're back next Saturday with more from our own correspondence.