← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
. A Return to the Countryside
00:28:04
Chris Stewart is in Spain where some young people, unable to find employment in the in...
Loading summary
Transcript15 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening to a download from the BBC.
- [00:02]
B
This is from our own correspondent.
- [00:04]
A
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
- [00:13]
B
BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:16]
C
Today, young men return to the Spanish countryside as austerity bites in the big cities. Drought's the threat in the American state of Nebraska. There, farmers say they're losing the battle against the elements. We walk through the poppy fields of Gallipoli, 97 years after a battle in which 130,000 lives were lost and the locals are on holiday. The streets are quiet. The air is pure August in Paris. It's like a month of Sundays. There are clouds gathering over the Spanish government. This weekend, it's reported to be close to seeking a multi billion euro bailout from the EU and the European Central Bank. That will mean further deep austerity measures, which in turn could lead to protests on the streets, even a general strike. Trades union representatives met King Juan Carlos earlier this week. They told him they were opposed to the new rescue package because it would increase the hardship for Spaniards already suffering from two years of harsh austerity measures. Chris Stewart, who lives and farms in the south of the country, says the economic crisis is having some unexpected consequences in rural communities.
- [01:24]
A
No hay mal que por bien no venga is what the Spanish say when they want to point out that every cloud has a silver lining. Twenty years ago, Paco Sanchez and I used to talk about a utopia in which all the abandoned land in the Alpu Harra would be beautifully farmed. We dreamed that young people, tired of the blandishments of urban life, would return to the land burning with agricultural idealism and would recreate the Garden of Eden that we believed existed here 500 years ago. When, when the Moors ran the show, it didn't happen, of course. The last thing that the young of booming urban Spain wanted was to return to the brutishness of a country existence. And so the land that surrounded the villagers fell deeper into abandonment as decrepitude got the better of the old men and they downed tools. No young people, or very few, came to take their place in the gardens and terraces. People lost the habit of growing their own food, of cultivating the land. The villages that had once been gorgeously set among lovingly tended terraces of fruit trees and olives are surrounded now by abandoned land where the wilderness creeps in and goats destroy the painstakingly built stone walls. I was in Ireland recently. Another of the so called basket case economies. Ireland, like Spain, went from boom to bust. They're good and busted now, and just about everybody I spoke to expressed profound relief that the boom times had gone. To be sure, there's no money about, but at least we're regaining those old qualities we were famous for but lost beneath the weight of the wealth. Qualities like cooperation, generosity of spirit, sociability and poetry. The spirit of Ireland was impoverished by the boom years. Now things are returning to an even keel. I made the trek to the village of Torviscon last week for, of all things, a Chinese takeaway. Now a Chinese takeaway has been an unattainable dream since we moved to the remote Alpuhara 20 years ago. But at last a young Englishman, half Chinese, has set up a small clandestine business in his unfinished house, and with the modest proceeds he is building, bit by tiny bit, the house. As I waited for my dim sum, I slipped across the alley to see Paco, who was sitting on the roof of his house with his family, enjoying the cool evening breeze. Whenever one opens a conversation these days in Spain, the sheer ghastliness of the effects of the economic crisis and the venal bungling of the people in power has replaced even the weather as an opening gambit. It's hot. Hot as hell. But the climate crisis plays second fiddle now to the money crisis, which is heaping so much misery onto the lives of millions of ordinary Spaniards. It's hot, said Paco, pouring a beer. Hotter' n hell. So how are things in the village? I asked. Things were not so bad as one might expect, he said. Rural communities are used to hard times. Mechanisation has already put most people out of work. Miserable prices have impoverished a small producer, while soaring costs make life impossible. And then when things are going really badly, along come the droughts or storms and floods. The countryman tends to be more stoical and resilient than urban man. The population of Torviscon has dwindled over the last 20 years, from 2000 to 600. It's a dead and alive sort of a place, with just a little mountain agriculture to keep it going. The young people had all headed for the big cities in search of work. But now, continued Paco, it looks like people are coming back from the cities and they are bringing back into cultivation land that has been abandoned for years. When we got a team together recently to clean an irrigation channel, there were no fewer than 20 of us at it, and that's a lot more than I've seen for years. We sipped our beers and gazed across the rooftops of the village. Spread below us on most of the roofs sat a family embracing the cool breeze. A full moon rose over the hill. Swallows raced to and fro, shrieking. The church bell clanked. 10 o'. Clock. We sighed a little at the thought of our crazy old utopian dream beginning to come true. My chino will be ready, I said. It was a hot, hot night, and as I raced for an hour and a half round the hairpin mountain roads to get the takeaway home, the hot wind came pouring through the windows so that when I got home the dim sum was hotter than it had actually been when we left Torvisconne.
- [06:02]
C
And that's Chris Stewart in the south of Spain, the worst drought in 50 years and record high temperatures have caused more damage to the American corn crop than expected. The US is by far the world's largest producer of corn, and according to figures from its Department of Agriculture yesterday, 1/6 of this year's crop has been destroyed in the past month because of the hot, dry weather. Experts are predicting a sizeable rise in food prices as a result. Paul Adams has been to talk to farmers and ranchers in the state of Nebraska.
- [06:36]
B
In the sandhills north of Ogallala, it simply won't rain. But my, how the clouds threaten On a narrow, rolling county road as we drove past desiccated hills and the improbably named Swan Lake, towering cumulonimbus gathered and grew towards the end of yet another afternoon of oven like heat. Heavy black walls came closing in as the horizon disappeared. Thin gray veils of moisture drifted downwards, holding the promise of a downpour before long flashes of lightning lit up the darkening sky in almost every direction. But the rain came not. In the words of John Steinbeck in the mesmerizing opening to his Great Depression era novel the Grapes of Wrath, the rain heads dropped a little spattering and and hurried on to some other country. And so it goes on, right across America's agricultural heartland, day after day, month after month. Soaring temperatures and hot winds bleaching and pulverising the corn so that stalks and leaves crackle and fall apart in your hands. Endless dry days that leave pasture thin and withered less and less nutritious for the cattle that graze here. And rainheads always hurrying on to some other country. Oh yes, said farmer Andy De Vries, looking out at the pregnant clouds from under his sweat stained hat. It's like that every day. Andy knows better than to pay attention to these promising portents. If anything, the storms are more likely to set fire to his tinder dry fields than to nourish them. Sometimes they flatten them with hail storms so violent they can destroy a crop in minutes. Andy has 700 acres of irrigated fields where a forest of healthy stalks stands taller than a man and where, if the heat hasn't intervened, pollination has already taken place. But the rest of his corn, which grows beyond the reach of his well, is gone. In the 1930s, when the summers were actually less relentless than this one, the fragile topsoil simply blew away. One storm in 1935 carried off an estimated 300 million tons of dirt, dumping much of it in the Atlantic. At the end of his first chapter, Steinbeck described the aftermath. The women came out of the houses, he wrote, to stand beside their men, to feel whether this time the men would break. 80 years on, and we're not there yet. Changes in agricultural practices mean the topsoil isn't going anywhere, and the vast Ogallala aquifer, hardly touched in the 30s, now sustains irrigation from South Dakota all the way to the Texas Panhandle. Recent years have been good ones. This is one of very few parts of the country relatively unscathed by the recession. Agriculture, a tiny fraction of America's overall economy, has been doing remarkably well. But at its heart, farming remains a battle for mastery over the elements. And right now, the farmers and ranchers of western Nebraska feel they're losing. Andy DeVries may already have written off a good part of this year's crop, but he knows that if it doesn't start raining soon, next year's will be in danger, too. As for the ranchers, they're having to make agonising decisions, working out how many of their cattle they can feed with what they have and selling the rest for slaughter or to buyers from less parched states, sometimes undoing years of hard work in the process. At the livestock auction in Ogallala, I met Rick Grove from Sioux county in the far northwest Corner of Nebraska. 40 years of experience under an immaculate cowboy hat and a sense of humor as dry as his ranch, where it's barely rained in over a year. Rick had just finished selling off his entire herd. He wasn't about to make the same mistake as the ranchers of Texas, who moved their cattle north last year to avoid the drought, only to find this year that the drought overtook them. Never, he said, recalling advice he received as a young man. Never try to outrun a drought. But Rick didn't seem unduly defeated. He was going to bide his time, pick the right moment, perhaps in a month or two, to buy new cattle, take them to pasture in southwestern Nebraska and Colorado, where he knows he has food enough for the winter. But right now, he said, life is just about getting from A to B. And that across great shimmering swathes of the heartland, this summer is harder and harder to do.
- [11:02]
C
And that's Paul Adams. The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is visiting Turkey for talks on the crisis in neighbouring Syria. She is meeting the Turkish President and Prime Minister for discussions which are expected to focus on ways to support the fractured Syrian opposition and prepare for the possibility of a post Assad Syria. In Syria itself, heavy fighting for control of the country's second city, Aleppo, has been continuing. But it's not just Syrians who've been caught up in the violence there. And in the capital, Damascus, thousands of Filipinas, the vast majority of them illegal migrants, are working there as maids and nannies to provide for their families back home. The Philippine government is trying to bring them safely home, but as Kate McGowan's been finding out in Manila, the authorities have little information about who or where they are.
- [11:54]
D
Living in the Philippines, I've become very used to the idea that a substantial part of the population is missing. One out of every nine Filipinos works overseas and they're quite simply the lifeblood of the economy. They leave close knit, often rural communities to work in faraway cities as nurses and construction workers, teachers and doctors, cleaners and sailors. But because Filipinos can be found all over the world, world events can sometimes resonate right here in the Philippines. And that's what's happened with the crisis in Syria, where at least 7,000 Filipinos are caught up in the turmoil. Until a few days ago, Janice Devena was one of them. I went to meet her in a government run half way house in downtown Manila. She was clearly happy to be back, smiling broadly as she shepherded around the dozen or so other women who'd flown back with her, eager to tell me their stories. Janice's situation is typical. A single mother with two children from a small town on the island of Mindanao, she didn't have many career options. So when a neighbour asked if she wanted to become a domestic helper overseas, earning about four times as much as she would back home, she jumped at the chance. Often foreign workers have to pay cash up front for the plane ticket and recruitment agency fees. But if she went to Syria, the recruiter said she wouldn't have to find any money in advance, as she'd get it deducted from her salary instead. Janice didn't need much persuading. As soon as her parents had offered to look after her two young sons, off she went. Her employers, a rich Damascus family, were nice to her, and she said she ended up closer to their three children than their own mother was. Thinking about them. From here in the safety of Manila, her eyes welled up with tears. Every time she asked her employers what was happening, they'd say it was nothing serious. But there are only so many times that you can wake up at 2am with bombs exploding around you before you know that it is serious. She told her employers she didn't want to die in Syria. She had her own family to think about back in the Philippines, and she eventually persuaded them to get her an exit visa. Some of Janice's companions had far worse experiences. Amy had been working in a house that was bombed to the ground. She turned up at the Philippine embassy with only the clothes she was standing up in. Newly married Rhea was physically abused by her employers. Afraid to stay indoors, yet also afraid to go outside, she phoned the embassy in secret after locking herself in the bathroom. And then there was Miriam, a small, shy woman sitting at the back of the group. After a lot of coaxing from Janice, she said she tried to leave Syria many times, but it took four months for the authorities to let her go. It turned out they first wanted her help to arrest her employer. He was one of President Bashar al Assad's bodyguards, but had defected and was on a wanted list. Miriam had had absolutely no idea about any of this. It's easy for the Syrian authorities not to let these women leave because they shouldn't have been there in the first place. According to the Philippine Foreign ministry, more than 90% of Filipinos working in Syria are there illegally. Janice and her companions arrived in Damascus on tourist visas without any official papers. So in order to leave, they had to pay a fine and obtain an exit permit on top of paying for a flight out. It's an expense that's beyond these women and something the Philippine government is helping with. But it's a painfully slow process, and that's if the women can even be found. They're working in houses all over the country, and there are few records of who's where. Foreign Minister Albert Del Rosario is a gentleman with an easy smile, but it's a smile that quickly turns into a look of concern when he talks about the Filipinos still in Syria. He sent a special team there to give out leaflets in the major cities, make radio announcements, and even go house to house if necessary, trying to find as many of these women as they can. As for Janice, now she's back in the Philippines, her main priority is to spend time with the children she hasn't seen for two years. Her youngest son has learnt to talk in her absence, and she says she can't wait to see his progress. But despite everything that she and her friends have gone through, not a single one of them is planning to stay in the Philippines for long. They all have plans to work abroad again, many of them as soon as possible. Not in Syria, though, Janice added quickly.
- [16:29]
C
Kate McGowan in Manila when they come to write the history of how revolution swept the Middle east and North Africa in the early part of the 21st century, no doubt personal diaries and emails will prove invaluable source material. Journalism, it's sometimes said, particularly by journalists, is the first draft of history. But these more personal thoughts, notes and other writings about times of conflict are vital in helping to place events into historical perspective. Peter Biles was armed with some newly found family memorabilia when he set off recently for the First World War battlefields at Gallipoli. He wanted to learn more about the place where his grandfather was killed 97 years ago in 1915. The conflict there saw Allied forces, including thousands of soldiers from Australia and New Zealand, involved in months of deadly trench warfare against Turkish troops.
- [17:23]
E
In early summer, the fields of Gallipoli are full of poppies. They enrich the national park, which is dotted with Turkish, Commonwealth and French memorials to those who died fighting nearly a century ago. I'd never taken particular interest in the Gallipoli campaign until I read my grandfather's 1915 diary. It's an A4 size writing book that he purchased from Boots the Chemists. The price Sixpence. Harry Byles was a writer in the Navy. He was an assistant to one Commodore Oliver Backhouse of the Royal Naval Division, a unit created by Winston Churchill and made up largely of reservists. They left England in February 1915 aboard the liner Grantully Castle as plans were laid to attack Germany's ally Turkey, force a way through the narrow straits of the Dardanelles and open a supply route into the Black Sea. By late April, the men of the Royal Naval Division were berthed off the Greek island of Skiros, but a celebrity in their midst lay critically ill aboard a French hospital ship. The war poet Rupert Brooke had succumbed to an infection and was dying. Harry's diary on April 23rd attended funeral of Lt. R.C. brooke of Hood Battalion, who died at 4:20pm septic pneumonia. He landed at 8:30pm, body buried in the olive grove at Skyros at 11pm A very impressive scene. Returned on board about midnight. Rupert Brooke had been buried by his friends with haste, because by dawn the next morning the Allies had set sail and were getting ready for the Gallipoli landings. As a member of Commodore Backhouse's staff, my grandfather was not in the first wave of men who went ashore. On April 26, Harry was still at sea, writing a letter home. There has been some very severe fighting here, he said. The Australians lost a large number of men in landing, but their bravery is great and they are making history. Optimistically, he went on, the whole situation is very satisfactory, I believe, and we shall eventually get to Constantinople. A day later, on April 27, he wrote in his diary, we did not land today owing to the Turks being so strongly entrenched. About 5:30pm, a ship passed with Australian wounded. They seemed very cheerful with their shouts of are we downhearted? No. On April 29, laden with bags, revolvers and ammunition, Harry landed at Cape Helles on the southern tip of the Gallipoli peninsula. He was carrying food for three days biscuits, a tin of meat, a small packet of tea, some sugar and a piece of cheese. It's just possible to picture the scene on what's known as W Beach. The remains of the piers that were built still protrude from the water. The rusting shell of a small boat lies in the sand, and in the distance, ships head for the Dardanelles oil tankers nowadays rather than battleships. Cliffs overlook the beach, and from here, Turkish forces had inflicted heavy casualties on the Lancashire Fusiliers. On the first day of the landings, the Royal Naval Division's 2nd Brigade based themselves a mile or so inland at a place they called backhouse post. In 1915, this was open ground. Today it's a pine forest, but an intricate dugout hewn from the rock is still there. Through the trees, you can see the blue of the Dardanelles glinting in the sunlight. My two sons were with me. We tried to imagine what it would have been like for Harry in May and June 1915. He was no longer a scribe and his diary had been left on board ship. He'd been made responsible for moving the brigade's supplies of ammunition. As we walked on into the woods, we stumbled across a network of trenches. Roots and foliage have caused some subsidence, but these old front line positions are remarkably well preserved. It was here, close to Backhouse Post, in appalling conditions at the height of summer, that Harry was killed by a Turkish sniper on July 13. The next day, Commodore Backhouse wrote this to Harry's widow in Portsmouth. He died almost instantaneously from a bullet in the chest, and I'm thankful to say he could not have suffered. The offensive by British forces ended in stalemate. Harry is buried nearby at Skew Bridge Cemetery, one of the many pristine Commonwealth sites on the peninsula. A large white granite memorial faces the main gate. The trees around have matured gracefully. You won't find a more peaceful place than this. Overall, 130,000 lives were lost at Gallipoli in nine months. Gazing at the neat rows of gravestones, we reflected on the futility of of such an ill conceived campaign. But we left feeling privileged to have had an intimate insight into all that happened 97 years ago.
- [22:19]
C
And that was Peter Biles. Finally, to Paris and the French capital in August seems unnaturally quiet. An estimated 50% of its 10 million residents are off on their holidays, and those who do remain seem to have smiles on their faces, even time to offer directions to confused tourists. But with so many people away and entire apartment buildings empty, the police know this as prime time for house break ins. But it's still an atmospheric month in the city, as Joanna Robertson has been finding out.
- [22:51]
F
In Paris in August, one can breathe with about a third of the usual number of cars. The air feels like the Swiss mountains. Half the population's gone. Those who are left develop a camaraderie seldom seen in this pushy city renowned for its rudeness. It's a kind of comfortable complicity. We were wise enough to stay. These remnant Parisians are relaxed. They smile, strike up conversations at bus stops. Suddenly there's time to take time. In the early mornings, everything's still the parks and gardens breathe aromatic, moist air through their railings onto the silent streets. One can skip along the middle of a boulevard normally roaring with four lanes of traffic by 7am with no trouble at all. Shuttered windows stay tight, shuttered on thousands of empty apartments. The half moon's still in the early blue sky. And on the corner of the Boulevard Montparnasse, Jan, the waiter, pristine in his black and white uniform, is setting up the terrace tables at Le Dome restaurant. His face is tanned, his eyes sparkle. C' est un moi des di manches. August in Paris. It's a month of Sundays, he says. At 8am exactly, Monsieur Grandon arrives. He's a regular Monday to Saturday, all year round. His orders an expresse, a small, bitter coffee, which he always takes with two lumps of sugar at the fourth table from the left facing the window. Monsieur Grandon wears a distinctive cologne, and in August it hangs in the air with a tang that's entirely absent in December. A retired shoe salesman of 40 years, he likes August in Paris. The only thing he dislikes is that exceptionally, La Dome closes for four Mondays this month and he must take his morning express at Le Chien qui Faume, the Smoking Dog Cafe. Not the same elegance at all. The summer exodus began in earnest around the 14th of July, Bastille Day, La fte National. When it poured with rain on the splendid midnight Farwick display. Parisians flowed out to the seaside, the mountains, houses in the country. The end of July marked the beginning of low tide. By then, the last of the small shopkeepers, restaurateurs and concierges had removed or repatriated themselves for the summer. Most of the concierges to their families in Portugal to enjoy a month free of emptying bins and scrubbing floors on the Rue de l'. Ambre. The Italians with a delicatessen had gone home to Tuscany, the French fishmongers for a month at the Breton seaside, the cobbler to his mother in Tunisia, the bakeries were the last to close, longer and longer queues forming at those that were still open. By the first of August, the Quartier was almost deserted, except for a small, open all hours grocery shop on the corner. There's a wiry little man who works there, his long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail. He speaks a barely comprehensible, seamless blend of French, Italian and German. I've often wondered why now was the time to ask. Sononato a Berlin Ost. I was born in East Berlin, he says in his linguistic mix. O fugato di Mao a don millenno vergento suessant fiat Ich habe neuensehen und I escaped over the Berlin Wall in 1964 when I was 19. He continues in this, his very own language. His experience has dealt him then. I lived many years by the sea in Italy, not so very far from Pisa. I fished. Now I'm here in Paris. Would you like some blueberries? At Rue d', Assas, Andre, who's almost 90, opens his shutters. Everyone else in the building is away. Until two years ago, when his wife Elizabeth died, aged 96, Andre would spend his August afternoons sitting with her in the park across the road, on a green painted wooden bench under the chestnut trees near the fountain. They'd sat there together in the cool shade through many a summer heat wave. Elizabeth always wore a hat, of which he had a great many elegant examples. I always knew which day it was. By Elizabeth's hat, andre says. Now she's gone, I miss not only her, but her hats as well. The market on the Boulevard Edgar Quinet, usually 500 metres long and thronged with shoppers, has dwindled to just a few straggling stalls. There are roses and lavender for sale, hot roast chickens, fruit and vegetables, pear cake and apple tarts. Marie Law is out shopping with her carer. I always stay in Paris in August, she declares. The air is clean, the streets are quiet. It's the very best time. Born in 1908 at 104 years old, Marie Laure knows best.
- [27:56]
C
Joanna Robertson savouring August in Paris and bringing this edition to a close. There'll be more from correspondence far and wide next Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.