← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
An End to Education
00:27:53
Despatches from correspondents worldwide. In this edition: Mishal Husain's in Bekaa to...
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Thank you for downloading the latest edition of BBC Radio's from our own correspondent, the best in news and current affairs storytelling. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, the Syrian children forced to swap school for backbreaking work in the potato fields. Africa's pirates go west. There are now chilling stories from the seas of Nigeria, Togo and Benin. How's the wildlife faring as India's towns and cities gobble up more and more of their living room? And with California now in its third year of drought, we're in the suburbs of Los Angeles uncovering furtive nocturnal rituals. It's now thought 3.3 million people have left Syria as a result of the civil war there. And it's clear this tide of refugees is straining resources and threatening political stability throughout the Middle East. More than a million have crossed the border into Lebanon, a country which before the fighting in Syria itself only had a population of four and a half million. It says it's now at breaking point and it's begun turning away many of the Syrians still seeking sanctuary. Most of those already inside its borders are being put up in refugee camps. Many are children who are now receiving no education at all. Michal Hussein has sent us this dispatch from Lebanon's Beqar Valley.
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When we arrived at the Turbol camp early in the morning, there were lines of refugees heading in the opposite direction, out to work in in the surrounding potato fields. What stopped me in my tracks were the small figures amongst them, school age children heading off for a six hour shift, carrying their lunch in small plastic bags. Inside the camp we met the children too young to work and some older ones. There's nothing for them to do. Terbol is little more than a large field covered in the simplest of shelters, wooden framed huts with thin plastic sheeting providing the walls and the roof. One bright curious face caught my eye. 12 year old Soraya, the youngest of three daughters living in the camp with their mother Noora. They left the Syrian city of Homs three years ago. Since then, Soraya has managed to have only one year of education in a Lebanese school. She picked up some French and a few words of English and was keen to practice them on me. Her aptitude for learning shone out. But there is no longer any school for Soraya. They are too expensive and too difficult to get to from the isolated rural setting of the camp. When I went out into the potato fields later to speak to the refugees working there, I met Soraya's two older sisters, Ameerah, who's 18 and 16 year old Dalal. They work seven days a week for little more than 50 pence an hour. Some of the women harvest the potatoes, others others rub off the earth and then they're piled into sacks, some of which will be exported to Saudi Arabia. It is back breaking work which began for both Amira and Dalal as soon as they arrived from Syria, a journey into safety that also marked the abrupt end of their education. It is simply unaffordable for them to attend Lebanese schools. Standing tall in the field, Ameerah put a brave face on their situation, but said, there is nothing for us here. Dalal stood next to her, listening, and when I asked her about school, she crumpled. The tears immediately came to her eyes and she walked away from us, out into the field. What she misses most about Syria, she told us later, is school. The story of these three sisters from Homs is not unusual. The UN estimates that 64% of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon are are out of school. The picture is the same for refugees in Iraq and not much better for those in Turkey, Jordan and Egypt. It is a stark contrast to what these people had in Syria. Before the war. It was a police state, but its citizens had universal access to basic education. Today, hundreds of thousands of schools inside Syria lie damaged or destroyed or have been turned into shelters. There is precious little learning of any kind for a child of Syria. When this war comes to an end, as one day it must, a devastated landscape and society will have to be rebuilt. Perhaps it will be only then that we understand the impact of all these children being out of school. Syria will need them, but they could offer so much more if their potential wasn't being wasted as they sit in refugee camps in places like Lebanon. When we broadcast from the Terbul camp, we were surrounded by an audience of excited young children keen to ask what we were doing and why. We'd recorded an interview with Soraya, and as our report went out on the airwaves, she put on the headphones and listened, proud that her French was being heard by people in a faraway country. I had had an inkling of what I would find in the camp before I left London, and so had brought with me exercise books, coloring pencils, a few stationary sets. Not enough to go around, but something. One of our drivers discouraged me, saying, they won't use them, they'll throw them away. I didn't believe him. These children knew what they were missing. Their hunger to learn about a world beyond the camp and the fields of the Bekar was clear. I asked Soraya what she would like to be. If she managed to finish her education, she answered immediately, Sahafa I want to be a journalist. I can only hope that somehow her dream becomes a reality and that one day she'll be able to tell the story of the Syrian people herself.
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Nisha Hussein in Lebanon now think piracy, and the place which immediately springs to mind is Somalia. But in the past year, West African pirates have now overtaken the Somalis, both in the number of their attacks and the brutality of them. They have various objectives. Some board a vessel to steal money, computers, radios and mobile phones. They might be, after the cargo. Oil tankers have been hijacked, taken to a quiet bay where the oil is siphoned off. Or they may seize crew or passengers in order to obtain ransoms. Marine insurers say the waters off Nigeria are particularly dangerous. Mary Harper, who's just been there, says the country's fishing industry has been hit hard. Some trawlers are now standing idle in port, and thousands of seafaring jobs have been lost.
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Under a busy bridge in Nigeria's megacity Lagos, women in colourful African print sit behind rickety wooden tables. On the tables are piles of fish. Crabs, prawns, lobsters and squid stack so high they look like they're about to tumble down into the oily mud below. They come from the deep water, says the lady with the highest piles of prawns. Glistening creatures in all sizes small, medium, large, giant, extra giant, extra, extra giant. The trawlers bring them in from the high seas. But Nigeria's fishing industry is being destroyed by piracy. The person best placed to tell me about this is Margaret Onyema Ora Kusi, who owns a fleet of fishing trawlers. On my way to visit her, I sit for some time in the famous traffic jams of Lagos, inching along the bridges that swoop and soar over the lagoons. Tropical rain pounds down from the sky above. Water seems to be everywhere. Margaret lives in a large house in a fancy part of town. There are pictures of ships on her walls, models of boats in her living room. Even her well stocked drinks cabinet is shaped like a boat. The attacks are deadly and brutal, she says. At times the pirates throw the crew into the ship's cold room where we store the fish. They freeze to death. Margaret tells me how pirates have planted explosives on her trawlers, shot dead one of her captains and fired bullets into the face of her chief engineer. Unlike most of Nigeria's trawler owners, who have shut up shop, Margaret is determined to carry on, as is Rotomy George A Nigerian seafarer. He has a sweet smile and a gentle face, dressed smartly in what Nigerians call an up and down top and trousers in the same color cloth. His is saffron, his shoes and bag a matching pale leather. I like the freedom of the sea, Rotomi tells me. When I'm not on deck, I write about love, about God, about myself. But Rotimi was recently attacked by pirates. They boarded his ship in the dead of night, shooting open the doors and taking away the Russian captain and Ukrainian chief officer. They stole Rotomi's laptop and his phone. They looted the ship, even stealing chicken and other food from the kitchen. Rotomi tells me how he and the boatswain hid themselves away and how awful it was. And I was thinking they might sink the ship. That would be the worst death, because you'd die while hiding. I would want to see what was killing me. Unlike many seafarers who are simply too traumatized to go back to sea after suffering pirate attacks, Rotomi was itching to get back to work. Pirates can't stop my dreams, he says, before singing for me a song about the sea. I will sail on as far as I can go. And it's by sailing out from Lagos Harbour that I begin to understand why piracy is such a problem here. The ocean is crammed with ships at anchor, many waiting to get into the congested port, great hulks of rusting metal low in the water, almost inviting pirates to sling their ladders over the side and clamber on board. I was taken out to sea by Sven Hansen, a man with giant muscles in his arms. He's a former member of the British Special Forces and is doing very well out of West Africa's piracy problem. His private security company works with the Nigerian navy and he wanted me to see a safe area they've created in the middle of the ocean. I found it difficult to absorb the information about the safe zone, essentially a big circle of sea, but patrolled constantly by gunboats. That's because I was being horribly seasick, as Sven described to me how not a single ship inside this protected area has been attacked or even approached by pirates. But West Africa is going to have to do a whole lot more if it's going to win the fight against maritime crime. The waters off Nigeria, Togo and Benin have been declared a war risk area. But pushing up the cost of insurance. This ultimately affects the price of our food, our petrol, anything that comes by sea from West Africa. But the highest price of all is being paid by the seafarers. People like the Gentle Rotomi, who the pirates brutalise and the many others they kill in their quest for plunder.
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Mary Harper in Lagos. In India, gods can come in a host of forms, animal as well as human, with living things often revered as avatars of supernatural beings. The tradition of keeping sacred groves undisturbed has given wildlife some precious footholds, even as the country's human population has burgeoned. Seemingly unattractive species like snakes and monkeys are protected in some places. But as villages, towns and cities have grown and gobbled up animal habitats across the subcontinent, there's less living room for everyone. And Anu Anand says harmonious coexistence can turn quickly to conflict.
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The other day, a passenger plane about to take off towards New Delhi hit a water buffalo on the Runway. The poor beast, black from head to hoof, simply couldn't be seen in the gloom of evening. A week earlier, a wildlife charity was called in to capture a cobra lurking at a New Delhi cash machine. Needless to say, he'd failed to charm unsuspecting customers. All summer, complaints of marauding rhesus monkeys raiding homes and offices have flooded civic hotlines. Cows, cobras and monkeys are considered holy by Hindus, and you'd be forgiven for thinking their divine status brings them better lives. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Perhaps because of perceived mythological powers, the animals are often left to fend for themselves. Why would a divine beast need mortal assistance? But in a country where growing populations are swallowing up habitat, India's wildlife needs all the help it can get. Take elephants. They are, without doubt iconic symbols of all that is wild, majestic and colorful about India. But today, their plight also illustrates how antique religious and cultural notions are holding back their conservation. Anyone who's lived in India knows what an amazing sight it is to suddenly spy a pachyderm roaming around your neighborhood. Their sheer size is, of course, the first thing you notice during religious festivals. Decorated elephants are invited to Hindu temples, where devotees feed them kilos of chapatis and sweets. They're seen as representatives of Lord Ganesha, who has an elephant's head. Partly fueled by this fascination, elephants are captured in the wild and hired out at events. But their life in the city is far from heavenly. Recently, two Delhi elephants were hit by lorries as they took advantage of lower temperatures to take a nighttime walk. The trouble was, their keepers chose chose the city's busy ring road for a stroll. One was blinded. Another could barely stand. As a result of the accident, a local charity took the injured beasts to a sanctuary. But their veterinarian told me he sees many malnourished and suffering elephants in cities. The most common problem they face is that their feet are constantly assaulted by hot tarmac, broken glass and nails. The injuries form painful abscesses, he said, and those can lead to cancer. Still, Delhi is home to eight working elephants. Six disappeared last year and are presumed dead. And while the city is no longer issuing new elephant licenses, it is also not providing protection or support to the remaining animals. New Delhi's chief wildlife warden admitted he had few resources. His only answer, he said, was to personally harangue owners to leave the city voluntarily and to take their elephants with them. But that isn't happening. Down by the banks of the Yamuna River, I meet Hira. The 50 year old elephant has been a star attraction at lavish New Delhi weddings, birthday parties and religious festivals. Hira used to live permanently on the banks of the Yamuna, a polluted river where nonetheless, fresh air, space and foraging are more readily available. But a few years ago, the city banned elephants from living here, and Hira was moved to a crowded slum where the concrete lanes are barely wide enough for a pachyderm to pass. Now he only visits the river while Hira is microchipped, and occasionally a city inspector comes to check up on him. There is no veterinary support on offer. Hira's owner in the elephant business for generations, refuses to leave the city and believes the animal is an integral part of New Delhi's heritage. He feels the devotion shown to Hira is all the beast needs, apart from kilos of juicy sugar cane. But the veterinarian who rescued the two elephants hit by lorries says Indians need a reality check when it comes to endangered if holy animals. If people believe in Lord Ganesha, he says, they have the option of asking for a blessing. Why do they need a live animal? Elephants simply don't belong in a concrete jungle. Neither, presumably, do monkeys, cows, cobras or even packs of street dogs. Protected by law, but still suffering from mange and unspeakable infections and injuries. Whether they are considered sacred or profane, whether Delhi is their natural habitat or not, all of these species desperately need human help. India's new prime minister came to power on a promise of providing toilets before temples. Perhaps similarly, it's time to put animal welfare before worship.
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Anu Anand in Delhi now there have been some developments in the fight against HIV AIDS in Malawi. Despite recent advances in treatment, it's still the leading cause of death there. Life expectancy is only in the 50s, and there are more than three quarters of a million children in the country who've been orphaned by the virus. This may be a peaceful, democratic state, but it's still struggling to improve health care. Malawi has managed to reduce the prevalence of HIV among adults by trying to prevent new infections. And that's a strategy which Victoria Gill, in the small rural settlement of Mchinji tells us is now being expanded to the young with a little help from the internal combustion engine.
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Two powerful and immaculate bright blue motorbikes are a bit of an incongruous sight here. They're parked up outside a small bare brick health centre that's well off the tarmac road, reached via a very dusty dirt track. Most of the 200 or so people at Caguazanga Health Centre today have come here on foot or by bicycle. In Malawi, you quite often see a whole family on a bicycle. A man pedalling his wife on the back in a very neat side saddle posture, with a baby in a sling on her back. When I arrive, the concrete benches and even the floors of the central waiting area are completely full. People are spilling outside, taking shade under trees while they wait to be seen. I'm here to follow the journeys of two couriers who ride those gleaming motorbikes. They're called Kufa and Madalizo. They work for an organization called Riders for Health. In thick bikers gear in 35 degree heat. Their job is to collect blood samples from this and 12 other community health centres. They carefully pack them into special padded boxy backpacks and take them to the district hospital laboratory where the samples are tested for hiv. In Malawi, almost a million people live with hiv, so the rider's most pressing job is collecting samples from babies born to HIV positive mothers. It's a project led by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. The aim is to provide the tests and treatment that can help mothers with HIV avoid transmitting it to their babies in the womb or via breast milk. Once we've passed the crowd of patients to reach the doctor's office and check that we have her blessing to film, we meet the nurse. We've arranged to interview Chansey. He's tall, broad and straight backed with the warmest gap toothed smile I have ever seen. His nurse's smock is so white, pristine and starched that I feel awkward next to him after a morning in the dusty heat. My own long sleeve T shirt is somewhat grubby. Our plan is to film Chansey as he takes a blood sample from a young baby. Then we'll follow one of the riders as they take that sample for testing. Chancey's arranged an appointment with a young mother who's HIV positive. She was diagnosed and given antiretroviral drugs from early in her pregnancy, so Chancey's hopeful that her baby might test negative. Only she hasn't turned up for the appointment. Chancey tries to reach her on her mobile phone. When he finally gets through, they have a brief, quite solemn sounding conversation. Then he simply says, that baby is no more. It turns out the little boy died over the weekend, but the work must go on. There are dozens of other patients to see. A young mother named Hannah lets me look on as her six week old son is tested. Chancey washes his hands, then does a heel stick test, jabbing a short needle into the baby's foot to draw out spots of blood onto a sample card. As Chansey gently squeezes the baby boy's chubby little foot. There's a lot of crying and squirming, but the ordeal is quickly over and after a perfunctory comforting cuddle, Hannah whisks her son deftly back into his sling and he's quiet again. One of the riders will take that sample and several others back to the lab for testing. Crucially, Hannah will have those results back within two weeks. It used to take as long as four months. Samples would just sit around waiting for transport. And that transport was usually the district hospital ambulance, which, as well as being an ancient Land Rover with an ominous looking crack creeping across its windscreen, is also the hospital emergency vehicle collecting blood tests and results just had to wait until it was free. As we pack up to follow the riders on their journey to the hospital, a tractor pulls up, towing a flatbed trailer to the door of the health center. It's as if it turned up to illustrate the problem. There are 20 people on that trailer, including one very sick looking pregnant woman. Some of her fellow passengers have to carry her into the building. That's the last we see of her. We have to leave with all those precious samples. Chancey is still smiling that broad, optimistic smile as he says goodbye. He'll continue to spend every day attending to more patients than he should reasonably be expected to cope with. But at least he now knows that the results of all those tests will come back in time to be of use to all the people he's trying to help.
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Victoria Gill with the bikers making a difference in Malawi now, the state of California can seem like a dream of the good life, particularly as winter knocks on the door. Here, its wonderful climate allows a profusion of Crops to flourish and a healthy outdoor culture based on them all. Fruit and salad and sunbathing. This state grows more than half of all America's vegetables and more than 60% of its fruit and nuts. But there's no farming without water and a long drought is threatening the fields. The deeper farmers delve to find more water with pumps and reservoirs, the drier California gets. Some people are warning there could be a new dust bowl on its way. So all sorts of tactics are being tried to reduce water consumption. From people spray painting their parched lawns, a more vivid green to the city of Santa Cruz officially banning the filling up of hot tubs and jacuzzis. David Willis has seen the effects on his own doorstep.
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I have a neighbour. Her name is Deborah, and ever since I've lived here, her front lawn has been luxuriant and green. But wandering by the other day, I did a double take. Mounds of earth were piled up where the grass had once been. And an army of workmen had set about installing succulent plants and ground cover and the kind of prickly cactus you normally see in children's cartoons. By the time Deborah had finished explaining why she was doing it, I could hardly believe that I hadn't done the same thing myself. Aside from the satisfaction of knowing that you're planting something that's actually meant to grow in these desert like conditions. As distinct from grass which sucks up water with the zeal of an inebriate who stumbled upon the keys to the drinks cabinet, she also stands to save a fortune on her water bill and avoid having to confront her sorry, burned out apology for a front lawn every time she leaves the house, added to which the city of Los Angeles actually paid her to do it. Generously too, by all accounts. And if paying people to rip up their lawns and replace them with drought tolerant plants strikes you as an odd use of government resources, then all I can say to you is that desperate times call for desperate measures. And these are desperate times. California is now in its third year of drought. The reservoirs are running dry and so too are the groundwater supplies. And while comedians joke that it's so dry in California these days that the longest lines at Disneyland are for the water fountains or ponder replacing the bear on the California state flag with a camel, what this place is witnessing is a dust bowl of truly Steinbeckian proportions. It's so dry, in fact, that officials were reportedly thinking of adding a fifth level to the current four tiered drought scale, which currently rates 99% of the state abnormally dry. But whilst replacing your lawn with plants does help save water, the vast majority of the water used here goes not to households, but to support California's economic mainstay, agriculture. And so water intensive is that industry that the benefits of planting the odd cact here or there start to seem a little modest in comparison. Take almonds. In recent years, the little nut with the hard brown shell has been touted as the holy grail of healthy snacks. Whether you're seeking a slimmer body or a smoother skin, or you just want to spend a little longer on the planet, almonds are for you. They've been touted as a remedy for cancer, arthritis, heart disease, even Alzheimer's. And not surprisingly, perhaps given their growing fan base, the farmers of California's Central Valley have been planting them like there's no tomorrow. Getting on for a million acres are now given over to almond trees. And such is the nurturing nature of California's Mediterranean climate that this state now accounts for more than 80% of the global supply. California's entire almond crop commands a stunning 1.1 trillion. That's trillion with a T gallons of water every single year. That's twice as much as it takes to grow cotton or tomatoes. And enough, I'm reliably informed, for you or me to take a 10 minute shower every day for the next 86 million years. Added to which, it's not as if this nutty elixir is being produced to satisfy local demand. Nearly 70% of the almonds produced in California are for export. And where do most of them end up? China. Which does little to quell criticism that the Chinese, with their booming economy, may soon, quite literally, be sucking this place dry. Predictably, perhaps, there have been calls to scale back on almond farming, at least until the rains return. As for those front lawns, my neighbour Deborah may have started a trend. Now that weekly water restrictions have been introduced, others in the street are considering cashing in and planting cactus and such succulents instead. In the meantime, brown is the new green around here. Although I have to admit, it's painfully difficult to stop watering your grass. Hence the dawn chorus in these parts is not so much the sound of bird song as the subtle hiss of sprinkler systems engaging in a furtive nocturnal ritual. And judging by how lush some of the lawns are around here, one might almost be tempted to think that some of us were bending the rules. Almost being the operative word. I have to live here, after all.
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David Willis, keeping on the right side of the neighbours in Bone Dry La and that's it. More stories from around the world. Next Saturday. Until then, goodbye.