← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Between Life and Death
00:27:41
Storytelling and writing. In this edition Gabriel Gatehouse is in Sicily which waves...
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Thank you for downloading the latest edition of BBC Radios from our own correspondent, the best in news and current affairs storytelling.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, Islamic State fighters are now just 70 miles from Baghdad, but in the Iraqi capital, that's not all that's worrying them. Fortunes were once made and lost there every day. But now the trading floors are about to close. At Chicago's mighty Board of Trade. We visit the town in Canada with a colossal statue of Jesus and the largest walk through dinosaur in the world. And why are people leaving the paradise islands of the Pacific? Could it really be they're fed up with eating fish? The Italian authorities fear that thousands more migrants may arrive on their shores this weekend. The sheer numbers are beginning to overwhelm the country. Some regions are now refusing to take them in. Hundreds are sleeping rough in the main stations in Rome and Milan, but its in the south and Sicily in particular, where the problem's at its most acute. Yet some sectors of the local economy are actually said to be benefiting from the newcomers. And as Gabriel Gatehouse tells us, Sicilians do have experience of their own when it comes to migration.
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From below, the small town of Mineo looks like an eagle's nest. It sits atop a rocky outcrop overlooking the rolling countryside of Sicily. To the east, Mount Etna, the still a smoking active volcano. To the north, fertile plains dotted with orange groves. It was there that I met Osazua, a tall, powerfully built man from southern Nigeria. His name means God chooses wealth. And that's appropriate because Osazua too has chosen wealth. Or at least he hopes he has. That's why he's here. Osazua left his home in edo State in 2013. It took him a whole year to reach Sicily. Crossing the desert and then the sea, he spent five dangerous days on a small boat. It was a long journey, he told me. A long journey between life and death. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Edo was at the heart of the Benin kingdom, one of the most powerful African empires. Now, thanks largely to oil and gas, but also to a people with a passion for business, Nigeria is once again on the rise. But in Nigeria, prosperity and opportunity are not shared by all. In Africa's most populous nation, there are millions like Osazua who feel like they're missing out. I came here to get a better life, he told me. Of course, when he set out upon his journey, Osazua didn't intend to end up living among the orange groves of eastern sicily. But like 4,000 other migrants, he's Now a resident at Europe's largest refugee camp, housed on part of an old US Air Force base in the plains below Mineo. Nearly everyone here is from sub Saharan Africa. Most have been here for a year or more, waiting and waiting for their immigration status to be decided. What, I wondered, did they make of all this up in Mineo itself? As our car wound its way up the hairpin bends to the top of the rocky outcrop, I figured I could probably guess the answer. Jobs in this part of Sicily are not plentiful. I arrived just as the older folk were emerging from their shops and homes, sitting on benches and swapping greetings and gossip in the shadow of a massive baroque church, an edifice vastly out of proportion to the size of the town itself, population 5,000. But the xenophobic grumblers, which I had expected to be legion, proved elusive. Mostly my inquiries about the inhabitants of the migrant camp at the bottom of the hill were met with an indifferent shrug. They're ok, seem to be the consensus. They steal our oranges sometimes, but otherwise they give us no trouble. But many of the migrants also work in the orange groves, picking fruit for well under the minimum wage. It occurred to me that the newcomers might well represent an economic benefit. 4,000 people to feed, clothe and cater for must surely do something for the economy of Mineo, or at least for the local mafia. A prosecutor in a nearby town told me there's still hardly a euro spent in Sicily without the Mafia taking a cut, and the Mineo camp costs the Italian government tens of millions of euros per year. But there was perhaps another reason, one that struck me as I wandered past a barber shop in one of Mineo's back streets. It was an old fashioned sort of a place with cut throat razors and leather chairs. The kind of place where a mob boss might get gunned down in a hail of bullets and blood soaked towels. My godfather themed musings were interrupted, or perhaps prompted by the sound of an American voice coming from a balcony overhead. Where are you guys from? The voice asked in an unmistakably Boston accent that I won't try to imitate. What was he doing here, more to the point? His name was Anthony Giglio. He was visiting some cousins in 1888. His grandfather, Antonio Giglio, had got married in the church down the road. In 1902, the Giglio's had emigrated to the United States. It's a familiar story, especially here in Sicily. Emigration is deeply ingrained in the folk memory. There were no jobs here then, he said. People who were working in the orange groves down below. Sometimes they'd just get paid in oranges. Mr. Giglio is retired now and comfortably off. He's thinking of buying back the old house that once belonged to his grandfather. His grandfather who like Osazua from Nigeria a century later, made a long journey across the sea. A journey perhaps between life and death. A journey also between necessity and choice. Like Osazua, Mr. Gilio's grandfather chose wealth.
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That's Gabriel Gatehouse. There've been clear signs this week that President Obama's been forced to adjust his strategy towards Iraq and the fighters from the self styled Islamic State. He's sending hundreds of extra personnel to assist Iraqi troops. The Americans are also considering establishing a second camp or hub from which they can extend their operations against the jihadis. IS are now in control of some 70% of Iraq, despite repeated airstrikes by the US and its allies. The city of Ramadi, just 70 miles from Baghdad, fell to them last month. But people in the capital aren't just worried about Islamic State, as Olagaran's been finding out.
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I was dropping off to sleep two weeks ago when history repeated itself with a sickening thud. It was a bomb nearby, so near it shook the BBC bureau in Baghdad. Minutes later, from the roof, I could see dark smoke rising in front of an upmarket hotel now called the Crystal, but formerly the Sheraton. It was one of two hotels targeted that night by the Sunni extremists of Islamic State. Fifteen people were killed. Standing on that rooftop, hearing sirens wail brought back another assault on the Sheraton in November 2003. Then I was in the hotel during a rocket attack. There was a direct hit on the 16th floor. It sent the lift crashing into the lobby. But no lives were lost. The capital looks a little better these days. There are fewer blast walls and checkpoints. When the searing heat of day fades, you can see families chatting on low walls along a section of the River Tigris. Those that can afford it sit on wooden benches, eating grilled fish and puffing on water pipes. But any sense of normalcy here is easily shattered. Like the countless shop fronts that have been smashed by bombs. We came face to face with members of an IS cell in the capital who are now in custody. They are accused of helping to plan bomb attacks that killed about 50 people late last year. The cell leader, Haider Mansoor, limped into view in a yellow prison uniform. We were told he injured himself trying to evade arrest. The 34 year old was handcuffed and had shackled feet he said he was studying accountancy before Islamic State came calling. With his short hair and neatly trimmed beard, he almost looked the part. He calmly admitted helping to arrange eight bombings, though he said he avoided news reports about the attacks. I didn't want to know how many died, he said, claiming he felt guilty. One of his accomplices, Louis Sallech, was a jobless father of four. He was balding and softly spoken. He claimed he only joined IS because they bought him a car and promised to rent a house for his family. And he said he was attracted by their promise of a region for marginalized Sunnis like him, Islamic State feeds off the dissatisfaction of the Sunni minority. Mansoor and his men are in some ways a symptom of a broader danger to Iraq sectarian hatred. Once is is defeated, our problems will increase, said a seasoned Iraqi journalist. The sectarian issue is the biggest threat. The next war will be about that. It is already a familiar battle here. The country was riven by sectarian killings in 2006 and 2007. The situation is far more dangerous now, according to the journalist, himself a Sunni. I am 52 years old, he said in precise English, matching his neat attire. I have always lived in Baghdad, and this is the worst year of my life. I worry about Islamic State, but I also worry about being kidnapped by Shia militias. Every time I leave home, I drive a different route. Asked if he thought there was a future for his homeland, he his response was swift. Not at all, he said, his voice rich with sadness. What will the coming years mean for Iraq? What kind of landscape will be carved out by Islamic State and sectarian power struggles? I got one answer. After coming within sight of IS territory in northern Iraq, Kurdish fighters took us to the windswept frontlines near the city of Mosul. We could see the plain of Nineveh down below us, an expanse of fertile ground held by Islamic State. As we drove away, our local guide spoke up. We need independent states for Kards, Sunnis and Shias, he said. Iraq is on life support. It's time to switch off the machine.
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Olagarin in Baghdad now I bet there are plenty of people toiling away in our big cities who reckon that life in the tropical climate of Micronesia sounds just like paradise. There are thousands of Micronesian islands out there in the North Pacific, full of glorious empty beaches, swaying palms and all that sort of stuff. Of course, there are concerns that with some islands only a few metres above sea level, they could at some point be wiped out by high tides or a tsunami. But Mark Stratton says society there also faces another threat the steady departure of its young people.
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Francis pours me a cup of coconut palm wine, fizzy, sweet and intoxicating. Then he tells me about a typical day in the lives of lametrex men. We get up at 6am to tap palms to make our wine, he starts. We fish all day until 3pm Then drink the wine until dinner. Then we drink more later and discuss what we're going to do next day. Such is life in paradise. I was travelling across the Federated States of Micronesia in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Lamartrek is a tiny coral atoll of 320 islanders. A translucent turquoise lagoon of bright corals encloses virgin white sand beaches. Micronesia's hundreds of coral atolls host tiny settlements like this, separated by great swathes of empty Pacific Ocean. To outsiders, life here might seem idyllic. Yet even paradise isn't immune from the stresses the outside world brings. Micronesians are certainly concerned by climate change, not least the issue of rising sea levels and the impact of cyclones. Nukuru Atoll, for one, is just five metres in altitude at its very highest point. Nakuro's mayor, Senard Leopold, says they're extremely worried. We're seeing higher tides that have damaged our taro crops, he says. On the Gulu Atoll, Cyclone Hagipit came barrelling through in December 2014. Windblown coconut palms are still strewn across the island, resembling a giant game of pickup sticks. Islander George Mangtau shows me an EU funded concrete cyclone shelter. He says it saved their lives. Big waves swept right across the island, he tells me. We were scared. All our breadfruit trees were blown over, so the government sent us emergency rice. George also touches upon an arguably more pressing issue, vexing many of Micronesia's tiniest communities. Island depopulation. Nagulu Atoll now has a population of eight. Back in the 1990s, it was awash with 20 people. Others have left for the large island of Yap because they became bored with eating fish, George scoffs. They want modern life. They want to drive cars, watch movies and eat chicken, he says. Dislike of a piscatorial diet and a penchant for kfc, however, aren't really driving depopulation. It's education. Schools on tinier atolls teach only as far as elementary level. For high school studies, children must leave for larger Micronesian islands such as Pohnpei, which has something approaching a cash economy, plus airport links to the United States after high school. Potential university students then head even further afield to American Pacific dependencies like Guam or Hawaii. Mayor Leopold of Nakura is concerned. Our biggest problem is 50% of our 200 Islanders are small children. While the rest of us grow older to continue education, our children must study on Pohnpei. Once they realize there are no jobs to come home for, they don't want to return. I encountered a similar tale of depopulation across all the remoter atolls I visited. Francis, my palm wine drinking buddy on Lamatrek, told me he had seven children. Other than drinking, there wasn't much else to do. At nights, he winks. I don't think any of them will stay on lamatrek because life here is too slow for them, he says. On neighboring Wole Atoll, it was yap cultural day. Under a royal blue sky, traditional outrigger canoes arrived from outlying islands for a day of feasting and culture. Returning Wallian exiles studying or working off Ireland are easily identified filming proceedings using smartphones and iPads. Yet island tradition still dictates that even returnees wear traditional clothing. I meet Martin Jangiralmar of the App State's Department for Education. He says they do teach school children skills like weaving and making fishing nets. But he suggests this is only so they can remember their heritage in the future. What you see here is a culture that will have gone in a generation or two, says Martin. The children prefer Western culture and want to earn money. In 50 years, this island may be deserted. It's a much bigger issue for us than sea level. Back on Nukuro, however, chief prosecutor Ramon is bucking the trend of drifting away from the remotest atolls. Ramon possibly has the easiest job in criminal law. Just one instance of palm wine overindulgence in the previous year. No charges were pressed. Hanging up his morning catch of tuna, he told me he'd abandoned a Westernised lifestyle on Pompeii. There was too much stress, so I returned home. He said, look around you. Everything I need is on this island and it's free.
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And that was Mark Stratton. Now, the great trading cities of the world used to pride themselves on their mercantile exchanges, raucous shouting places where trading in commodities was carried out. In these temples to commerce, fortunes could be made or lost in a day or even a few minutes. But it seems this frantic milieu can't keep up with how money, which never sleeps, now circulates around the globe. But the click of a mouse as our lives get more and more computerized. The trading clause at the Chicago Board of Trade were some of the world's busiest dealing in all the crops which the vast American Midwest was producing, but they're now falling silent due to shut their doors for the last time in a couple of weeks. Peter Day remembers his own trips there
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nearly 30 years ago. I drove with the reporter John Roberts across the American Midwest and in pursuit of a grim financial crisis that was sweeping through the family farms of America. It was a sad thousand mile trip and the news that the tumult and the shouting was ended in the mighty Chicago Board of Trade building brought back a flood of memories. I'll come back to the Board of Trade in a minute, but first I want to tell you what we found on our journey across the slightly undulating acres of Illinois and Iowa and Nebraska. This was a troubled land. As we drove every 50 miles or so on a bluff above the road would appear a beautifully sited red roofed farmhouse, a barn and one of those steel framed windmills that pump the water for the farm. Get closer though, and the traveller would have been shocked by a great gash down the roof of the house, abandoned some years before as a slump in crop prices drove family farmers out of business. On a Monday morning we went to a poignant sale on the courthouse steps where the town sheriff presided over the auction of a farm where the bank had taken possession after the debt payments stopped coming in. A knock down price obviously. At a Crossroads restaurant one night, we had a steak dinner with a failed farmer and his wife who'd lost everything in late middle age. With him next to her, she described how her husband sometimes disappeared into himself, consumed with remorse. It's like sometimes he's not there, she said, repressing a tiny sob. In the small town called Audubon in Iowa, white crosses were arrayed on the grass in the town square, one for every failed farm. The crisis passed, of course. Crop prices swing in great cycles. They wipe people out when they fall, and then they rise again and make others fortunes. But the importance of agriculture in the American economy has been dwindling for decades. And those family farms have gone on being swallowed up by vast agricultural corporations. And now inevitable change has hit the commodity markets hundreds of miles away from the growing acres of corn and soybeans in the farm belt. In 1986, John Roberts and I started our journey across America at the Chicago Board of Trade, where they'd been trading farm commodities for 168 years. Not to understand sacks of corn and wheat and soybeans, but financial contracts based on them. These are the futures markets, trading agreements to buy something at a certain price in the future. They provided a sort of insurance policy for growers. But this was also a frenzied casino, where speculators made and lost fortunes every day. It was a very physical business. The traders, wearing garish blazers to distinguish the firms they work for, piled into octagonal terrace pits on the floor of the then mighty Board of Trade. They shouted and gesticulated. It was hectic and raucous, and on busy days, the pits would be packed. Some traders worked for brokers taking orders from outside, including farmers phoning in from their tractor cabs to lock in the price of the harvest they were just then out planting in the fields. But other market participants were locals, working for themselves, taking huge risks every day with their own money, utterly addicted to the adrenaline flow and the strenuous physical and intellectual effort of gambling on food prices for a living in the pits. But now all this is going like so many other human things. The sadly dwindled physical market activity is being completely replaced by trading on computer screens in offices. Thirty years ago, we prized one trader away from her post in the pits long enough to get some sense of what it was like. An imposing woman, she was large enough to stand her ground in the press of mainly male traders. She spoke of how distant the sullen tragedy of the farm crisis then seemed from the daily urban scrums in those pits in the Board of Trade that were her stamping ground. I can't forget something she told us. One day. A trader died of a heart attack in a pit. He was held upright for the remaining 20 minutes of trading by the press of the other participants before the bell went for the end of the session. Nobody noticed until the shouting stopped and the other traders walked away. And now they are all walking away for the last time. And I, for one, have noticed.
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Peter Day, the makers of the new film Jurassic World, which is showing in a cinema near you today, must be very pleased that we all seem crazier than ever about dinosaurs. There was even a new species announced this week, discovered on the South Wales coast by two amateur fossil finder brothers from Llantwit Major. For those keen on the detail, it's a theropod from the early Jurassic period. You'll eventually be able to see it at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. But Tom Holland tells us that the town of Drumhella in Canada is actually the place which claims the title of Dinosaur Capital of the World. And he tells us that's not its only claim to fame.
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Drumhella is definitely the place to visit, if you like dinosaurs perched amid the fossil rich badlands above the town, the Royal Tyrrel Museum is probably the greatest treasure trove of palaeontological riches anywhere in the world, boasting everything from three complete tyrannosaur skeletons to a single delicate dinosaur feather preserved in amber. Drumheller itself, not surprisingly, is an absolute monument to Mesozoic chic. There are concrete dinosaurs everywhere, in car parks, on sidewalks, even on front lawns. Pretty much every shop, it seems, features a cartoon triceratops. There are some in Drumhalla, though, who see in their town status as the Dinosaur Capital of the World, a more serious business opportunity. Zeke Wolf was an oil man, but retirement hasn't dulled his relish for making a buck. No one has better dinosaurs than us, he declares with evident pride as we leave Drumhella and drive along the ravine scarred river valley which extends north out of the town. The gleam in Zeke's eye, I suspected, was one with which his erstwhile colleagues would have been thoroughly familiar. But it wasn't an oil strike that he wanted to show me. Pulling off the main road, climbing a winding track past a rusting ski lift, and bumping across a scrubby plateau, he brought the car to a stop. In front of us were yet more ravines with craggy, vertigo inducing drops. This, Zeke told me, is made for ziplines. You put a zip line from this side of the ravine to that side and you've got the best zipline in Canada. But it won't just be the ravines make it the best. I looked at him expectantly. Zeke smiled. I'm going to fill that ravine with dinosaurs. They were, he told me, surprisingly cheap. Made in China. An animatronic dinosaur would set you back a mere £4,000 a head. Zeke planned to invest in an entire herd of long necked sauropods and a pack of velociraptors. He asked me what I thought, and I readily agreed that the experience of travelling on a zip wire over an assemblage of Mesozoic megafauna was would indeed be a distinctive one. Zeke sighed. There's only the one problem, really. He turned and pointed back down the ravine. I looked there, past the rusting ski lift at the head of the valley. I saw what he meant. It was an astonishing sight. Gleaming white crenellations, classical pillars, and three crosses on a hill. It seemed to be a replica of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. And so it was. Drumheller, it turned out, is home not only to the world's greatest dinosaur museum, but also to Canada's foremost biblical extravaganza, the Badlands Passion Play. The following day, when I went to visit its executive director, Vance Neudorf, I met a man no less in love with his vision of the future than Sieg. The Passion Play, Vance told me, had been going strong for over two decades and it was like the flower of the cactus when it blooms once every year, a beautiful thing. Unlike Zeke, Vance was not much interested in turning a profit. The Passion Play was staged largely by volunteers, for the love of Jesus and the sheer joy of performance. Just like Zeke, though, Vance had big plans. In this summer's forthcoming production, he told me he intended for the first time to have Pontius Pilot ride on stage in a chariot. His ultimate ambition, he went on to say, was to build on the side of the very hill where Zeke was looking to station his velociraptor pack, a full scale replica of Bethlehem. It all sounded rather ominous. One further battle, perhaps in a war as old as Darwin. Somehow, though, I suspect that a compromise will be found. Drumheller, unlike the American Bible Belt, seems to have a taste for it. The same town which boasts the largest walk through dinosaur in the world, an 86 foot tall Tyrannosaur 4 and a half times the size of the real thing, is also home to a colossal statue of Jesus which stands with its arms outstretched on a hill above the outskirts. Originally, Vance told me the concrete dinosaurs which now adorn Drumheller's streets had been gathered at the statue's feet. It was a wonderful image and gave me hope for the future. After all, if Christ could be shown preaching to stegosaurs and sauropods, then why should visitors to Drumhella not be able to follow a dramatization of St. John's Gospel with a zip wire ride over a velociraptor pack? It would certainly tick my boxes.
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Drumheller in Canada. Not the place to go if you don't like dinosaurs. Tom Holland there, bringing another edition to a close. More dispatches from far and wide on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Why don't you join us? Goodbye.