← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Jan 22, 2011
00:28:07
Is China's economic muscle crushing the heart out of blue-collar America? Justin been...
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Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hi, this is Alan Johnston. We make two editions of from our own correspondent. If you'd like to hear the version I introduce on the BBC World Service, you can find it by going to the BBC iPlayer. But here's the one broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's presented by Kate Ad.
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Today we hear that China's economic muscle is crushing blue collar America. Some excitement as we visit South Asia's largest religious school. An Oxbridge of Islamic learning. A plea for independence from a corner of Somalia where democracy is functioning, the economy thriving and the people romantic. And in South Africa, we're told how love and happiness can be bought with a herd of cows. President Hu Jintao has arrived home after his four day visit to the United States. He flew out of Chicago's o' Hare Airport a few hours ago. After promising to help create much needed American jobs, the two nations signed a series of deals. There was talk of quelling anti Chinese sentiment in the us. The visit came at a time when many Americans are finding it hard just to get by. Nowhere is it tougher than in the decaying industrial heartlands of the Midwest. And as Justin Rolat has been hearing, some there believe their problems are quite literally made in China.
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It is a mixed blessing when Bruce Springsteen decides to immortalise your town in a song. Of course you'd be chuffed that someone had taken notice. But let's be honest, optimism and hope aren't really the strong suit of America's poet of blue collar life. So I was surprised when everyone I spoke to in Youngstown loved his song about the city. Youngstown was the crucible of the American Industrial revolution. The great Mahoning River Valley that runs through the city used to be lined with steel mills. Youngstown steel made the railways that opened up the west and built the skyscrapers of New York and Chicago and the fortunes of America's first great tycoons. Now the yards are just scrap and rubble. Sings Springsteen, telling of the terrible decline the city has suffered. These mills that built the tanks and bombs that won this country's wars. He continues. We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam. Now we're wondering what they were dying for here in Youngstown. Here in Youngstown. The steel industry in the Youngstown area used to employ 50,000 men. Just a few thousand jobs are left. George Kalko is lucky enough to have one of them. He's the fourth generation of his family to work in the industry. George and his wife Sheila took me on a tour of their community. We drove along roads where entire blocks have been Bulldozed, just grass and telephone poles remain. Youngstown, Sheila told me ruefully, is now famous not for steel, but as one of the drug and murder capitals of America. We stopped at a mill that closed a couple of years ago. The vast works buildings are shuttered now and weeds grow in the yard. George explained how Chinese businessmen buy up the machines in factories like this and ship them back to China. Now they're making what we used to make and selling it right back to us, he told me bitterly. Lots of people in America blame China for the decline of great American industries like steel. But George discerns a deeper malaise. This is going on all over America's industrial heartland, he said as we sat in his car outside the silent factory. Places like this are going out of business left and right. What we're losing is much more than just a product that can be found in a store. We're losing a culture and a way of life, a culture of hard work. We're losing a culture of people that knew how to get things done. I looked over at Sheila, who was sitting beside George. Tears were streaming down her face. I asked her why she was so moved. I teach in schools and I think about all the problems that come from losing a job, she told me, choking back a sob. I just think about all the people that can't provide for their families anymore. 300 miles away in Bethesda, a rich suburb of Washington D.C. there is no unemployment problem. This is where the power brokers live in this, the most powerful city on earth. I'd come here to interview one of the most respected journalists in America. Thomas L. Friedman is a three times Pulitzer Prize winner who writes for the New York Times. He's worried, just like George and Bruce Springsteen, about the decline of something Americans used to champion the nation's working class. What's most unsettling about China to Americans is not their communism, it's the capitalism, he said as we chatted in his kitchen. We see in China the things we used to see in ourselves. Can do, get it done. Hard work, sacrifice, own the future that used to be us and now we see it in them. It would be hard for America to cope with the remarkable rise of China at any time. But at a time when America is stagnating, it is particularly difficult. On my last evening in Youngstown, I went for a drink in a bar in the city centre that has become a focus for local activists like George and Sheila. I. I got talking to two lads outside. This town is dead. They told me we're getting out of here. One of America's great strengths is its optimism, but it is hard to believe that your best days are still ahead in a place like Youngstown. So where do you want to go? I asked the young men outside the bar. Stick a pin in a map, man, one of them said with a shake of his head. I'd go anywhere rather than here, anywhere. He took a long, hard drag on his cigarette and exhaled with a deep sigh. The raw winter wind whipped the smoke away and up into the Ohio night. The problem for men like these is that now there is no great hope of a shining future. Over the hill these are difficult times for blue collar America.
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Justin Rolatt and as the US Suffers this crisis in confidence, it may be worth remembering that across the sweep of its history, the country's known darker hours. Think of the Civil War, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor. But it's a place which has proved adept at reinventing itself and rising again. And as Mike Wendling has been finding out, some of that old American spirit is still very much alive and well among the nation's brightest youth.
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The light was just peeking through the window when the phone rang. Confused, I stumbled from the bed and opened the curtains. Big buildings. Lots of shouting, obnoxious car horns. New York there's only one person who would dare ring me this early. Mom. Good news, she said. Your sister had the baby. It's a girl. I tried to act surprised, but the truth is I was well prepared for the new arrival, in part because of my sister's posts on Facebook. Earlier in the week, I'd seen her status update. Looks like the baby will be here on Thursday. I'm still hoping for sooner, though. Smiley face. For the past two weeks, I've been crisscrossing America, producing a radio documentary on the history of social networking. The story goes back further than you might think. My trip began in Berkeley, in California, where a group set up a computerized bulletin board in a record store in 1973. Over a couple of weeks, I met a host of interesting characters hippies with houseboats, ambitious Harvard students, people barely out of their teens running startup companies backed by billionaires. And along the way, I've been test driving some of the very technology I was learning about, using social networking sites to arrange interviews, check check the news, and keep in touch with people scattered all over the world. On the West Coast, I dropped in on the company that has become synonymous with social networking. It may have once looked like a passing fad, but nowadays people take Facebook very seriously. It's easy to See why? Half a billion users, a blockbuster film, a superstar CEO. It's a business worth £30 billion
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Mountain View, the heart of Silicon Valley. The company with that instantly recognizable blue and white logo, is currently housed in an old factory. Picture hard surfaces, exposed brick, graffiti art on the wall. Exactly what you'd expect in the headquarters of a trendy Internet company. Provocative posters adorn the wall. Move fast and break things. What would you do if you weren't afraid? Nobody looks much over the age of 30. Fueled by free fruit, strong coffee and late night ping pong, Facebook's employees think they're in the vanguard of a revolution, pushing forward an idea that will change the world. Standing in the middle of their headquarters, it's hard to think they're wrong. They don't talk about where they are now, all their recent success, and the bundles of cash they're making more than £1 billion last year. Instead, they talk relentlessly about what's next. Chris Cox is vice president of product, which is a California way of saying he's in charge of making loads of cool new stuff for your Facebook page. Cox paints a picture where all sorts of everyday decisions are influenced by our friends. Say I want to go out and eat in New York, he says. Instead of reading reviews from strangers, I go and read what my friends in New York recommend the most. That's really how we think things are going to evolve. But we're not there yet at all. Afterwards, I'm in the lobby checking my email, getting ready to pack up and leave until Time magazine's person of the Year walks in. I wasn't expecting to see him, but there he is. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is wearing his trademark hoodie, blue jeans and the hint of a self satisfied grin. It's a journalist's dream. I'm right beside the richest 20 something on the planet. But I fumble with my microphone and camera. Zuckerberg is through the door in a flash. Later, back in New York, the sun is up and it's time to find a restaurant for breakfast. Those Facebook guys are right. Social networking isn't going to help us here. Instead, just ask a local. Right around the corner, the Morningstar Cafe. Tasty pancakes, hot coffee. I sort out one final interview with an entrepreneur who wants to build the next big social network. Business taken care of. I use my phone to once again glance at my Facebook page. Status update from my sister. Baby is here. Hayley Eugenia was born at 2.03am she is perfectly healthy. The comments are pouring in. Congratulations to all Muchisimas felicidades. I'm so excited for you. You and six other people like this. The east coast of America settles in under a blanket of snow for me, one last flight heading inland to upstate New York to see my new niece, just born, but already making an appearance on the computer screens of friends and family around the world. Because all this online communication is great, but it's still no substitute for actually being there.
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Mike Wendling among some smiley faces in upstate New York. Way back in 1960, a small nation emerged on the Horn of Africa. And then, after just a few days, it disappeared. British colonial rule in Somaliland ended on June 26. It was independent for only four days before becoming part of a much larger state that we now know as Somalia. But for the people of Somaliland, this has not been a happy union. They want to break away and they've declared their semi desert region on the Gulf of Aden to be independent. The rest of the world refuses to accept this, but as Mary Harper has been finding out initially in London, Somalilanders remain determined to go their own way.
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I was in a run down part of the East End on a dreary, wet winter day. I was looking for the Somaliland mission to the UK and I was completely lost. Walk past the cinema and turn right when you come to the supermarket. That's what I'd been told by Somaliland's representative to Britain, but I couldn't locate his office. Eventually I found it. A small room in a shabby business centre on a tatty side street. After a cup of sweet tea and a fascinating lesson on Somaliland's history from the representative, I had my visa and I was ready to go. My next stop was Kenya and a scheduled flight to Somaliland. The only hitch was a stopover in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, probably the most dangerous city in the world. Luckily, there was no heavy fighting on the day I landed there. A glamorous business lady I sat next to on the plane was keen to take me into town, close to the area controlled by Al Qaeda link fighters. I'll just pop out and get you a full Islamic dress, black niqab to cover your body and face, black gloves for your hands and black socks for your feet. I was worried about my blue eyes and about the fact that the BBC would be most unhappy with my excursion, so I politely declined. Once I arrived in Somaliland, things were completely different. It seemed strange that the Somali territory with a functioning democracy, a thriving economy and safety on the streets was the area. Nobody in the world was willing to recognize in Somaliland, I was under no obligation to cover myself with thick black material. Most of the women wore the traditional Somali dress of brightly coloured petticoats, robes and scarves billowing in the breeze. Some wore veils over their faces, but I was told this was more a matter of fashion than religious observance. As one man said, some of the naughtiest girls in the land wear niqab. The day after I arrived in Somaliland, the Islamist group Al Shabaab, which controls much of Somalia, issued a new Men and women are no longer allowed to chat in public. They're no longer permitted to shake hands. Now, chatting and shaking hands, actually kissing hands, are an integral part of Somali culture, and in Somaliland there's plenty of both. The people are romantic. Long, lyrical poems are central to the Somali way of life. And those that aren't about war or camels tend to be about love. People flirt with each other in a delicate and sophisticated way. One man was receiving poetic nightly text messages from an unknown admirer. Another thing that struck me about Somaliland was how dramatically the capital, Hargeisa, had changed since the last time I visited, in 1988. The city was reduced to a pile of rubble and human bones after systematic aerial bombardment by Somali government warplanes trying to crush a rebellion. Hargeysa was called the Dresden of Africa. Two decades later, the city is flourishing. Standing on a hill overlooking Hargeysa, there were new buildings as far as my eye could see in every direction. Somalilanders are coming home from exile to invest and to help. I met a woman who'd built a hospital on top of a mass grave, the place where executions used to be carried out. One man who works as a psychiatrist in Canada, gives up weeks of his time for free every year to come treat mental patients because there aren't any psychiatrists in Somaliland. Others from Britain, the United States, the Gulf and Scandinavia are setting up profitable businesses. Because it's not officially a country, Somaliland can't get big international loans to repair its shattered infrastructure. The government has no money. So instead of keeping all their profits for themselves, business people are developing the country. They're building roads, they told me. They used to pay the salaries of the police force and their petrol bills. I walked across a bridge in the town of Burao. It spans a wide river bed filled with rusting armoured personnel carriers left behind after the civil war. The area used to be impassable in the rainy season, so people contributed what they a goat, a camel, a dollar. This, together with a bit of help from government and a lot of help from big business resulted in the bridge. It all seemed very far away from that cold little street in that remote part of London where I got my visa. But the Somaliland mission in the UK is a bit like Somaliland itself. It set itself up on its own without much help or interference from government or international institutions, and it's doing quite well.
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Thank you, Mary Harper. Now, there aren't that many BBC people who've left their mark on the Pashtun homeland, that mountainous, often lawless terrain which straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But John Butt has. He's one of those behind a radio soap opera about life in a Pashtun village, a sort of Ambridge of the Hindu Kush, which has been beamed into homes there via the BBC service every week for 14 years. Butt made this rugged part of the world his home. After setting out from England on the hippie trail some four decades ago, Nadine Ghori caught up with him in another part of the subcontinent, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
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As our car turned around the bumpy Indian road, a shining white marble minaret came into view. My fellow passenger, John Mohammed Bhatt, could barely contain his excitement. Can you see it? He asked. It's like the Oxford University of Islamic Learning. For me, these minarets and domes are just like the gleaming spires and towers of Oxford. It's almost 30 years since I first came here, and I still get the same thrill. This is my alma mater. The alma mater in question is Darulolum Diaband, South Asia's largest madrasa, or Islamic school. Driving through the madrasa gates, we entered a world rarely seen by Western eyes. Deoband was built in 1866 by Indian Muslims opposed to the then British rule. Little has changed since. Winding streets and tiny courtyards aligned with stalls selling fragrant chai, bubbling pots of rice and paintings of Mecca. Everywhere are the Talibs religious students, young men with dark eyed, fervent expressions, carrying books or quietly reciting the Koran. And in another scene reminiscent of Oxford students riding bicycles, a chai seller recognized John and ran towards him. John Saab. Jon Saab. The two hadn't seen each other in decades, yet the man remembered him instantly. John Saab was the only student I ever saw who used to go jogging. There was only one John Mohammed. Unique, he laughed. That's perhaps not so surprising when you learn that John Butch remains the first and only Western man ever to have graduated from Dearband. He showed me his old dormitory room, a windowless cell where he spent eight years in a life of virtual seclusion, living under a regime of prayer and Quranic study. But that's just one facet of this man's extraordinary life. Aside from his time at Deoband, he spent most of the past 40 years living among the fierce Pashtun tribes who inhabit the lawless hinterland between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He went there in 1969, he says, as a dope smoking young hippie, and never came home. He laughed. When people call me an aging ex hippie, I always reply that I am aging maybe, but I'm certainly not ex. I'm still a hippie. John Butt cuts an imposing figure. At 6 foot 5 inches tall, he sports a long white beard and alabaster skin that's almost translucent. Dressed in flowing white robes, he reminds me of a Benedictine hermit monk or a Victorian explorer swashbuckling straight out of the pages of a historical novel. He tells me he adores the Queen. Stilton is his favorite cheese and that football is his passion. Yet among the border tribes, this old hippie is regarded as a native Pashtun and revered as an Islamic scholar. Home for him until recently was a tiny village in Pakistan's Swad Valley. Swat was once a popular tourist destination, but is now the scene of regular battles between the Pakistani military and the Taliban. But back in 1969, the young John was hooked from the moment he saw Swat, describing to me snow capped mountains, rivers like flowing jewels, forests and alpine pastures. But John's world changed in the late 1980s with the arrival of Arab jihadists who came to the border areas to fight the war against the Russians in Afghanistan. He says he saw the rural Pashtu way of life he had come to love become contaminated by a more hard line, militant ideology. So he decided to fight for his adopted culture. Six years ago, he set up a radio station which broadcasts across the Afghan Pakistan border and which tries to promote tribal traditions along with peace and reconciliation. John is also focusing his efforts on Afghanistan, where he's spearheading the formation of a new Islamic university in the southern city of Jalalabad. He wants to promote what he calls a spiritual, non violent theology. But this message of peace, not holy war, has set him on a direct collision course with the militants. Death threats have forced him to leave his beloved Swat valley. And in Jalalabad, the Taliban have sent him night letters, so called because they are delivered at night and in secret, denouncing him as a Christian missionary or Orientalist labels which can earn a death sentence. As I said goodbye. He was planning to travel to Jellalabad on the local bus. We talked about the possibility of him being attacked and he admitted he could easily be killed. But when I asked if he was scared, he brushed me off with a shrug. You only die once. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.
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Nadine Ghori and you can hear the Imam of Peace, A programme she's made about John butt, here on Radio 4 on Monday evening. Now, learning to live and work in a foreign land as he did can of course be a tricky business. Even if there aren't people trying to kill you, there are day to day concerns to worry about. There's a language and local customs to learn. You've got to find out what makes a place tick. Christian Parkinson, a cameraman in our Johannesburg bureau, has been telling us he has a special personal reason for immersing himself in the local culture in South Africa.
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I'm sitting in my car in a quiet side street in Soweto. Fidgeting beside me, my friend MPO is telling lame jokes to try and ease the tension. Outside, I can see a long row of bungalows, each with individually designed steel gates and brightly painted walls. There are BMWs and Mercedes parked on neat driveways. These days, most of Soweto feels like a cozy suburb, a far cry from the anti apartheid street battles of the 1970s and 80s. My mobile phone buzzes. It's a text from Bro Gugu. He's one of my key negotiators. It's sorted, he says. I feel a surge of relief and adrenaline. Then Gugu and the team appear at the gate, and behind them, the tall, slim figure of Kutluano, the woman I've just bought. According to local custom, we're now man and wife here in South Africa. They call it lobola, or bahadi, but the tradition of paying a dowry of cattle for your wife is practiced across Africa. When I first met Kotuano two years ago, the tradition struck me as archaic and somehow demeaning to women. But I've seen how important it is here and how seriously it's taken. When I realized that I'd finally met the woman I wanted to marry, I knew I had to do things the African way and hopefully earn the respect of Kutluano's family. Bahadi isn't a simple procedure. It's a long, elaborate process with many rules, each depending on the tribe and inclinations of the families involved. My first duty was to write a letter to Coetzee's father, informing him that my family intended to pay a visit. But the letter was supposed to be written in the Sosutu language by my mother, who's back in Leicester. English and doesn't speak a word of the language. Initially, Coetzee's father wasn't inclined to compromise on this, but eventually he agreed that my mum could send him an email in English. She let him know that she would appoint a team of South Africans to negotiate on her behalf. I turned to a friend, Bradan, who is from the same tribe as cuts his family. He's a smart operator and good with people. I also asked a fellow cameraman, Gugu, and two of her close colleagues, Ezra and Connie, all from different tribes. As for Kutuano, she was excited but also worried that her family would expect too high a price for her. She's educated, beautiful and doesn't have any children, all of which puts her at a premium. And people here tend to assume that white foreigners are rich, something that I'm certainly not. Kutuano spoke in private to her mother. Word came back that we shouldn't worry. The price would be fair and not based on my nationality. Back home in Leicester, mixed race couples are not a big deal. Here in South Africa, they're still very rare. People often stare at us as we hold hands in public. Mostly they're just intrigued. When we're out shopping, young black women will approach Kutuana and ask in a whisper, how can they meet a white guy too? Apparently we have a reputation for being devoted and taking care of those we love. Race is still a complicated issue in South Africa, but I found most people very open and welcoming. Finally, a date was set for our negotiations. Outside Kutuano's home, her family deliberately kept my team waiting for a good half hour, a traditional tactic. Eventually, they went inside without me. Bottles of whiskey were exchanged and the cash value of a cow agreed upon. Even in modern urban South Africa, the cow remains the unit of negotiation. Then the bidding started. It's considered bad form in South Africa to talk openly about how much you paid for a wife. Let's just say it cost me a herd and it was worth every cow. But that's not the end of the wedding ceremony. Twelve weeks later, I'm back on the same street in Soweto. This time I'm wearing a traditional lampshade shaped Sotho hat, an off white linen suit and brown sandals, not my usual style. I'm dancing clumsily down the road, my entourage singing Sutu songs and laughing at my footwork. The whole neighborhood is out in force. All of them singing and shouting encouragement. I reach Kotuano's home and push my way through the wall of people surrounding her, pulling her away from her family and into mine, completing the ritual. The women ululate and the men grin and sip their potent home brew, Mgomboti. It's a true township welcome. And suddenly I feel very at home.
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Christian Parkinson and a new big happy family from Leicester to Soweto. And that's it. There'll be more from our own correspondence next week on both Thursday and Saturday. Until then, goodbye.