← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
June 16, 2011
00:27:56
Tunisia's fragile revolution is under threat from the violent uprising in Libya.
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Transcript21 lines
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Pascal Harta
Hi there.
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Kate Adie
You're about to hear from our own
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John Donison
correspondent a download from the BBC.
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Kate Adie
We make editions of the programme for
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Unidentified Producer/Presenter
both the BBC World Service and Radio 4.
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Kate Adie
And this is the latest Radio 4 broadcast. As ever, it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Reporter (Various segments: Pascal Harta, John Donison, Claudia Hammond, Stuart Maclean, Rajesh Merchandani)
Today, the Tunisians who fear their revolution is threatened by the violent uprising in neighbouring Libya, the island off Hong Kong where people come to kill themselves. Israel's blockade of Gaza goes into a fifth year. We meet two Gazans who get nearer the outside world than most. And a consultation in Johannesburg where you might be offered head of a black mamba or perhaps a severed monkey's paw. It's six months since the start of the so called Arab Spring, when the people of Tunisia rose up and forced their president to flee the country. Their revolution is still young, though elections have yet to be held and the former president is awaiting trial. Dates have now been set for both. Today, that spark of revolution that spread successfully to Egypt has become an explosion in neighbouring Libya. Pascal Harta's been trying to find out if Tunisians are keen to help their revolutionary neighbours or more concerned with protecting their own fragile uprising.
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Pascal Harta
No one walked into the polling station where I stood with my microphone. It was 2004 and I was in the capital, Tunis. To cover the elections, I tried another polling station and then another. It was the same scene in all of them. Eight or ten polling officials, no voters. Tunisians were showing with their feet what they couldn't say with their mouths. Finally, an old woman came in, dressed in the veils of Tunisia's rural villages. She was staying with her son in the capital. She held aloft her voting card and crying, Our President Ben Ali kissed it. An official from the president's party gave her a senorial nod, like a lord wearily accepting his dues from a peasant. In the early hours of the next morning, a resounding victory was announced for the returning president, Zina Labedine Ben Ali. Voter turnout was put at more than 85%.
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Narrator/Reporter (Various segments: Pascal Harta, John Donison, Claudia Hammond, Stuart Maclean, Rajesh Merchandani)
Ha.
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Pascal Harta
What a big waste of money that was, a Tunisian man told me happily this week. Every five years, pretending to hold elections. That piece of theatre cost a lot, you know. He's happy because finally it's all over. Six months after the revolution, I'm here to see if Tunisia has changed. Will the security services still shove people about on the street? Will Tunisian still look scared if a foreign journalist asks them a question? But the new Tunisia hits me like the heat as I step off the plane. At passport control, a policeman sets aside his stamp to tell me his Thoughts in front of everyone. The problem is Libya, he says. The Libyans are our brothers, so we must support them in their revolution. But it's too much for Tunisia. 60,000 Tunisians used to work there. Now with the war, they've come back here where there's no work. And then there's the Africans. He means the Nigerians, Somalis and Eritreans. Stuck in a refugee camp near the border, they have protested that their situation by blocking the main road, suspending what little cross border trade was still going on. The sense of solidarity towards Libyans is repeated everywhere I go. How can we do more to help our Libyan brothers? Taking shelter in Tunisia is the topic of a radio phone in show. A Tunisian who's taken in a group of refugees is on the line. Another caller says, that is wonderful. Your family must be very proud of you. A resident in the border town of Dahiba greets me with welcome to Tunisia BBC. I will now for the first time tell a stranger my true opinion. This is a place where residents can't get to their fields because of Colonel Gaddafi's forces shelling the area. Yet here too, there is a willingness to suffer for their neighbors revolution. It's partly self interest, the man explains. If Libya's revolution does not work, Tunisia's is not safe either. Colonel Gaddafi is already shelling us here in Tunisia. He does not respect the border. A Libyan who's just crossed over into Tunisia tells me of his experience at a language school abroad. His fellow foreign students used to ask, libya, where's that? And then they'd say, ah, Gaddafi, terrorists. His friend nods emphatically and says, gaddafi didn't want any other Libyans to be known, only him. I'm told how in Libyan football matches, the commentators were not allowed to mention the name of the players. Instead, number 13 passes to five, player two and goal. It's so that no one becomes famous, only Gaddafi, the man explains. An exception was apparently made when Colonel Gaddafi's son Saadi became a professional player. Then the commentary went something like this. He said, Number two passes to number 11 and the Honorable Captain Engineering PhD Saadi Al Gaddafi has the ball and passes back to number four. Another group of refugees talk of how after demonstrators were fired upon in Benghazi and Tripoli and bodies of protesters were piled up on the streets, one of Colonel Gaddafi's other sons, Saif Al Islam, appeared on television. He had a reputation as something of a reformer. One of his pet projects, a man tells me, was called Libya Tomorrow. But we used to call him Tomorrow never comes. The man said. Nevertheless, the nation expected Saif to call a halt to the violence. Instead, he took his father's side. We will find you hiding in your cupboards, he said in a chilling speech to the protesters in Benghazi. We will show no mercy. A woman who has just driven across the border with her husband and children tells me we want to catch the Gaddafi family alive. I wonder what she'll say next, this mild mannered woman, her eyes suddenly shining. To bring them to justice? I ask. Yes, but more than that, she says.
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Narrator/Reporter (Various segments: Pascal Harta, John Donison, Claudia Hammond, Stuart Maclean, Rajesh Merchandani)
So.
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Pascal Harta
So he can live to see we are not stupid. So he can see what Libya can be without him.
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Narrator/Reporter (Various segments: Pascal Harta, John Donison, Claudia Hammond, Stuart Maclean, Rajesh Merchandani)
And that's Pascal Harta. Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip entered its fifth year this week. It was tightened after the Islamist movement Hamas came to power in the Palestinian territory in 2007. The blockade has meant hardship for Gazans and made it extremely difficult for people to leave the territory. Although Egypt recently eased restrictions at its border. There's a growing number of people in Gaza who have never left the tiny strip of land. But our correspondent there, John Donison, has met one man who gets tantalisingly close.
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John Donison
Ayman eats 25 hummus sandwiches a day. It is an improbable number for a fellow who's whippet thin, tipping the scales at a tad over nine stones. He has the lean limbs of a long distance runner, the hollowed cheeks of a Tour de France cyclist. Only the cigarettes tucked into his top pocket suggest he might struggle to go the distance. A fondness for hummus and a svelte frame do not normally go hand in hand. Yet it can be explained. Iman walks more than 30 miles a day. He boasts of getting through a pair of shoes a month and obviously a fair few calories. He is the trolley man of Gaza, a baggage handler extraordinaire. Ayman and his colleague Anta are the porters working at the Erez checkpoint, the main crossing from Gaza into Israel. Their place of work is remarkable a kilometer long cage, a steel encased secure walkway that stretches between the Israeli checkpoint and the Palestinian controlled territory. Iman claims, perhaps with some exaggeration, that he steers his luggage laden trolley along the walkway up to 60 times a day. Iman and Anta's relationship is fractious. They bicker and snipe over the other's slowness of step. But what's striking about them is they perhaps have more contact with the outside world than almost any other Gazan. Each day they shoot the breeze with the smattering of foreign journalists and aid workers who were able to visit the strip. Israel's blockade of Gaza has made it incredibly difficult for Palestinians to leave. Some of those who Ayman and Anta do help through are bandaged, limping, weak and sickly. Israel does allow some Palestinians out to get medical treatment. People here often call Gaza the world's biggest jail, and leaving through Erez is indeed like getting out of a prison. There are at least 10 electronic gates to pass through, a body scan, a bag search, and if you're unlucky, a strip search. And that's for a British journalist with an Israeli government issued press card. Palestinians don't have it so easy. Israel has its reasons for such procedures. Before the checkpoint was modernized and security stepped up, several Palestinian suicide bombers blew themselves and others up at Erez. Others successfully crossed into Israel to carry out attacks. And Israel also has its reasons for the ongoing blockade of Gaza, something the United nations has called an illegal medieval siege. Gaza is still run by Hamas, a group that sees itself as a resistance movement fighting occupation, but that Israel regards as a terrorist organization which has killed and maimed hundreds of Israelis. It's hard to argue, though, that Israel's blockade has worked. Four years after it was tightened, Hamas remains in power. It's also hard to argue that the blockade doesn't collectively punish Gaza's population of one and a half million people. And the biggest punishment is being forced to remain here. This week I learned that Gaza is almost exactly the same size in terms of land area as Sheffield, the place where I grew up. Even the Steel City's biggest fans, and I am one of them, might balk at the idea of spending an entire lifetime within its borders needing a permit to go to Rotherham, for example. Recently Egypt, which has also been blockading Gaza, eased restrictions at its border, allowing more Palestinians to cross. Many are jumping at the chance, but the places most Gazans would like to visit are the west bank and Jerusalem, where some have relatives and friends they've not seen for years. And for that you have to pass through Erez. There was a time up until the late 90s when tens of thousands of Gazans did just that every day, traveling to work in Israel. Many older Gazans speak fluent Hebrew. One farmer told me here as we stood in his sweet scented orange orchard, that he still gets birthday phone calls from the Israeli friends he met years ago while working across the border. But such human interaction between a new generation of Israelis and Gazans is almost unheard of now. Ayman the trolleyman, he of the hummus sandwiches, is one of the few who has any dealings with Israelis at all. As he wheeled me out of Gaza this week, with songbirds and geckos dancing alongside us on the bars of the steel encased walkway, Eiman had warm words for the Israeli officer who runs the Eris checkpoint. He's happy to have the work. Shlomo is my friend, he told me. Ayman then passed on one final number to impress me. He has 11 children. None of them has ever left Gaza. None of them has ever met an Israeli.
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Narrator/Reporter (Various segments: Pascal Harta, John Donison, Claudia Hammond, Stuart Maclean, Rajesh Merchandani)
John Donison in Gaza. The people of Cheung Chau, near Hong Kong, have a problem on their hands. Their islands become known as a place where people go to kill themselves. At the beginning of the decade, the suicide rate soared in this part of the world. This was a time of recession, poverty and unemployment. There was also a devastating outbreak of SARS disease. Claudia Hammond's been visiting the island and has learned that while the suicide rate has come down in recent years, people still come to end their lives there. And the local community is trying to do something about it.
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Claudia Hammond
Sitting on the promenade on Cheung Chau island, eating dim sum while families stroll past on their way to the beach, this place feels very Chinese. There's one stall selling tiny fish drying out on racks in the sunshine, and on the next, traditional herbal medicines. And it has a familiar holiday resort atmosphere. Children are carrying buckets and spades and begging their parents for ice creams. Teenage boys cycle past on tricycles with their girlfriends. On the back seats shaded by blue and white striped canopies, people sit in cafes looking out across the harbour, which is so packed with blue and green wooden junks and fishing boats that you can barely see the bright blue water in between them. And overlooking this pretty scene, there are blocks of holiday flats sympathetically built into the hills surrounding the harbour so that they peep out from behind the trees. But partly because of its convenient location and the abundance of cheap holiday flats for rent, this island has become known as the holiday resort from which not everyone returns alive. In the last few years, there have been some people who've come here with a very specific plan in mind. They come to kill themselves. Cheung Chow has become notorious for it, and the tiny community here has sometimes had to deal with 20 cases of suicide a year. When the economy in Hong Kong started to pick up after the recession at the beginning of the decade, the number of suicides went down, but the rate is still four times that in the uk. Experts blame the pressures of life here and the fact that asking for help can be seen as shameful. I met Angela, who'd come to Hong Kong from rural mainland China with her husband. A life of poverty and discrimination, she says, has ground her down. After her youngest daughter was born, she was diagnosed with depression. After the baby spent a year in foster care, she began to blame herself, believing she was a bad mother. I talked to her at the Castle Peak Psychiatric Hospital in Hong Kong. This is the place where people joke that you'll be sent if you're not careful. Angela told me how, in despair and suffering from depression, she decided her children would be better off in another life, the other world, as she put it, rather than in this one. She decided to kill her children and then herself. But when she told the staff at the hospital of her plan, they gave her treatment before she was able to carry it out. Now, in her early 50s, she says she feels a bit happier. She tells me she quarrels less with her husband and. But she still doesn't have much hope for the future. Angela may not have been one of those to die at Chung Chau, but people kept on coming to the island to kill themselves, and finally the community here realized it had to take action to try to stop their island being a destination for those determined to take their own lives. Advice was taken from the eminent center for Suicide Research at Hong Kong University. Researchers there say at least a third of people attempting suicide do so on impulse and have had no previous signs of mental illness. Illness. But the director, Paul Yip, points out that Cheung Chau is a small island. Quarrel with your wife, and everyone knows about it next morning. And this, he says, makes it a place where the community can pull together to solve a problem like this. I noticed, as the hordes of holidaymakers swarmed off the ferry, a couple of police officers standing quietly at the quayside. They were looking out for anyone on their own who appeared vulnerable. If they see someone who seems lonely, they'll talk to them and offer help. It's been decided now that the holiday flats can no longer be rented by just one person. And when the flat owners become concerned about a tenant, they'll now knock on the door, sometimes repeatedly, asking if they can be of any service. There are no cars on the island, and so police on bicycles watch out for anything suspicious and will raise the alarm if they're concerned. The experts say that some of those determined to end their lives will go ahead come what may. But the community here can confirm from experience that making it more difficult really does deter others. Last year, There were just two suicides here. The year before, there were 20. I watched as Another fast ferry from Hong Kong island just 35 minutes away. Docked at the quayside, families loaded down with picnics streamed down the gangway, ready to hit the beach, determined to enjoy their day out on Cheung Chau Island.
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Narrator/Reporter (Various segments: Pascal Harta, John Donison, Claudia Hammond, Stuart Maclean, Rajesh Merchandani)
Claudia Hammond Now a lot of people have words of praise for our National Health Service, but all too rarely do its practitioners tell you the treatment you need is a snake's head or perhaps a monkey's paw. Both have a role to play in traditional African medicine. The Zulus call that muti. It's used to treat every illness imaginable, from cancer to colds, gynecological conditions to gout. And it doesn't just involve animal parts. Plants, tree roots and bark also have their uses. The Faraday Muti market in Johannesburg is one of the continent's biggest. And as Stuart Maclean's been finding out, there's something for just about every ailment.
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Unidentified Producer/Presenter
When I inquire about the cure for my cold, I am not expecting to be handed the head of a deadly black mamba snake. But that is exactly what Fikile Sikali pulls from a plastic supermarket carrier bag as I describe my recent symptoms. Pointing to the reptile's fangs gleaming proudly from a lifeless jaw that has been propped open with a matchstick, she shows me how to grind the snake's head in a steel pestle and mortar, sprinkle the acrid grey powder on my hand and lick it off to absorb its nutrients. Within hours, she says, I will feel stronger, healthier and better equipped to fight off that lingering sniffle. The unusual prescription is one of hundreds given every day at the Faraday Muti Market in Johannesburg, a colourful, ramshackle collection of more than 100 stalls run by traditional heelers from across South Africa and its neighbouring nations. Alongside the snake heads, Fikile's stock includes the skins of various mammals, cowbones, sheep trotters and even the entire skull of a buffalo. Each item, she tells me, has its own particular use and value in the world of muti, the traditional medicine practiced widely across southern Africa. And rising from her rickety bench, dressed in modern clothes and with her face vividly daubed with a layer of orange clay, Fikile eagerly introduces me to the offerings on the other intriguing stalls nearby. One man's table is piled high with sacks of ground up tree bark for curing headaches and impotence. Another is selling recycled whiskey and Coca Cola bottles filled with glowing liquids. And his neighbour has hanging the huge skin of what Once was a 20 foot python to be ground into a powerful powder which can improve one's internal life force. The Faraday stalls form one of two established muti markets in Johannesburg. Both serve the needs of thousands of inyangas and sangomas, the local words for traditional healers from the multitude of tribes which form the Nguni societies, including, in South Africa, the Zulu, Khurza and Swazi groups. For the uninitiated, the stench of rotting animal carcasses in the sweltering heat, the presence of several thousand persistent flies, and the lack of any conventionally trained practitioners could make both sites seem unlikely places to seek medical assistance. Certainly to visitors, the thronging markets can seem decidedly otherworldly and unsettling. Even after two years living in South Africa, I definitely feel like a foreigner as I watch the exuberantly dressed sangomas adorned with strings of shells and bright strips of cloth, shopping for the vital ingredients needed to treat their patients in the country's rural areas or densely packed townships. The country's healers are strictly regulated by law and represented by the Traditional Healers association, which claims to have almost 30,000 members who each see, on average, 30 patients a day. It says around three quarters, or 72%, of South Africans use traditional medicine each year and claims the number doing so has increased considerably over the last five decades, suggesting that as the population has grown, so too has the faith in the healing techniques of the ancestors. There are concerns in some quarters about patients, including pregnant mothers, who choose to remain disengaged from state run sources of treatment. But those who support the vibrant trade maintain traditional medicines, when taken in conjunction with a traditional lifestyle, can be a solution as powerful as anything the multinational drugs companies can produce. And in a country where public health care for the poor can be patchy or too distant, the presence of traditional healers in virtually all local communities means that someone is at least on hand to offer guidance and counseling. Perhaps the biggest current threat to the industry, like so much in the world, is the global economic crisis. Back at the Faraday market, store holder Manfumelo Dadler admits trade recently has slumped. We used to have many customers a day, the Zulu salesman tells me from his perch on an upturned crate. Now people don't have jobs and the business is far less, he says. At the moment, many people are so poor they can't afford treatment. Surrounded by snake heads, animal carcasses and pots bubbling with unidentified liquids, that remains the most unsettling thought of all.
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Narrator/Reporter (Various segments: Pascal Harta, John Donison, Claudia Hammond, Stuart Maclean, Rajesh Merchandani)
Stuart Maclean There now, which place has more songs written about it than anywhere else in the world? London's fairly popular with the composers. New York, the city that never sleeps, doesn't do too badly either. But I think it's an amaz American state which emerges the winner. There are literally hundreds of songs about California. Everything about it is eulogised. And not just the beaches, the girls, the fun. So why is it that Rajesh Merchandani, our correspondent there, well, our former correspondent there in fact, has some harsh words for the Sunshine State.
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Kate Adie
After three and a bit years, I've come to see LA as a bit like the Galapagos Islands. Bear with me. Granted, this is the second largest conurbation in America, but really it's far away from everything else. Those big urban centres on the east coast, they're three time zones ahead of us. We're not talking giant tortoises here. But remoteness has ensured the city has evolved in a strange and unique way. I first noticed it three years ago on my inaugural LA New Year's Eve as I was getting ready to drive to a party. I watched the east coast celebrations on TV to get in the mood. Times Square and the big shiny border and that huge crowd three hours later in the nation's second city. We turned on the TV to join in LA's Countdown and saw a repeat of New York's new year recorded, rewound and replayed. My theory is that LA doesn't host its own event because this is a city that doesn't do crowds. Angelenos prefer the cocooned safety of their cars to communing with others. They don't like to share physical space with other human beings. Their subservience to the car means they've evolved valet parking even at the bank. And this does nothing to instill a feeling of community or civic pride. In that sense, I found it a very selfish place. A lot of the people you meet are less interested in you than what you can do for them. Maybe Hollywood is to blame, but the auto companies that bought up all the land decades ago and prevented a light rail system from developing must, I feel, share the blame for LA's me first attitude? You see it in the predatory driving. Every day when I signal my intention to change lanes, my neighbour speeds up to deny me access. The City of Angels should have as its motto, get them before they get you. And that doesn't fit with the laid back, hippie, surf dude image California became famous for. But the longer I live here, the more I wonder if that California even exists anymore. This was known as a land of plenty. Now it's a land of foreclosure. And unemployment. In the shadow of skyscraping towers lies the most sickening Skid row children are among the fastest growing groups of the desperate. In San Diego. There's even a school for homeless kids. And it's just about full up. Californians used to enjoy subsidized education in the best equipped, most beautiful university campuses in the world. Now tuition fees are going up while courses are being slashed and a degree can set you back $150,000. Back in the 30s, Dust bowl refugees flocked to the Golden State to pick fruit from its lush orchards. Now migrants from Latin America toil in broiling heat for a few dollars a day. Yet in my local supermarket, the fruit comes from other countries. It's under ripe and overpriced. Californian fruit, I'm told, earns greater profits at export. You can buy locally grown produce and in fact, the hip new food trend here is to be a locavore, stocking your table from producers nearby. It's ironic that anti globalization has found a foothold in a state with the strongest worldwide brand. In fact, when I speak to people in the UK, you can hear the dreaminess in their voices. Where? Wow, you live in California. They make it sound like paradise. So now that my time as the west coast correspondent is up, you'll imagine that I can't wait to get out of here. So what am I going to do? Well, I'm staying. That's the problem, you see. It gets into your blood. I'm sitting here on my terrace in the bright evening sunshine, looking at the palm trees and the desert plants. There's a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower and turtle doves nest nearby. Later I might go to Little Tokyo for sushi or Thai town, Koreatown, Filipino town, or Little Armenia. Or if I can brave the rush hour freeway over to the west side for the best Iranian food. Maybe I'll head to the beach to watch the sun go down with a glass of Californian Pinot Noir. At the weekend, I can drive an hour to the mountains or to the desert or to the coast. I can walk out of my door and practice my Spanish, or I can supersize my meal and add fries and a giant soda for an extra dollar. I have become spoilt by California's diversity, its beauty and convenience, and energized by its can do spirit. I'm staying, and I'm hoping to go back to college and to do some volunteer work. That Pacific Ocean coastline has made my own horizons feel broader. I complain about it because it's home. And it's still the place people dream of visiting. I couldn't leave if I wanted to.
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Narrator/Reporter (Various segments: Pascal Harta, John Donison, Claudia Hammond, Stuart Maclean, Rajesh Merchandani)
Rajesh Merchandani staying on in sunny California, bringing this edition to a close. I'll be here again on Saturday morning with a fresh delivery of dispatches from around the world. Do join us. Goodbye.