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From Our Own Correspondent
Libyan pets
00:27:48
What does a chaotic pet market have to tell us about Libya's transition from to Kevin...
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Hello.
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This Download from the BBC is the
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latest edition of the Radio 4 programme
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from our own correspondent, it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, fewer than 20 dead. It hardly makes the news in Mexico, but the country's violent drug wars are set to play a key part in the coming election. An African grey parrot struck dumb as Libya's new leaders fail to impose law and order. A massive gas find off the coast of Mozambique. It means Life on 32 palm fringed islands will never be the same again. And in the mangrove swamps of southern Togo, there are twins who never die. They only go out for a walk in the forest. Candidates in the Mexican presidential election in July yesterday launched their campaigns, each calling for an end to violence. During the years the current president, Felipe Calderon has been in power, more than 50,000 people have lost their lives in drug related bloodshed. The contest to succeed him will be a fierce one. And will Grant says the candidates know that Mexican voters are looking to them to take on the country country's ruthless drug gangs.
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The stories are gruesome and frequent. In January, 15 bodies were dumped on a petrol station forecourt in the state of Michoacan. Two weeks ago, 10 severed heads were left outside a slaughterhouse in the neighbouring state of Guerrero. The next day, gunmen shot dead 12 policemen in an ambush as they searched for the perpetrators. Not to mention the countless individual murders and double homicides that are so common they barely cause a ripple on the evening news. Undoubtedly, Mexicans are still affected by the tales of extreme violence emerging from different corners of the country. But perhaps because I haven't been here long, I'm surprised how quickly they fade from the local media or how little people speak of them. After more than six years of such brutality, fatigue is setting in. The constant barrage of grisly details coming out of states like Tamar Lipas in the north or Guerrero to the west, and has begun, it seems, to wear down people's sympathy. You'll get like that too, eventually. A journalist who has been here for a while warned me when I first arrived, I barely even bother to pitch a story if the body count is less than 20. Heartless, perhaps, but it reflects a growing reality in Mexico that frankly, unless an attack has been particularly bloody, people here have seen worse. The drug trade in Mexico is often painted as something distant along the long and porous border with the US or in the mountains of states with names like Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua. But there is a growing sense that it is getting closer, reaching previously peaceful parts of the country and rearing its head in the capital. I think a lot of us in Mexico City are missing some of the terrible violence taking place in the poorer outskirts of the city, says Ana Maria Salazar, a former drug enforcement official in the Clinton administration now living in Mexico. As we sip coffee in her garden, she tells me of something known as narco menudeo the street level drug trade in Mexico City rather than the cross border trafficking, which is also turning nasty. Every day on the walks to the office, you can see the effects of this increased drug availability. The boys who dart out among the traffic to wipe down the windscreens for a handful of pesos are often surreptitiously inhaling solvents on the pavement as they wait for the lights to turn red. Domestic addiction is something of a taboo subject with the Mexican authorities, who prefer to paint the drug problem as solely the result of demand north of the border. For a man whose two predecessors were killed in helicopter crashes in mysterious circumstances, the Interior minister, Alejandro Poid, is very relaxed as he settles down in a plush library in his offices. He gently mocks my accent before speaking in his own Harvard educated English. With almost 50,000 people killed since the current administration took over, isn't it time to change tack? I ask him. Has the time come to try to negotiate a peace deal with the drug traffickers? What do you think that would mean to the families of those killed by the cartels? He replied rhetorically, pausing for dramatic effect. The only way in which the levels of violence will come down and people will feel safe and free is when we make sure every single criminal is tried fairly in court and is paying for his crimes. But in today's Mexico, the day that every single criminal is tried fairly in court seems a long way off. The country's presidential election campaign is now officially underway. There are three main candidates. The frontrunner, Enrique Pena Nieto, a telegenic politician from the party which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century. His closest challenger, Josefina Vazquez Mota, Mexico's first ever female presidential candidate for a major political party and the runner up from the last election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or Amlo for short, the left winger. For the next three months, through rallies, billboard posters and Internet videos, these candidates will be presenting themselves as the right choice on the drugs war. Change is coming, is AMLO's bold slogan as he tries to tap into that collective exhaustion with the relentless violence. But the drug trade is lucrative and deeply ingrained, and many Mexicans fear that no matter who wins in July, it will be years before the Grim reports of decapitated bodies stop appearing on the news.
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And that's well, Grant There are signs in Libya that life is beginning to return to normal. Oil production is getting back on track. Elections are planned for early summer, but serious problems remain. In the last few days, more than 50 people have been killed in tribal clashes in the south of the country. A senior member of the Governing Council announced his resignation, frustrated at their inability to impose law and order. And it isn't just warring factions and an overabundance of guns the new leaders have to contend with. Kevin Connolly says the amount of uncollected rubbish found on many streets, even in the capital Tripoli, symbolises the difficulties they face.
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Libya is still in an early stage of its wobbly trajectory from dictatorship through revolutionary chaos to whatever comes next. So they probably haven't got round to appointing any animal welfare officers just yet. But when they do, there's a mountain of paperwork waiting for them at the pet market on the city ring road near the old Gaddafi compound. There are places where the phrase mountain of paperwork is just a figure of speech, like soul of discretion or hive of activity. But in Tripoli, there really are mountains of paperwork building up along the sides of some major roads where the householders of Libya's free capital city have taken to dumping household rubbish in higgledy piggledy foothills of food tins and fetid waste. Now and then the rubbish appears to ripple as a sleek and lustrous rat slithers through, graceful as an otter in a highland stream. Libya is a country intoxicated with the poetry of nation building, forming parties, holding elections and bedding in the principles of democracy. The prose of governing, emptying bins or preventing motorists from speeding, for example, is dull stuff by comparison. So no one really does it. The pet market would gladden the heart of anyone anywhere in the world who feels that business is mired in pettifogging bureaucracy. It's a spontaneous weekly gathering of animal traders who park their cars along either side of one section of a busy main road. So light is the new government's touch on the tiller of regulation that the road isn't even closed, and pedestrian browsers pick their way through a steady stream, and of ill tempered drivers nudging through the crowds. Caged birds are the big sellers here, but if you are an animal lover, look away now. It's not just the budgies with no room to budge and the finches without the space to flinch. There is a species of tiny African bird so light and so delicate that when a hand reaches into the crowded cage to scoop one out. Dozens of others swirl furiously and helplessly like leaves in a sudden breeze. There is an African grey parrot, too, blinking solemnly out from behind the bars of a tiny cage. He has an air of affronted dignity, as though the only reason he's not speaking is because he refuses to lower himself to the vulgarity of showmanship. The distinction between pet and part is uncomfortably blurred, and not just because of the tortoises, which look like ambulant but lethargic meat pies. One man has two boxes of rabbits. The slightly cuter, sleeker ones on the right, with velvety ears and brown buttony noses, are destined for hearth and hutch. The ones on the left are heading for casserole country. The market does work, testament to how the instinct to trade can flicker like a pilot light in the heart over decades of totalitarianism and then burst into life with the smallest encouragement. Anyone in Tripoli with a picnic table and a camping gas ring can set up a roadside omelette stall. And of course, the surrounding mountains of rubbish provide somewhere handy to throw anything left over. The market itself is laid out like a kind of food chain, starting with tiny birds whose wings beat like batted eyelids, and working up to the larger, lairier members of the canine kingdom. Every so often a big hound is led through the crowds which prudently part to let them past. Some have the ripped ears and dull eyed aggression of the fighting dog, but we never reach the dog department. There is a sudden sound of gunfire, regular and rhythmic at first, like the sound of target practice or a seller showing off to a prospective buyer. But there is something more to this. It sends a pulse of aggression running through the crowd like electricity, and a breakaway group spills through the fetid foothills of rubbish and across a dried river bed which lies beside it. One young man scampers clear of the scene before turning to gesture aggressively towards the group from which he'd run away, that universal sign of raised arms and beckoning hands, which means come on then, and which is nearly always made from a safe distance. Eventually the trouble is broken up by a group of rebel fighters who emerge from a neighbouring barracks with slightly heavier weapons, including a flashy nickel plated machine gun to restore order. They stalk through the crowds, warning that the pet market has to stop and that if it reappears next week there will be trouble. Somewhere in those edgy moments are traces of many of the problems and opportunities that post Gaddafi Libya faces. Unlicensed traders, unregulated firearms, uncollected rubbish, all Sorts of impulses are contending uneasily but unmistakably for power in uncertain times here. No wonder no one's got round to appointing an animal welfare officer just yet.
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Kevin Connolly in Tripoli. This week's drama in the North Sea, when a platform was evacuated amid talk of a possible explosion, underlines the fact that offshore drilling can be a hazardous business. It's something perhaps which the people of Mozambique haven't yet fully considered, as an enormous gas field off their coast was only discovered last October, but it could make Mozambique one of the most significant exporters of gas in the world. Refineries will now be built and 500 miles of pipeline laid. Antonia Quirk's been to find out what all this will mean for the islanders.
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Just off the north eastern tip of Mozambique lies the Quirimbas Archipelago, a Crescent of 32 tiny pristine sanded islands, most of them deserted, some of them occupied by villages of fishermen who still use spears to fish. Ibo, one of the more southern islands, was used by the Portuguese as their administrative centre until 1975, when they were required to quit in just 24 hours after independence. The long civil war that followed and the relentless poverty and lawlessness here. North Mozambique is known as the Wild west of Africa, prevented Igbo and the rest of the archipelago from any kind of serious development. And so it fell into a kind of forgetfulness. When I arrive on a ferociously hot day in a small boat down a boulevard of mangroves. Maine's electricity has just been introduced to the island for the first. The rains have come, bringing with them the kind of honey coloured lightning which at night the shoals of barracuda in the seas around use to hunt on the shore. The Once smart pink 18th century Portuguese stone villas have been left for over three decades to grow thick with tamarind trees and indigo. The island is eerily quiet, like an Inca ruin. Few of the islanders have even heard of the gas discovery, let alone its scale. Gas was always known to have been here, but the war had kept it from being properly investigated. And besides, very few people know of this place. A British run consortium in 1891 deemed these islands of absolutely no commercial interest. And the Kurimbas was last actually mapped by the Russians in the 1950s and then not altogether accurately, during the 20 years since the war ended, the area had been quietly becoming known as a paradise for a handful of wealthy European and South African eco adventurers. The seas with their warm gentle currents and acres of unbleached coral have not been overfished. No Japanese Longline trawlers here, not least most recently because of pirates. One night at a bar on the island of Vimizi in the north, I meet a big game fisherman from Zimbabwe. Is he 30 or 50? Who can tell? His face is so weathered. Who says over his fifth beer, the pirates are every fisherman's best friend. The talk on these islands is always and endlessly of fish. Record sized peacock grouper and mangrove snapper are brought up all the time. And today someone drags a 140 kilo dog tuner onto the sand. Everyone raises their glasses to the sea. But even pirates cannot stop the refineries and pipelines. There is a sense on Vermizi of anxious anticipation. Some hope that the Mozambique government will run the project well and money will filter down to the islands, which are particularly poor. Many people have feared the worst from the start. An islander tells me that when they heard gas had been found to both the north and south, they watched all night as the illuminated exploration vessels searched and searched ever closer to their shores. We stood on the sand, he says, and prayed it would not be found right here, thanking Allah when the vessels moved on. A conservationist I meet paints the worst case scenario of thousands of construction workers and huge tankers collecting and potentially spilling the liquefied gas. The region will change forever, he says. With so many men, many of them imported from outside Africa, there will be the inevitable need to supply them with everything from food and beer to women. But for now, the islands wait. There are times here, walking across mud flats to get from one island to a canoe to get to another, when you feel you are the furthest away from anywhere in the world, and that no kind of industry or government could do anything but slide away. In an old fort on Igbo, I find a room piled high with secret files left behind by the Portuguese. Secreto goes the red stamp on the mouldering pages describing the activity of rebel gangs, a regime come and gone. Later that day, as a storm hits, I take shelter along with hundreds of weaver birds on the crumbling veranda of a guest house with no guests. The receptionist proudly shows me an Olivetti telephone, which was probably last used in the 1940s, its wires long rotted. He picks up the defunct receiver and says into it two of the unlikeliest words to amuse me. Hello, London.
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Antonia Quirk. In Mozambique now, the world has always been fascinated by twins, and all the more so if they're identical. In times gone by, they were sometimes sacrificed to ward off natural disasters. But other cultures saw them as a sign of Plenty, perhaps, that the livestock would reproduce energetically. And then, of course, there's a well in Scotland. Drink half a cup of water, it's said, and you'll have twins. They are also regarded as special in parts of West Africa. Jonathan Fryer has got to know one particular family in Togo which enjoy special status because of its tendency to produce twins.
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The boatman pointed the prow of our launch towards the thick mangroves that lined the northern shore of the lagoon. Then he cut the engine. Slowly we glided under a canopy of branches till we came to a shuddering halt amongst a tangle of roots. He held a finger to his mouth as I adjusted to the gloom. Silently, he pointed to various pairs of eyes that had started to emerge from the brackish water. These were small fish of prehistoric appearance that latched onto the mangrove roots and then slowly climbed up in a caterpillar like motion, reassured by our lack of movement and noise. Later, the villagers will be along to harvest them, my local companion, Cosi, said as the boatman gingerly backed out his craft. Catching these fish and shrimps is the main activity for the men round here while the women make salt. I'd heard about salt making amongst the fond people of this part of the West African coast and the laborious but effective method they've been using over the centuries. And at a nearby village, I was able to witness it for myself. The basic ingredient is the sludge in which the mangroves grow. This is put into baskets over which fresh water is poured. The liquid that filters through this dark brown mud trickles down into a bowl into which a couple of kola nuts have been placed. When the liquid is saline enough, the nuts float and the bowl is taken away to a thatched hut where charcoal fires are burning. There, the bowls are heated until the water evaporates, leaving behind brilliantly white salt crystals that will be bagged and sold. It tastes delicious, too. By the time I emerged from the evaporation hut, sweating profusely, I'd acquired two little boys, each holding on tight to one of my hands. Clearly, having a real live white man to oneself was something of a status symbol amongst the village kids. Awkwardly, we maneuvered along the slippery path until we reached the home of the family considered to be the most fortunate in the whole region. For generations, this family has been producing twins, which in West Africa are generally believed to have preternatural powers. These can provoke both fear and awe. In ancient times, the Yoruba, who inhabit a swathe of West Africa from Nigeria to Togo, used to sacrifice twins to assuage malevolent spirits. But these days, their birth is a cause for rejoicing among the different tribes. Their arrival is thought to bring good luck and prosperity to the family concerned. But they have to be nurtured carefully, even indulgently, as they also have the power to bring disaster and disease upon the community. As Cosey explained, twins are given specific names according to whether they are identical, the same sex or or different. And which one is born first? The Fon, as well as the Yoruba, believe that the firstborn is actually the younger twin, as he or she has been sent out by the other still inside their mother's womb to see what the world looks like. If the first baby cries, the other knows it's safe to follow. A voodoo priest will later advise the mother about what food the twins should eat, what colours they should wear, and which animals are potentially dangerous for them. The family I was now visiting had been producing twins for generations, which had won them great renown. And as I sat in front of their little wooden house next to the eldest man, one of the women went to fetch the absent twins to present to me. When a twin dies, a small wooden figure representing them is made, and it's washed, clothed and given offerings of food on a regular basis. When the woman returned, she was bearing a large bowl lined with cloth and divided into little sections. In each compartment lay an exquisitely dressed wooden doll, each distinct from the other, and all looking far more affluent than the family around me. When a twin leaves this life, Cosi whispered to me before I made any gaffe, no one must say he's dead. Instead, we say, he's gone for a walk in the forest.
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Jonathan Fryer in Togo. Next Friday sees the start of Passover, one of the most important occasions in the Jewish calendar. It commemorates the story of Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. The first two nights of the festival see family and friends gathering for storytelling, singing and games, and a great deal of food. In New York City, where there are 2 million Jews, the anticipation, the cooking and the shopping are well underway. Reggie Nagelson has already phoned through her order.
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I'm on the phone to Russ and Daughters trying to order food for a party, and a quiet, familiar voice says, hello, Reggie, this is Sherpa Locks. How can I help? Oh, good. I think Sherpa knows his way around the lox and other delicacies I'm hoping to buy at Russ, New York's great appetizing store. But maybe I better explain Sherpas in New York Locks Appetizing Stores Joel Russ, a Jewish immigrant from Central Europe, started selling smoked and pickled fish on Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1914. Subsequently, his daughters took over. Then his grandson Mark Federman went to law school. But Mark heard the call of the Lockes, it is said, and return to run the store. In the last half decade or so, Mark's daughter Nikki and her first cousin Josh have taken over the business. Lox is in the Blood In New York, an appetizing store usually refers to a place that sells those fishy delicacies, sometimes defined as stuff that goes with the bagels. Head into Russ on East Houston street where the pink and green neon sign and a couple of neon fish Salmon, I think wink over the door. On one side are glass fronted counters that contain golden skin, sweet fleshed smoked whitefish, smoked mackerel, smoked sable, the smoked sturgeon. There is homemade cream cheese and behind the counter the best bagels in town also bialys and the onion rolls known as pletzel. In back there is the caviar pickled herring, the herring in cream sauce, the herring salad. Before Jewish holidays, items like gefilte fish, matzo ball soup and latkes potato pancakes to you are available to crowds who jam the shop. Take a ticket, please. But at the very heart of the place is the locks and the nova. In New York, almost everyone refers to smoked salmon as lox. Lox, in fact, is the cheaper, saltier brined belly salmon. Its more aristocratic cousin, cold smoked salmon, often comes from Nova Scotia, but New Yorkers use the term nova to refer to all smoked salmon except lox. Got it at rust. Displayed in all their glory are smoked salmons from Ireland, Scotland, Norway. There is even pastrami salmon salmon spiced with pastrami flavoring. And behind the counter are the slicers princes of the Church of Lox. Among them is sherpa. How much would you like? He asks, wielding the slicing knife as an artist, his brush turning smoked salmon into pale pink paper thin slices of paradise. It takes at least 10 years to become a great slicer, he adds. Sherpa's Sherpa locks that is full name is Sherpa Chapte Panasha, and he was born in Patlai, a village of 120 in eastern Nepal. At school there were no chairs and I got tired of sitting on the bare floor listening to teachers for eight or 10 hours a day, sherpa says. Restless and ambitious, he made his way to Zaarsi, where he worked with trekkers, made friends with foreigners, got himself into English language school in Kathmand. His English is pretty perfect now and then to America. I've been everywhere in America, and I've done everything, including crushing grapes in the Napa Valley, says Sherpa. Eventually I made my way to New York. A job at an uptown appetizing store taught Sherpa to slice salmon. Then someone mentioned Russ and Daughters. What is Russ? He thought. And this being before ubiquitous use of the Internet, he wandered the streets until he found it and asked for a job until he got in a store manager. Now Sherpa has been at Russ for a decade, where he works alongside Italians, Dominicans, Mexicans and Israelis. Sherpa lives in Jackson Heights in Queens, where he says, I feel completely at home. But then there are now about 7,000 Nepalese in New York and approximately 2,000 Sherpas. In 1907, when Joel Russ arrived at Ellis island in it was a long journey, but he came like millions of others, in search of refuge and maybe a little slice of paradise. When long ago the Sherpa tribe migrated from Tibet to Nepal, it is said that they too journeyed first in search of a Shangri La. You might think of Russ and Daughters as a primarily Jewish shop, but this is New York. Everyone comes here. Do you like the food at Russ? I ask. Sherpa grins. Oh, yes, I eat it all. I always say to customers. I am from Kathmanju.
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And with that from Reggie Nadelson, well prepared for Passover. I think we've reached the end of another program. I'll be back with more from around the world next Saturday morning. Do join us. Goodbye.