← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Rio Rubbish
00:28:13
Correspondents' tales: why they're arguing about Macchiavelli on a rubbish tip in Rio...
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You're about to hear from our own correspondent.
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We do two versions of the programme,
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one for the BBC World Service and this one's a download of the latest edition from BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today it's all change in the election in Brazil. But on a rubbish tip in Rio, they're still arguing about Machiavelli. India and Pakistan are arguing again too about who started the latest cross border skirmish in Kashmir. We're talking about Timbuktu on the back of a motorbike in Ouagadougou. And men of God made the journey in the Middle Ages. Now Hollywood's following in their wake towards a remote outcrop of the west coast of Ireland. So who's going to be the next President of Brazil, the largest and most populous country in South America? The election goes to a run off vote in 10 days time. The environmentalist from the Amazon is now out. The president who many thought would step straight back in is beginning to look shaky. The pro business, pro US outsider suddenly looks worth a bet. In the meantime, there are voters to be won over. And while the rich are being assured they are not about to be hit hard, the poor are hearing that for them life could just get a little better. The pledges from the presidential hopefuls underline the huge gulf which exists between Brazil's haves and have nots. Neil Trevithick has been talking to some of those who've been trying to make ends meet. Or on a rubbish tip in Rio
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de Janeiro, smoke drifts like mist across an apocalyptic landscape of rubbish and rubble. Huge pigs snuffle through the haze while to my left a goose tries to separate tiny newborn chicks from their mother. The hen stands her ground and pecks the threat away. Cheered on by two small children. Methane flares from pipes driven deep into 35 years of rubbish. And someone stamps on a five foot snake that emerges from the vast pile. We are in Gramacco, only a short drive away from the glittering beaches of Ipanema and Copa Gabana. Here, until recently, most of the poor survived by sorting through the rubbish for anything valuable that they were able to sell on. Some visitors talk of the nobility of these cathedores or rubbish pickers. They suggest that their hunter gatherer attitudes and hardy self determination are attributes lacking in the comfortable lives of Rio's rich and fashionable models and football stars. Gloria tells me she was a rubbish picker from a very young age, but she was embarrassed by her background. She used to scrub herself endlessly before going to school to get rid of the smell. But the stink wouldn't go away. It would emerge from the sweat on her fingers, transfer itself onto her pencil, infuse her pretty dress, and the other children would hold their noses and point at her. She immersed herself in the books she found in the tip when she grew up. Dostoevsky helped her through severe postnatal depression after the birth of her child. When she read about bullying, guilt, conflict, poverty, and the murderous need for money in the Brothers Karamazov, it was a world she immediately recognized. Another Grammacco resident, Zumbi, says he ironed the pages of the prints to make them readable. When he found a copy scrunched up and wet amidst decomposing food scraps, he and two friends who'd also read the book argue about leadership techniques in Renaissance Italy. They speak fast and fluently, these catadores. They've absorbed Machiavelli's lessons. They're model students. They may need to apply those lessons to their own lives rather soon. The Grimacho dump has been closed. The landfill is full. Today, Rio's messy domestic waste goes to a sealed pit. Elsewhere, it gets regularly covered in hygienic layers of soil, and it's off limits to the rubbish pickers. The city council wants the Grimacho rubbish pickers to work in new warehouses, which they call recycling plants. Commercial rubbish is delivered by lorries, and the rubbish pickers sort it and earn their own living by selling on anything valuable. It's essentially the same process as before, made more orderly, taken indoors. But it means that the catedores are no longer allowed to dig through the outdoor landfill. Gloria now has a phone and a computer in one of those warehouses. She rings companies asking for cardboard, paper, bottles, cans to be delivered. The problem is there's not enough rubbish to fill all of the warehouses the council has built. There's no longer enough work for all of the catadoris, and the future for those working in the warehouses rests on Gloria's shoulders. And that phone. The economist Manuel Thedin, director of the Iets Institute in Rio that does research on work and society, tells me she's bound to fail because she just can't manage such a big task on her own. Outside, the sun is setting gloriously over the flaring methane and legally tipped building rubble. Snakes, shouting children. The remaining catedores, those who can't find work in the warehouses, still live in shacks built on rubbish foundations, forbidden from picking through the dump. They are without the hope that comes from treasure hunting. I'm Reminded of the biblical quote, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. The earth, of course, is commonly interpreted to mean the world or the holy land. But standing here, it seems to me that it might be more honest to think of earth as soil or dirt. The meek shall inherit dirt. Giving a voice to the voiceless and broadcasting those voices to those in power is a romantic notion. Amongst some journalists, it entertains the possibility of being a force for change. But Manuel Thedin says the powerful are not good listeners. They won't even allow the poor to sift through their old rubbish so that they can earn a living from it. Perhaps money should be spent enabling poor people from around the world to meet each other. The only real help they're ever going to get is from each other and perhaps from their companeros in literature.
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And that was Neil Trevithick. Senior Indian and Pakistani military officials have been holding discussions after a surge of violence across the border in the disputed region of Kashmir. A number of villagers died in the exchanges of artillery fire and thousands of people left their homes to seek sanctuary away from the border area. Kashmir has been a blight on relations between the two countries since independence from Britain in 1947. Both India and Pakistan control parts of the mountain territory and claim all of it. Shaima Khalil's been to talk to people in a Pakistani village close to the border.
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Walking around the sleepy village of Damala, it's hard to imagine that only a few days ago this was the scene of intense shelling as Pakistan and India again squared up to each other. Senior security officials say it was caught in the middle of the worst escalation in decades. It's only a few hundred meters from the Indian border, just across from Indian administered Kashmir. So close that beyond the small mud houses and the lush green fields, you can see the Indian border control posts. This latest flare up between the two nuclear armed neighbors happened during the festival of Eid Al Adha, one of the holiest times for Muslims. I was among a group of correspondents taken there by the Pakistani security forces. They wanted to show us the damage that had been caused and of course they said that it was the Indians who had violated the ceasefire. The villagers may not be used to TV cameras, microphones and endless questions, but they still seemed keen to talk about what had happened. We were taken to the Akhtar family house. One of the walls is peppered with holes caused by the shelling. Bits of mortar shells are strewn across the floor of this now deserted family home. Whether they were a result of the cross border firing or whether they were strategically placed there for the benefit of the media, it's hard to tell. But the child's slippers, abandoned on the floor next to a blood stained pillow and shirt, certainly suggested this family had suffered a grave loss. All three deaths in the village we were told were from the Achtar family. They lost two of their three boys in the shelling as well as their grandmother. At the nearby military hospital, I find the boy's mother, Iram Shehzadi, sitting on a bed next to her surviving six year old son, Akhil Akhtar. He was sleeping next to his mother and a small teddy bear. Despite the bandages on his face and arms, it's clear Akhil had a lucky escape. Iram was sitting quietly next to her son. But the minute I approached her and asked her what had happened, she started crying uncontrollably. My sons were wearing their new clothes for aid. They had washed their faces and were getting ready for the celebrations. She told me through her tears, now they're dead. My whole world is destroyed. I can never go back to that village again. Still crying, she touched Akil's face and then kissed his hand. On the Indian side of the border there were almost mirror images of this destruction and misery. In total, at least 20 civilians were killed in this latest flare up and many people had to flee their homes. The number of casualties is hard to verify as getting to these remote places is almost impossible without the permission of the security forces. Not surprisingly of course, both sides accuse each other of targeting civilians. The irony is that this latest surge in cross border aggression comes at a time when campaigners from both countries and have just shared a peace prize. Pakistan's noble peace laureate Malala Yousafzai issued invitations to both the Indian and the Pakistani leaders to accompany her and fellow winner Kailash Sataryati, an Indian child rights activist, to the awards ceremony. Yet only two hours later, the firing started in Kashmir and neither of the two leaders was prepared to say if he would accept Malala's invitation. This is one of the oldest and most complicated conflicts in the world. It took a senior general more than 30 minutes to explain the different types of borders which exist between India and Pakistan. It's far easier to comprehend the civilian suffering, however, a mother of three struggling to come to terms with the fact that now she's a mother of just one injured child. An old woman sitting at the entrance of her small house, telling me about the different injuries her son sustained in the shell fire and not knowing whether or not he'll ever make it back home. And families who had to leave their homes in the dead of the night and then had to risk returning in the morning in order to make sure that all was well with their livestock. There's always endless analysis and discussion about political and military maneuvers on any two sides of a conflict. But the human cost is simpler to explain. As I get up to leave the military hospital, little Akil shifts uncomfortably in his bed as he wakes up next to his mother and his teddy bear. He doesn't yet know that he's lost both his brothers and that he's now an only child.
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Shaima Khalil In Kashmir two years ago, Mali in West Africa was at war. Rebels from the Tuareg community and jihadist Muslims took over the north of the country. Eventually the French army intervened, the occupiers were evicted, elections were held and peace restored. But still, today there are thousands of Malian refugees living in neighbouring countries like Burkino Faso. Reluctant or unable to go home, they complain of poor living conditions, boredom and frustration. Some of the Tuareg refugees in Burkina Faso leave their camp to head into the capital, Ouagadougou, to try their luck selling jewellery and other items in the city's hotels. Chris Simpson tells us how he, somewhat reluctantly, became a customer.
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One of the many things I liked about my hotel in Ouagadougou was its open door policy on guides and vendors. There were the regulars arriving every morning, some striding confidently, some walking hesitantly past reception towards the modest restaurant. Staff. Management and guests acknowledged there was a price for this tolerance. Hawkers with hard luck stories could occasionally outstay their welcome. There was no malice here, but the more persistent offenders could easily be marked down as predators who had breached salesman's protocol by interrupting breakfast. A feeble haggler and notoriously poor judge of artifacts and trinkets, I was initially reticent, even rude, when Alhassan nervously approached me bearing a collection of jewelry boxes and daggers. Ninety minutes later we had the beginnings of a friendship. Timbuktu was our connection. I had visited the city two months earlier, curious to see if the much talked about cultural citadel lived up to its reputation and to find out how it was recovering after a brutal period of conflict and occupation by Islamist extremists. Al Hasan was what is called a Bella, a dark skinned Tuareg and a Tombuktusyan. A native of Timbuktu from his childhood, Alassan had been a shepherd, looking after goats, sheep and camels. But he had also followed in his father's footsteps, making jewellery and selling it to tourists. He was barely literate, but spoke crisp, lyrical French. Still only 27 but married with four children, Alhassan was in exile from his home in Mali and miserable. Sensing I might be sceptical, he awkwardly pushed over his identity papers, confirming he was a refugee living in a camp some 20 miles from Ouagadougou. I would be more than welcome to come see him and his family, he insisted, while joking, that he would much rather show me round Timbuktu on top of his camel. A few days later, I was on the back of Alhassan's borrowed motorbike, speeding through the city's outskirts, switching from bustling highways to isolated dirt tracks, heading for the camp. I had no permit, so the visit was brief and discreet. But there was time enough for the obligatory three glasses of tea, while Al Hasan patiently translated my inquiries for his neighbours and kept the children in order. Refugee testimonies are rarely full of joy and optimism. On a first ever visit to Africa, I was bombarded with stories of villages torched and desperate treks through the bush from Liberians who had fled into Ivory Coast. Twenty years later, I winced as Nyborean womanhood crossed into Liberia to described the murder of her husband and her own rape, explaining how she could never go home. But often you sit patiently, trying to avoid bland and tactless platitudes as you listen to mundane complaints about meager food allowances, poor sanitation, children's health problems and the sheer unadulterated boredom. For Malian refugees to be reminded that things would be a lot worse if they were Syrian or from the Central African Republic does not offer much consolation. Nor do assurances that plans are in place for a carefully organised return programme, providing that Timbuktu and other once troubled parts of northern Mali are showing proof of a new calm and stability that is still far from guaranteed. The Malian government has yet to thrash out a proper peace deal with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, the MNLA, the mainly Tuareg organisation which launched its insurgency in 2012. There is a sizeable pro Azawad bloc amongst the refugees in Burkina Faso. I received long lectures in my hotel from champions of this separatist solution who wanted a homeland independent of Mali's republic. But there were equally compelling arguments from Tuareg sceptics, who saw it as a dangerous and already costly pipe dream. Al Hasan followed news from his home country with acute interest, but was wary of talking politics. He explained cautiously but bitterly that as a Bella. He still felt ill at ease with some of the lighter skinned Tuaregs, historically his masters. Alassan warned that for all the lip service now being paid to reconciliation in Mali, there were uncomfortable age old questions about social status and ethnic identity to be resolved. He saw these complications casting a long shadow over his future in Timbuktu. For now, Al Hasan had other priorities. The desperate battle to save enough to his own motorbike. The medicine for a sick child that was well beyond his means. The need to get something back to the refugee craftswomen who had given their jewellery boxes for sale. The forays into Ouagadougou were a welcome distraction, but could also be humiliating. It turned out that my tolerant hotel was the exception, not the rule, when it came to approaching customers. If lucky, you might get a pitch in the parking lot. If unlucky, more rejection and more dejection.
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Chris Simpson in Burkino, Faso the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon was in Gaza on Tuesday and said the destruction there caused during the war with Israel in the summer was beyond description. 20,000 homes were badly damaged or destroyed. Rebuilding could take years. International donors meeting earlier in Cairo promised they'd contribute more than 3 billion pounds. But it wasn't just buildings and infrastructure which were damaged in the 50 Day War. More than 2,000 people were killed and many seriously injured. A team of medical specialists from Britain recently flew out to help the Palestinian doctors who, months after the violence, are still trying to help those with serious injuries. Julia McFarlane travelled to Gaza with them.
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I have to say I'm terrified of leaving behind my wife and two small children, Dr. Naveen Kaval told me when I asked him why he'd come to Gaza. Naveen is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon living in London. He's never been to a war zone before in his life, but he was hoping his skills would be of some help in Gaza. The most serious case the visiting medics encountered at the Al Shifa Hospital was that of Abdullah Abu harbid. He was 24 years old and was newly married to a demure young girl called Imani. He was out walking when an airstrike hit a building next to him. Falling debris shattered most of the bones in his arm. As he got up, he triggered an unexploded shell which had been lying close by. The blast tore away half his pelvis, removed a third of his thigh bone and carved out a hunk of flesh on his right hand side. His left leg was barely attached to the rest of his body when he was brought to the hospital. But he felt no pain because the heat of the blast cauterized his wound, killing the tissue. But that was weeks ago, and by the time the British doctors arrived at Al Shifa, Abdullah's stained and dishevelled bandage was musty. The festering wound stank of meat, and there was a fly buzzing around it. I've treated severe wounds like this before, naveen said quietly. In the operating theater. They were mostly from car accidents. But war wounds aren't accidents. These injuries, they were not caused by accident. He frowned and continued to quietly pick away at the dead tissue on Abdullah's leg. Abdullah had no choice but to have his entire leg amputated from the hip down. That's the difficulty with these dreadfully injured people, graham Groom, one of the visiting doctors, a senior orthopedic surgeon, told me. We can't work miracles. We were able to save his life, but not his leg. Abdullah will have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. And in a place like Gaza, where the rubble and wreckage are everywhere, it's going to be a bumpy ride. Dr. Groome was full of praise for the local medical teams here. They are truly excellent, he said. They just don't have the specialists or the resources that we have in London. The Shejahiya neighborhood to the east of Gaza was pummeled by airstrikes during the conflict. It's very close to the border, and that made it a prime launchpad for militants trying to fire rockets into Israel and a target for Israeli missiles. There's no longer any kind of road in Shejaya. It's hard to imagine the force that tore the concrete into rocks, dust, sand. Harder still to imagine what happened to those who might have been standing nearby. The sun was setting as I looked at the devastation in Shejah, and it was eerily quiet. There was no hum of generators in the background like there is in so many places in Gaza. Here the generators, like everything else, had been destroyed. As we walked through the dust, sand creeping into our shoes, small dots of light began to twinkle through the dark behind the shattered walls. Through the wreckage, we saw the glowing embers of a fire and a group of people sitting around it in the gloom. Next to them was a sign written in Arabic on old packaging, propped up on a short wooden pole. This is the house of Mohammad Gharaib. Keep out, it warned. Trust me, one of the men said. Living here is better than living in the UN Shelters, sharing with seven other families, even if there is no water or electricity. Later, close to the center of Gaza City. We came across a stretch of grass dotted with families, teenagers, men and women and children milling around in the warm night air. Multi colored lights cast moving shadows from a quaint merry go round. We made our way into a small and brightly lit canteen, the warm sugary smell of caramel welcoming us in. In between mouthfuls of the sweet Palestinian pudding known as knafeh, I asked Naveen how he thought his first trip to Gaza had gone despite a heavy day in the hospital. His tired expression brightened at the question. He smiled and said, we did a lot more than I was expecting to in such a short time, and it felt good to contribute. I wasn't so sure I even wanted to come here in the first place. But now that I've been, not only do I think that I ought to come back, I want to come back as well.
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And that was Julia MacFarlane. The Irish seaside town of Port Magee isn't always the liveliest of places, and it wasn't a great deal livelier, apparently, when Hollywood flew in during the summer to film some of the new Star Wars. Port Magee is the place where the boats sail for Skellig Michael, the rocky outcrop in the Atlantic where the scenes were to be shot. The town was hoping it would mean a bumper few weeks for its hotels, bars and restaurants, but the filmmakers stayed only a few days and there was no hell raising to report. There were some against their project who believed it would spoil this historic windy speck out in the stormy ocean. Before the arrival of the filmmakers, Skellig Michael was principally known for its remoteness and its ancient monastery, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Vincent Dowd's been to take a look,
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study the advertising images used to promote Ireland abroad, and often it's as if someone cranked up the colour. Trees and fields are a green beyond technicolour, and surely not all Irish people have hair red enough to make a fox jealous. The palette of colour on the 90 minute boat ride from the village of Port Magee in Kerry to Skellig Michael is more subtle, the exposed rock receding slowly behind us. The little vessel is sturdy rather than speedy, is a rich browny grey. At a distance, ferns and foliage become dark olive green. An hour or so out the Atlantic swells a deep Prussian blue and and then the glistening rains come. The boatman, Cav emerges from the wheelhouse, his hair a tangle of matted blonde. He slides a plastic crate of rain capes towards his dozen passengers, though he will remain throughout in a T shirt and barefoot. Finally, the Tall and craggy outline of Skellig Michael looms. As the makers of Star wars have realized, nature has provided a perfectly cinematic wide shot. The ocean swell can be so strong at this point that the few boats allowed to land each day sometimes have to turn back. We're in luck. The sea is choppy. But Cav hands us one by one up onto the concrete jetty. Experts believe the small monastery on top of Skellig Michael was built around the 7th century AD and was fading in importance by about 1200. Today, in season, fewer than 200 tourists a day get to see its remains. First, however, comes a climb of more than 600 wet, uneven stone steps. At 80, des Lovel may be more familiar with those steps than anyone else alive. He's been arranging trips to Skellig Michael half his life. In the 1960s, he tells me, he'd be calling up hotels in Limerick and Killarney to find even half a dozen Dutch or American tourists intrigued enough to make the same journey the men of God made in the Middle Ages. They'd always ask the same question, he recalls. What on earth made the monks come to this place? To understand that, he says, you have to think the way people did then. Fifteen hundred years ago, it was far easier to travel up and down Ireland by a small boat than by land. The sea and the rivers were the main streets, he says. The a small island it took a day's rowing to get to, didn't seem so remote. And then there were monks on almost every island along the west coast. When I was young, everyone said this was a God fearing country. It was, but not like a thousand years before. Holy people devoted huge amounts of time to contemplating God. But Europe's changed. It's not how we'd pass our lives today. In wild weather, climbing up to the top of the small island is not easy. A head for heights would come in useful. But the difficulty of getting there was in part why the monastery existed and why much of it survived. Bit by bit, other monastic islands closer to shore had their masonry borne off for houses and farm buildings. By now, half the steep path before me is lost under a thick mist. Breathless, I consider abandoning my ascent. But I'm shamed into continuing by a couple in their 60s who almost run past, pulled ever upward by a large dog on a lead. The monastic site is extraordinary. Half a dozen beehive shaped stone huts and two bigger oratories. There are stones marking the graves of monks who died here. But it's the location, high over the Atlantic where which makes the experience otherworldly. I ask Des Lovell if, after hundreds of visits, he's ever now bored with Skellig Michael. Not at all, he says. On a busy summer's day he can be surrounded by tourists, but he'll always feel the power of the place. Des tells me he can always spot the visitors who found the experience of no interest, and the ones who get the most often didn't expect it. So they're like me, he says. You feel close to something, even if you're not sure what it is. Watching my fellow visitors quietly and carefully find their way back down to the boat, I sense he's right. Some of us aren't ready to step back into our own lives. Not just yet.
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Vincent Dowd there, back now from Skellig Michael and bringing this edition of the program to a close. More correspondence tales on Saturday morning here on Radio 4. Do join us. Goodbye.