← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Sept 3, 2011
00:28:09
The day after history was made in Libya Kevin Connolly was out shopping -- and tells a...
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Transcript14 lines
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A
Hi, this is Alan Johnston. We make two editions of from our own correspondent.
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If you'd like to hear the version
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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 Ady.
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Today, a shopping trip in Tripoli, the day after history was made. A mournful hooter on Main street as small town America struggles through economic downturn. We meet a woman in Congo who has helped more than 6,000 victims of rape. And it may have been a disappointing summer here, but in Death Valley, California, it's been a real scorcher. Libya's National Transitional Council says most of the country is now secure and safe, and it's just a matter of time before Colonel Gaddafi is apprehended or killed. The council's leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, says the opposition leadership will move from its present seat in the city of Benghazi to the capital, Tripoli, next week. There, the opposition will formally declare itself the new government of Libya. It's thought, however, there are some divisions over the kind of administration the country should have. Some say Gaddafi's supporters should play a role. Others are demanding a completely fresh start while the debate over the future shape of the country continues. Inside Libya and further afield, there has been an opportunity for our man in Tripoli, Kevin Connolly, to. To do a little shopping.
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The young shop assistant sucked in his cheeks thoughtfully, as though he hoped the gesture might somehow make me thinner. This is a very slimming pattern, he said reassuringly, patting the sleeve of the shirt I was struggling to fit into. I pointed out that any minor optical illusions that vertical stripes produce are cancelled out if the threads holding the buttons are stretched tighter than harp strings. I had not, of course, meant to go shopping for clothes, and as the rebel army which toppled Muammar Gaddafi consolidated its grip on his old capital. But Libya in August is brutally hot, and with my baggage lost in one of the dreary little desert staging posts along our route into Tripoli, I eventually found myself with no choice. It was late when we set out into the inky, humid night. Libyans normally drive as though they were competing at the advanced stages of a motor racing video game. But we made our way sedately along the seafront. It was as though the reckless, showy driving of the past had been all along a subtle form of insurrection, born of a feeling that it's hard to care even about good laws in a bad system. There were checkpoints every few hundred metres at the first A tired young fighter peered cheerfully in through the open window. Just making sure you don't have Gaddafi in the trunk, he said cheerfully. He slammed the boot of the car shut after finding it full only of our flak jackets and flight cases. No room for him in there. With his big frizzy head, he grinned. At another roadblock, a group of young fighters had an old official portrait of Gaddafi torn from a government office perched high on a huge wheelie bin. When one of them spotted a photographer riding on the back of a pickup truck, he unslung his Kalashnikov and loosed off a single round towards the poster. It missed, but he turned and raised the gun above his head in a clenched fist. You might have seen the picture in your newspaper. A dramatic but not inaccurate snapshot of life here and now. Real life Rebels these days tend to take their look from rebels they've seen themselves in Hollywood films. They like sunglasses with reflective lenses and bandanas, and they bind magazines of bullets together with brightly coloured masking tape so they can carry on firing for longer in battle. And here they have about them an air of jubilant satisfaction, a sense that when history came calling at a dangerous and exciting moment in their history, they were not found wanting. When we finally found a shop that was open, it was beside a major checkpoint near the seafront where the rebels had parked a huge mobile anti aircraft gun. Every so often they fired in celebration with a chattering metallic clatter that made it feel as though the fabric of the night was being torn. Even the spent shell casings landing on the ground sounded like cracked dinner gongs being struck with a hammer. Gradually, the shop assistant and I made ourselves understood. Above the racket we established that I needed a shirt that had no epaulettes, shoes with no tassels and shorts I'd be able to fasten up with no one to help me and no slogans. So not the slinky muscle shirt with the words Sexy Skier emblazoned across the chest. Eventually we just settled on the biggest shirt to be found on rails, which normally cater for Tripoli's snake hipped, fat fashionistas. It was still a little snug, but we had a deal. Now, would I like a pair of boat shoes? The shop assistant was surprised when I said the price was more than I'd be prepared to pay for an actual boat. I was worried I was a disappointment. He looked as though he was wondering what the point of joining the free world might be if my modest tastes and moderate spending power were all it had to offer. But then he cheered up. He was glad, he told me he'd decided to open his shop. After all, he he hadn't been sure it was the right thing to do. But as he said, there's no point in being free to do what you want unless you go ahead and do what you want. On the day Gaddafi fell, he had gone out and celebrated. But on the days afterwards, it had been hard to be sure what to do. I think that may often be the case on the day after history is made. People sometimes feel like actors in a great drama, waiting for an unseen director to tell them what to do next. We chatted idly about the difficulties to come, shortages of water and electricity and, bizarrely, petroleum in a country built on a vast underground sea of the stuff. There's the future unity of the rebels to worry about, too, and the honesty and competence of whatever government is to come next. As we talked, the huge machine gun outside opened up again, ripping into the night sky and drowning our idle small talk. It was time to leave with that deafening reminder that for many Libyans, the cares of the future are nothing for the moment when set aside the sheer joy of being here now.
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A rather smartly dressed Kevin Connolly there. Thursday could be a big day for the American president, whose popularity rating is currently wallowing. He's to address a joint session of Congress. It's expected he'll announce some initiative on jobs. The electorate's deeply concerned about unemployment. Yesterday, official figures showed the growth in jobs ground to a halt last month, leaving the U.S. rate of unemployment at more than 9%. And each week there seems to be further gloomy news on the economy. Industrial productions torpid. The country's credit rating slipped, consumer spending on hold. Johnny diamond has been observing how the economic downturn is affecting one small town in North Carolina.
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Eddie sat in the shade of a warm sunny morning and remembered what Rocky Mount's Main street used to be like in his mid-60s now, neither tall nor slim, with white blonde hair beginning to thin his 10 years running. The town's Chamber of Commerce are almost up. In his office, a stiff straw hat with a cheery motto sits atop a cardboard box of belongings that's ready to leave when he does. The local chamber is on the first floor of the restored railway station, a place with more than a hint of museum to it. The railroad first reached this town on Christmas Eve, 1839. Today, the lines, like most of the American network, are mainly used by freight trains, 50 or 60 a day. Here, passenger trains don't make it past the single figures. Before the freight trains come a long lonely hooter sounds that reverberates around the cities, towns and countryside of America, warning anyone foolish enough to hang around the tracks that they'd better get off sometime real soon. Then the bells ring on the crossings and along Main street. The crossing gates come down and great trains make their long trundle through the town. Five minutes of containers or coal going south, orange juice going north. Once the train would have picked up tobacco from the town. Here an early market for bright leaf and had been based, and on it the fortunes of the town had first been made. On one side of the tracks lived the blacks who picked the tobacco, on the other the whites who owned and sold it. Main street ran up the middle, divided by the railway line and the freight trains that moved up and down it. The town is in trouble now. It started with the hurricane of 95 Floyd, which saw so many leave and not come back. Then the Great Recession of the last couple of years roared in and sucked life out, doubling the unemployment rate and more. The textile factories closed up and went offshore. A big bank left, the headquarters of a restaurant chain found somewhere else to go. Just four years ago, mused Eddy, a local magazine did a seven page spread on Rocky Mount. He laughed as if to say it. Imagine that. It had been a hard slog these last few years trying to boost business. Now he's stepping down from the Chamber of Commerce. It's time to take it easy for a bit. Main street, said Eddy, waving his hand up along the railway tracks, is nothing now. Go take a look. Wrong way, says the sign at the start of the street. Dust and decay sit in otherwise empty shop displays. Beige paint blisters off protruding ledges that once sheltered promenading shoppers from the sun. A car's engine ticks quietly as it cools its driver nowhere to be seen. Block after block is like this. Out on the hot pavement, nothing stirs and nobody comes or goes. Dry leaves lie in the entrances of many shops. On top of the fancy stone lettering marking long shut stores, jewel box, Marilyn's shoes, their swirling fonts mocked by the stillness of the day. At the end of Main Street, a man sweeps up outside an antique store. Inside, a musty combination of furniture, curios, and junk from the last century old Coca Cola signs, Mantovani albums, a wall hanging with rusty number plates, a bright blue table from the 50s with a matching set of chairs, ludicrous glazed china figurines, and behind the counter stands Eva, returned to the town after a migration north that so many black Americans made now determined to get some life back into the main street that she too, remembered. She used to come here with her grandparents. She remembers the bustling stores, the packed streets, the cars pushing up and down. Her grandparents were sharecroppers, dirt poor tenant farmers who worked someone else's land and paid rent with part of the harvest. She'd gone north for better jobs, for a better life than that of the fields and local factories. Now, in her mid-50s, she had sunk her retirement fund into the antique shop and the building above it, and she sees a bright future for Rocky Mount. Soon there'll be apartments up top, specialty stores below. That's the trend, she says, places people can walk and work and shop and talk. There's light in her eyes and grit in her voice. She tells me she studied on 14th street up in Washington and had seen that neighborhood turned around. The same thing can happen here. Inside the shop, tumbling with reminders of America's past, it seemed to make sense. Eva's energy and determination cut through the hot weariness of the day. But outside the store, Main street rolled empty. Along the railway tracks, the crossing bells sounded and the few cars waited patiently in the sun for the long train to pass.
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Johnny diamond in North Carolina the Democratic Republic of Congo has been described by a senior UN official as the rape capital of the world. A host of armed groups roam the eastern part of the country, and all of them are accused of horrific violence against women. In one of the most troubled provinces of all, South Kivu, there's a woman who's been dedicating her life to helping rape victims and their children. Masaka Matsuva offers them medical care and counseling, as well as handing out new clothes, medical supplies, even building them houses. Fiona Lloyd Davis says that despite receiving little cash help, she's now offering a service that not even the well funded NGOs in the area are able to provide.
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Massaka Katsuva is a tiny woman. She's barely 5ft tall, but is a giant of a personality, and she's getting cross with me. Fiona, I don't have time to sit and talk to you. If I don't go out to the fields and get cassava, we'll all starve. No problem, I say. I'll come too. We head out from her open compound. It's on the side of a main road. There's little shelter from the minibuses which hurtle past, covering everything and everyone with with a thin film of dust. Goats and children are often hit. The recently installed speed bumps didn't prevent one of Massica's rescued children, seven year old Vivian, from becoming a casualty. She lost two front teeth and suffered a nasty bash to her head. Vivian was abandoned because she was the product of a rape. Her mother was allowed back into her community after being attacked, but they refused to take Vivian back in. Even in the dry season, eastern Congo is lush. Fields of maize swaying in the breeze, grow higher than you've ever seen. Ferocious electric storms light up the night sky in pink and blue, quenching the thirst of the land with enormous raindrops. Everything here seems abundant, and that, unfortunately includes the violence. It's impossible to be sure about figures, but some estimates say that nearly 6 million people have died since the civil war began in 1996. Hundreds of thousands of women and children and men have been raped. It's still going on. Massacre takes me off the main road and down a narrow path under the glare of the intense sun. An elderly couple squeeze past us. The man holds a multicolored umbrella over his wife to shield her from the heat. Massacre has no such protector. Her own husband, who she calls the love of her life, was killed in front of her. She stops by a field of crops and picks some small chili peppers, eating them raw. She turns to me. I never know when I may get my next meal. She smiles. There are crops on all sides. It's harvest time, and patches of coloured material worn by the women workers stand out amongst the green and yellow of the cassava and corn. Some of the women are weeding. Others, with babies on their backs, are breaking off the maize and putting it in baskets. They chat to each other. Occasionally you can hear them laughing. Pointing to her right, Masica shows me a patch of uncultivated land which has been given to her by an American donor. In a few weeks, she tells me, we'll prepare it for planting seeds. She's taking care of one hundred and seventy women at the moment. They call her Mama Massacre. Over the past 10 years, she's helped more than 6,000 victims of rape. This is my personal field, says Massicre, pointing to another patch of ground, this one with cassava trees growing up the side of a hill. It's the one I use to feed everyone at the center. She's greeted by some women working on the land. Massaka tries to dream of a better future, but she's also realistic. She wants her women to be able to stop doing hard manual labor in the fields and learn skills like sewing. But for that to happen, she believes the fighting and the rape have to stop she looks me in the eye and with a sigh says, but I don't see either the rape or the fighting ending today. She's showing me a pile of cassava roots stacked up ready for her to take home when her mobile phone rings. Everyone here is dependent on the mobile. It's virtually the only modern invention that works and keeps the country functioning. Just it's bad news. Massica looks ashen faced. A little baby who's just arrived at the compound is very ill. She's told we must go back there at once. We Back at her house we find eight month old Espoir limp, virtually lifeless. Massacre bathes him in cold water to bring his temperature down. One of the girls has a bag ready packed she can take to the hospital. This happens all the time, I'm told. I found Espoir in a village after an attack, she says as we make our way to hospital. The village chief said that when the militiamen arrived the they told the mothers to throw their babies down and then beat them to death. When the spoils mother refused, they shot her dead. Massica found the baby with a broken arm and brought him home three months ago. There are times, she says, when she feels devastated. But then she adds, when I find a baby without a mother in the middle of a pile of corpses, I'll save the child and who knows what the future will bring. I'm devoted to these babies, she sighs. I must help them survive. They keep me going.
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And that's Fiona Lloyd Davies the announcement from the Met Office the other day that this summer had been the coolest in 20 years wasn't exactly bombshell news. Apart from a flurry of heat back in June, it has, after all, been pretty dismal. August was particularly disappointing. Temperatures were down and the amount of sunshine the Met people gloomily confirm was less than you'd expect. The weather stories are quite different elsewhere, of course. Hugh Cordy says they haven't needed their woolly sweaters in parts of California.
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Death Valley is the lowest, driest, hottest place in North America. And if that's not enough to persuade the die hard sun seekers to visit, it also has the record for the hottest July ever recorded anywhere in the world. A blistering 134 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 57 Celsius. But while this may be heaven for some gods and goddesses, not everybody appreciates the conditions for those living here year round. Like Skydra Kempowski, the concessions manager of Death Valley national park, thoughts of July are enough to bring on a case of phantom heatstroke. This is Skydra's second year in the post, so trying not to smile, I I ask her how long it was after arriving that she thought about a transfer. Four months, she says, breaking into a giggle. Or, to put it another way, the experience of one summer. In July and August, she explains, you can't really do anything outside. It's like trying to breathe in a pizza oven. Just walking to the car from the house can leave you utterly drained. And getting into your car doesn't necessarily bring relief. Skydra tells me that sometimes the steering wheel gets so hot you have to wear gloves just to hold it. When I arrive for the interview, I notice the bonnet of Skydra's car is up. Has it broken down? I ask. Oh no, she says. It's to stop the desert rodents from taking shelter from the heat under the hood and then chewing through the wires. Even her house, cooled by air conditioning, isn't immune from the Death Valley inferno. With ground temperatures hitting 160 degrees Fahrenheit or 71 Celsius, the water coming out of her taps in July flows at one temperature hot. So just when a cold shower would seem the perfect antidote to the hellish heat, it isn't an option. Skydra's previous posting was Everglades national park in subtropical Florida, so I ask her what she misses the most. Green, she says. It's a response that needs no further explanation. Apart from the bizarre sight of the Furnace Creek Golf Course, the lowest golf course in the world, and the occasional strip of mesquite, a shrub that appears oblivious to the desiccating temperatures, Death Valley is essentially brown, and this year it's even more brown than usual. The valley is well known for its vivid wildflowers, which bloom for a few weeks in spring, but the failure of winter rains means these splashes of colour are very few and far between. Yet even at its most barren, the steep sided mountains, canyons and gravel plains are startlingly beautiful. Driving through parts of Death Valley is like witnessing a scene from the beginning of the world when the only living thing knocking about was the odd single celled animal. Of course, you don't expect to see herds of wildebeest in a desert, but this one does seem surprisingly lifeless. The park biologist tells me that this year there's even less wildlife around than normal. Her evidence comes from the absence of roadkill on her morning commute. It seems a strange method of assessing the state of play, but in this heat I can appreciate the challenges of looking for wildlife on foot. I did it but still didn't find much in three weeks. I can count the number of different insect species I've seen on almost one hand. Even heat loving reptiles like lizards and snakes are thin on the ground. And mammals? Well, leaving aside the wire eating rodents, I've seen just two kinds. The tiny antelope, ground squirrels that race around as if their tails are on fire. And coyotes. These legendary wild dogs are one of the toughest and most adaptable mammals on the planet, but this year they might have met their match. Right now they would normally be feasting on caterpillars, but caterpillars need wild flowers to eat. So no flowers, no caterpillars. This is one of the United States most popular national parks and the onset of heat Armageddon doesn't alter that. Americans tend to steer clear of the place in July and August, says Skydra. But there's plenty of Europeans, particularly British. They like to test themselves against the hostile temperatures, she adds. Possibly. Or just escaping the British Summer Hugh
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Cordy Back now amid the cool breezes of a British autumn, the new government in Tripoli is said to be alarmed by the number of guns in public hands. One estimate puts it at more than 15 million. You may have heard Kevin Connolly tell us earlier how his shopping trip in the Libyan capital was punctuated by the sound of an anti aircraft gun parked in the street outside firing random shells into the sky in celebration. During the last few days more than a dozen people are believed to have been hurt by bullets falling from the sky, but Andrew Hoskin tells us the new government is confident that people will soon hand in their weapons.
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From the rooftop of our house in Tripoli, there's a fine view across a canopy of palms, satellite dishes and mosques. Little escapes my attention when the heat of the day abates and the early evening ushers in a welcome sea breeze. The other day I watched mothers in their hijabs take down laundry as dry as parchment from the line and fathers scurry off to prayer through a dust haze. Two boys approached with what was clearly a rifle of some kind. There was the sound of a recoil as one of the boys pushed down on the loading mechanism, pointed the gun skywards in my direction and fired. There was a pop and a small cork shot a miserable couple of metres in the air before dropping into a small patch of shrub. They laughed. I smiled back with some effort. I confess there had been a moment when I had wondered what sort of ammunition was coming my way. After all, you don't have to look too far in Libya these days because before you come across a dizzying array of ordnance, whether proudly displayed by rebel soldiers and the endless checkpoints or lying spent on the ground. The other day I saw volunteers in central Tripoli sweeping up thousands of shell casings following a celebration in the same nonchalant way I have often seen park keepers deal with autumn leaves. Whether we like it or not. Small boys all over the world like playing with toy guns, and it shouldn't worry us too much if they call out bang, bang, you're dead, as I used to, or Alaw akbar, as you often hear children call out here as their corks pop and caps crack. But what is unusual at the moment in Libya is the sheer number of small children with toy guns, and you don't have to be a child psychologist to appreciate the reasons for it. What is it with Libyans and guns? A friend of mine in London asked me recently. It seems as if few news reports and bulletins from Libya, radio or television, are now unaccompanied by the sound of what we are told is celebratory gunfire, an oxymoronic phrase if ever there was. During a recent visit to Colonel Gaddafi's compound at Bab al Azazir, I saw hardened war correspondence. You know, the sort with eye patches, funny livers and four marriages behind them, reporting the celebrations there in helmet and full body armour. After all, what goes up must go up, come down. Friendly fire can kill, and does all too frequently at the heart of the complex. As local people wandered around with photos torn from Colonel Gaddafi's family album or items from his wardrobe, several young men fired their AK47 Kalashnikovs incessantly into the air, scattering red hot shell casings around. Not that anyone can feel safe indoors or even in a car. Occasionally I've been stirred from a nap by the sound of Kalashnikovs and the occasional boom of a 106mm gun coming from the car radio, only to realize that these bangs and rat a tat tats were considered the necessary punctuation points in a popular recording of an anti Gaddafi peroration by the writer Mohammed Ahmed Eid. The celebration which marks the end of Ramadan has been particularly challenging for the more nervous types. The parting, which included tracer flares, felt so menacing in our neighbourhood one morning in Tripoli that at one point a colleague was actually told to hit the deck on our roof terrace. Mao believed power could be delivered from the barrel of a gun, and certainly Colonel Gaddafi believed it, which is why many of the Kalashnikovs you see being toted on the streets by his enemies were actually looted from the huge arsenal of Bab Alazazir. You can see how empowering it must be for someone to take from a dictator an instrument of oppression and use it to bring about his downfall and celebrate the fact afterwards. The rebels National Transitional Council announced this week that it intends to disarm the people. When the time is right, it will ask them to hand in their weapons. NTC elders say they're confident that despite the conflict, guns are not yet embedded in Libyan society, say in the way they appear to be elsewhere, particularly in the U.S. in the meantime, fireworks might be a better option. Ideally, fighting and celebrating should sound different. Perhaps then birdsong will return to Tripoli. I struggle to see any birds there and I can only conclude that during these celebrations they must be adhering wisely to NATO's current no fly zone.
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Andrew Hoskin there now, on his way back from Libya and probably enjoying some peace and quiet. That's it. I'll be here again next Saturday morning with dispatches from correspondents around the world. Do join us. Goodbye.