← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Sibelius, Saunas and Salmiakki
00:28:27
Correspondents with colour and analysis from around the world: Theopi Skarlatos in on...
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- [00:00]
A
Hello from the. From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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B
Thank you. And in today's programme, it's Nigeria's birthday. But there's not much to celebrate in Abuja, one of Africa's most expensive and most charmless capitals. Why women of a certain age are being reduced to tears by photographs of old Bucharest. We're on the distant French island of La Reunion, finding out what really annoyed President Giscard d' Estaing and sampling a Finnish delicacy. It's like sandpapering your tongue, then pouring salt on it. But first, the leader of the Greek far right party golden dawn is behind bars this morning pending trial on charges of organizing a criminal group. Nikos Michalaliakos was one of six MPs arrested over the weekend after the recent killing of an anti racist musician. He is also accused of murder, assault and money laundering. The events surrounding golden dawn are being closely followed throughout Greece. Theopi Scalatos is in the port city of Thessalonica.
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I woke up to a blue Athenian sky and a text message from a colleague. They've arrested golden dawn leader Michalo Liakos. It's what many people in this country have wanted to see happen for two years now. A crackdown on this extreme right party. The drama has not stopped since its members were linked to the murder of the anti fascist Greek rap musician Pavlos Fisas. It's all people are talking about. There have been arrests, wiretaps and police raids. Officers are said to have found shrines to Hitler, unlicensed weapons, even wine bottles with Mussolini labels. Yet the golden dawn party officials deny charges of running a criminal organization. They insist they're nationalists, not neo Nazis. Their supporters I met chanting outside police headquarters could not believe what was happening. It's a question of nationality of Greece, one woman told me. Others may want the country to be part of a Europe full of Asians and blacks, but we don't. She and others said they wanted to protect their country, to preserve it. None of us here would ever kill anybody, another assured me, proudly waving his Greek flag. It's just we have a huge immigration problem here. The immigrants are dirty, they smell and they wee in the streets. And that can't continue. It felt strange standing amongst these Greeks singing the national anthem. It felt un Greek and it felt wrong. Now the mood is changing. Talk shows are not just responding to the latest news developments, but are asking questions. What makes someone neo Nazi what fuels right wing extremism? In Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city, evidence of a multicultural past is everywhere. Once dubbed the second Jerusalem for its large Jewish population, it was also home simultaneously to both Muslims and Christians. But those who live here now tell me the current influx of migrants, many from South Asian or African countries, is only fuelling Golden Dawn's popularity. Even the chestnut seller in the main square tells me we must buy from him, as he is Greek. He's openly hostile to the Bulgarian, also trying to sell corn on the cob. Nearby, I talked to a group of young people watching the sun go down by the sea. They have many unemployed friends, they told me, who not only support golden dawn but now openly admit it on Facebook. We have so many problems in Greece now, says George, who's 20. Some of our friends feel golden dawn is the only party standing up for Greeks. There is an end of season breeze in the air. A long summer is coming to an end. The temperature is dropping. Next to the harbour, a man is struggling to hold down a bunch of children's balloons he's trying to sell. Many here believe that as long as there is an economic crisis and what they see as uncontrolled immigration, as long as there are no real solutions that people can believe in Greece will continue to be fertile ground for far right extremism. Extremism, they reason, goes beyond the political. It's a psychological state. Another person I talked to summed up this week's events with one a panihiri, a circus. But others suggest that the possible removal of a party from government that promotes warped ideologies and inspires violence, and most importantly, is accused of being linked to criminal activity, could actually mean something. Perhaps it will mean migrants can walk the streets without fearing for their lives, and that leftist musicians don't have to worry about being next on a hit list. I would like to think it will mean Greece regaining lost respectability. The sun has finally set over the harbor in Thessaloniki. Palm trees wave in the evening breeze. Overhead, the sky is turning pink as couples stroll hand in hand and tourists smile, apparently oblivious to the drama of recent days. Those who had taken to the streets to protest about golden dawn are now sitting in cafes, sipping coffee and eating the traditional Bugattza pastries. As one of the party's MPs was escorted in handcuffs to the court, he shouted to onlookers that this fairy tale hadn't ended. And and indeed, after the arrested MPs guarded by armed police in balaclavas were paraded around Athens, the courts, then let some of them out on bail. The seeds of neo Nazism have certainly been sown. Its supporters must be shown a new Greece to believe in before it can be eradicated. I'm guessing it may be a while before we begin the next shiny new chapter of this country, but hoping. At the very least, recent developments here mean that somebody, somewhere has started writing it.
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B
Theope Scarlatos in Thessalonica, Nigeria, is marking its 53rd birthday this week, but celebrations, perhaps not surprisingly, have been muted. The anniversary comes amidst the continuing campaign of violence in the northeast of the country involving the Islamist militants known as Boko Haram. In the latest incident, some 50 students were killed when gunmen stormed an agricultural college in Yobe State. The anniversary is giving Nigerians an opportunity to take stock of their country. Many complain not only about security but about corruption, education, the economy. This is one of the world's biggest oil producers, and yet poverty is widespread. Alex Preston's been sampling the mood in the capital, Abuja.
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When one of Nigeria's long line of military dictators, General Obasanjo, seized the land on which Abuja was to be built in the late 1970s, he could hardly have imagined that 35 years on, the city would remain so noticeably unfinished. Abuja has a makeshift, haphazard feel to it, a place of bureaucrats and building sites, its streets eerily empty after the buzz of Lagos or the enterprising bustle of Kano. It's one of the most expensive cities in Africa and one of the most charmless. I'd been in Abuja for three days, about two and a half too many, when my friend Atta, a sociologist, picked me up from my hotel. We drove out towards ASO Rock, the monolith that looms over the presidential palace. On either side of the road stood complexes of bulky, imposing mansions, most of them unfinished. Some sat beside empty swimming pools. Others had mock Tudor timbering but were windowless and often roofless. Atta told me that 65% of the houses in these developments were uninhabited, put up only to launder Abuja's dirty money. We pulled off the Motala Mohammed highway at Mpape Junction, and immediately the road deteriorated. I'm going to show you the real Abuja, atta told me as his car struggled up a deeply rutted dirt track. A warm wind from the desert to the north, the Harmattan, whipped clouds of red dust around us. As we climbed through rocky scrubland into the hills, people began to appear on the streets, men carrying ancient Singer sewing machines, women balancing washing baskets on their heads. We entered a vast shanty town of shacks with corrugated iron roofs, slums stacking to the horizon. Nissan minivans scuttled past. They're called One Chance Buses as they barely stop on their manic journeys through these uncharted streets. Crowds thronged between skinny cows beneath posters advertising beaming televangelists. Dance music blared out, interrupted by a muezzin's call to prayer. Bright eyed children kicked footballs about. This was the home of the Ghwari people, the original inhabitants of the land where the capital was built. Hundreds of thousands of them were summarily evicted in the 1970s and now scrape a living in the hills. Abuja is itself a Gwari word, and although the city of generals and politicians below US has barely 700,000 inhabitants, 2 or 3 million people live in these shanty towns, many of them Gwari. The Gwari people continue to fight for compensation for the land wrested from them by the Obasanjo government, land now worth more per square kilometer than almost anywhere else in Africa. We got out and walked through the smoke and dust towards a row of shacks. In one of them, a woman knelt on the ground plucking a chicken, a man above her leaning on a makeshift bar. They were Frank and Mary, Gwari people in their 30s, children of one of the thousands of families originally evicted during the foundation of Abuja. The four of us sat in the shack sipping fantas, staring out at the swarming life of the shanty town. Motorbikes and cattle and people, all of them through a veil of reddish dust. I trained as an architect, Frank told me. I have an education, but I don't have money. I don't know the right people. So I work here with my sister in Abuja. Money defines everything. I ask him about the empty mansions lining the roads into the city that is Pseudo Abuja. A false place. It's unjust. We should be living in those houses instead. He gestured to the squalid lean to that jutted from the back of the bar. Mary looked up from her chicken. Life here is difficult. Often we can't see across the street because of the smoke and dust. If it rains, you can't move for the mud. But we pray hard. A storm was coming in, red clouds rolling overhead and thunder crackling down the valleys. Frank and Mary stood waving to us as we drove off down the hill towards Pseudo Abuja.
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Alex Preston in Nigeria now it's many years since it was accurate to say the sun never sets on the British Empire, but certainly it's always daytime in one or other of the French territories scattered around the world. Few are more remote than La Reunion, an island which can also claim to be one of the furthest outposts of the European Union. Once, La Reunion relied on its sugar industry. Today, tourism supplies most of its income. It has a spectacular volcanic landscape and palm fringed beaches. There's a lively local music scene, but Robin Denslow says some islanders are angry. They say too much is done for the visitors and not enough for them.
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It's a hot Sunday morning on La Reunion, an island out in the Indian Ocean that's part of France and overseas Departement. And in the little fishing port of Terre Saintes, they're holding an annual free festival known as Rissofait, named after the Creole word for the rice dish that the sugarcane workers used to eat before heading out to the fields that stretch up towards the volcano in the center of the island. Down by the pier, there are stalls where the wives of fishermen are of course selling Rhys Sophie rice mixed with hot peppers, sausages and fish. The beer tent is doing brisk business and there's a crowd of several hundred, from teenagers to old men in suits and straw hats, gathered around a little stage watching a furiously energetic performance from a celebrated local singer. Fimon Viry is now in his late 70s, but you wouldn't think so as he dances across the stage accompanied by drummers and his own k am, a traditional tray like percussion instrument made from cane stalks. He was once a sugar cane worker himself and then spent 20 years working in a cigarette factory. But now he's famous for his songs and albums. And yet just 33 years ago he would have been arrested for singing like this. The police would have broken up the concert and smashed all the instruments. Because Veery is an exponent of Maloja, a musical style that was banned by the French authorities and particularly hated, so Viery told me, by President Giscard d'. Estaing. The songs are sung in Creole, not French, and the percussive backing has its roots in Africa, from where slaves were brought to Reunion to work in the cane fields. The Catholic Church violently disapproved because it was used in service cabaret ceremonies in in which participants say they enter a trance and come face to face with their ancestors. The French authorities had other reasons to be concerned. In its secular form, maloja is great dance music, but it can also be protest music. And the Communist Party made great use of Maloja in the 1970s, when it was fighting for greater autonomy from France and the same status as Corsica. Some activists argued for full independence. My lawyer was seen by the French as a threat to the state. And sitting backstage by the sea after the show, Firmin Veery told me about life as a musician in those dangerous days. He performed without being discovered by the French authorities by constantly changing his tactics, organising shows in different people's houses, often under the guise of a birthday party. Other musicians were not so lucky. He told me of his friend Augustine, who. Who was jailed for playing Malloya. Life for a Malloya player changed dramatically in 1981, when Francois Mitterrand, leader of the Socialist Party, became the French president. He didn't just legalise the music, allowing it to be played on the radio, but provided funds to help cultural projects. The Communist Party had not got what it wanted, Veery told me, but the protests came to an end. Today, Maloja is becoming internationally popular among world music fans, thanks to artists like Daniel Warrow and Christine Salem, who were massively influenced by Fim and Viri. But it still provides a reminder of the divisions that exist on this exquisite little island between the French who buy houses here or come as tourists. And you don't even need to show your passport if you fly in from Paris, and the Creole speaking population, many of whom are poor and without work, and who argue that their identity and culture are in danger of being swamped by France. There have been sporadic, violent protests against the cost of living. The most recent was in February last year, when riot police were sent to the island from France. And according to Daniel Warrow's musician son Sam, the young people are angry. Unemployment is over 40% for those between 18 and 25 and they won't shut up. They're starting to scream. They're angry that people from France come here and get jobs when local people are struggling. Although France, he added, does provide unemployment benefit, so does the once banned old style Molloy. Music from the 70s still have a role to play. It's the cry of the people, said Fermin Veery. There is no good balance between France and Reunion when it comes to jobs. One of his songs is about unemployment and how hard it is far away in Paris. There's no suggestion that the authorities will ever again ban Maloja. But perhaps if they want to judge the mood in this tropical outpost, it's time for them to brush up on their Creole and start listening to Fermin's lyrics.
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Robin Denslow on La Reunion A decision by prosecutors in Romania to put on trial a prison commander from the days of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, has triggered Much media comment about the country's past. Romania is often accused of turning a blind eye on the excesses of the Communist era. This was the most authoritarian Stalinist regime in Eastern Europe. Dissent was brutally repressed. Today, the most visible part of the dictator's legacy is the huge palace he built for himself in the centre of the capital, Bucharest. Tessa Dunlop says it's only recently that Romanians came to realize exactly what was lost with the construction of that building.
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It's cool. I really like it. Born in the year of the 1989 revolution, Paul is one of the new generation of Romanians. Multilingual, well educated and ambitious for his country. He is understandably proud of the giant house of the people. Once Ceausescu's palace. After all, it's now home to Romania's fledgling democracy and only trumped in size by the American Pentagon. We are hovering in one of its many airless, pointlessly large halls, waiting for a conference on sustainable tourism to finish in the never ending room next door. I don't share Paul's sentiments. The vast slabs of marble feel suffocating. We may as well be stuck in the centre of an outsized wedding cake. The palace? Ha. It's a wall in the way of the people. A dam. Even photographer Andrei Pandelli is emphatic. We've met in a tea shop in the old Jewish quarter of Bucharest. There are sepia photographs from his collection on every wall. They are exceptional images, rarely caught on camera. But then, Andre is an exceptional man. Tall, dignified and handsome. Still, at 65, it's thanks to his fearless vision that Ceausescu's relentless attack on Bucharest can be seen stage by stage, as if peeling away the layers of an onion. I was an architect, he explains. I could find plans. I approximate what they would destroy next. Not exactly. No one knew that they were wild, totally out of control. 7 square kilometers of the city centre were levelled to make way for the palace of the people. Andrei wanted to take some pictures before old Bucharest disappeared altogether. I've been coming to Romania for 20 years, but I've never seen images like these. A city caught in its very own Armageddon. Yes, Andrei preserved a Bucharest that no longer exists. The exquisite glass covered market, the archways, cobbled streets, the vine clad villas the city once called the Little Paris of the East. But in many of the pictures, the mighty onslaught has already begun. Innumerable cranes chewing their way through people's lives. The facade of the crazy palace looming up over the threatened cityscape. And then in some others, there's just snow or dust and the desert of demolition, Not a verbose man. In front of his pictures, Andrei becomes almost chatty. After two years of photographing the architectural destruction, I decided that it was very bad, but it was even worse that they were ruining the lives of 22 million Romanians. So I began to take pictures of everyday life. I think they are much more striking. The next series of photographs, everyday life under Ceausescu, is like a haunting silent movie. Desolate streets there was no petrol. Queues for food that never came. Trams straddled by desperate commuters, Useless cars buried under snow. A wedding party picking their way through the streets. No one is smiling. I can't decide which is more astonishing, the photographs or the photographer. How did he get away with taking pictures which so openly denigrated the socialist reality, a crime that carried a six year prison sentence in Communist Romania? Andrei explains that he was a part time sports photographer, so he had a state sanctioned excuse to carry a camera. And he tells me, I must understand the strange psychology of state policemen. Tessa they are very aggressive with those who are afraid, but much less aggressive with people who are not at all afraid. I was confident. Don't hide if you don't want to get caught. Andrei's brazen behavior captured a vital slice of Romania's painful past. Yet it took a full 18 years before he could show his images to an astonished Romanian public. The people in power did not want to be reminded of what they'd got so wrong he had to wait. Andrei shrugs. I've seen women over 40 exploding in tears in front of my photographs because they saw their lives had been destroyed. But they realised it 20 years too late. And a lot of teenagers laugh neurotically because they recognised something in the pictures that their parents had told them, but they had never seen for themselves. My young friend Paul represents the generation which escaped that hell. He's silenced by Andrei, his experience, his audacity, his pictures. Later, as we walk back through the centre of Bucharest, taking in its schizophrenic appearance with fresh eyes, Paul quietly concedes it is a pity Ceausescu had to build the palace complex right in the middle of the Old City.
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Tessa Dunlop in Romania now, all correspondents have tales about extraordinary dishes they've sampled on their travels. We've heard plenty on this program. I personally won't be ordering balut, although some people in the Philippines regard this duck fetus dish as a delicacy. Similarly, you won't find me ordering khakal at my local fishmongers. Despite claims in Iceland that these slices of shark hung for months until they're completely rotten, are delicious. And if you think the Sardinian formaggioma, noted for containing live insect grubs is on my menu, well, think again. Finland, too, has a unique food culture, and there's one particular item of confectionery dear to many Finns, called salmiakki. It's something that my colleague Mark Bosworth has spent years trying to understand.
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This was obviously some sort of test. As I bit into the grey ice cream covered in a thick black coating and overwhelmingly unpleasant sourness filled my mout, I took another bite. Why is there salt in ice cream? After two bites, I'd had enough. It was the summer of 2002, and it was my first encounter with salty licorice, or Finnish salmiakki. The Finnish woman who bought it for me laughed. The test had proved that the Finns have their own distinctive and slightly odd taste. I was adamant that this would be my only encounter with salmiakki. But little did I know that this was just the beginning. Salmiakki is a soft licorice with ammonium chloride added to give it its distinctive saltiness. More ammonium chloride means stronger, saltier and more potent salmiakki. This candy, if such a salty snack could be described as such, originated in Finnish pharmacies, which manufactured their own cough medicine in the 1920s. Ammonium chloride, known for being able to break down mucus, was added to the mixture. No one is sure when ammonium chloride and licorice were first combined, but by the 1930s it was being produced in Finland as confectionery. Some eight years later, I was living in London with Milla, the Finnish woman who gave me my first taste of salmiakki. Some Finnish friends came to visit, bringing a type of salmiakki known as bombs with them. Within seconds of putting one in my mouth, an intense, sharp stinging pain spread across my tongue, as if somebody had sandpapered it and then poured salt on top. After the pain came the salty sourness, and I couldn't stop salivating. I had to spit it out. Our friends gave the same satisfied look that Miller previously had. So this is what the Finns do for fun. Then, over the following years, more visitors came, most bearing gifts of salmiakki. Salmiakki feet, salmiakki cars, salmiakki skulls. Many Finns tell me that the first thing they miss when they're abroad is salmiakki. Those who move away ask their friends and relatives to send it to them. I always take an emergency supply of Salmiakki with me, says Jukka Anla, the chairman of the Finnish Salty Licorice Association. Around his kitchen table, which is covered in empty packets of salmiakki, Jucker recalls going to Russia for a month in the early 90s. My host was amazed when I opened my suitcase, there were not many clothes, but it was half full of salmiakki. In order for me to survive in that hostile environment of no salty liquorice. Since moving to Finland with Miller a year ago, I've slowly been working my way through the myriad different types of salmiakki, determined to find a version that I could tolerate or even enjoy. I tasted soft salmiakki fudge, chocolate filled with liquid salmiakki and a strong pulverised version of salmiakki, which is affectionately known as crazy powder. On a night out with friends in Helsinki, I was given a shot of Salmiakki flavoured vodka. This tiny glass of black liquid posed two immediate problems. I don't drink vodka and I don't like salmiakki. When I thought I knew all there was to know about the salty snack, I stumbled upon the Salmiaki Kiosky in Helsinki. This old wooden street side kiosk is where the aficionados come, some of them sporting Salmiakki tattoos. A hundred different types of salmiakki are available in a dazzling array of brightly coloured packets. Salmiakki fish, Salmiakki bananas, Salmiakki pipes. The owner, Pettay Nevenen, says salmiakki is a big part of Finland's cultural heritage. He considers it to be even more important than saunas and Sibelius. It's a flavour that you grow up with and there's some comfort in that, he says. You go back to your childhood. It's a strange thing to explain. If you're not a Finn, you probably won't get it. From a shelf, Petty grabs a bag of Dracula Salmiakki, complete with a picture of the infamous Count with blood coming out of his mouth. Above the image are the words Yulma Salmiaki. That means cruel salmiakki. Like so many before, this variety stings my tongue and sets my saliva glands alight. But then something happens. The saltiness and sweetness cross each other and then a perfect moment when the two sensations are equal, creating a strong but pleasant sensation. This is why the Finns like it. Pette watches me in silence, gives me a knowing smile and says, it's good to have a new convert.
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Sal Miacchi clearly an acquired taste, and Mark Bosworth has acquired it. More tasty fare from correspondents far and wide. On Saturday morning. Do join us.
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Goodbye.