← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
The Buckwheat Barometer
00:27:54
Despatches. Steve Rosenberg sets out to discover who the Russian public holds for and...
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You're about to hear from our own correspondent. We do two versions of the programme, 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.
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Today, prices are rising, the currency's sinking, there's panic buying. But who do Russians blame for their current problems? 200,000 refugees seeking asylum in Germany. The authorities say it can't go on. The iguanas are still there. So are the giant tortoises. But islanders in the Galapagos no longer light cigars with twenty dollar bills. And why on earth is a grisly collection of pigs body parts drawing the crowds to a small town in northern France? There will be catastrophic consequences. That was the warning from President Putin of Russia about what might happen if the ruble continued its slide and slide further it did this week on the news from the oil producers group OPEC that they would not cut output. The President's been facing mounting international opposition to his country's involvement in Eastern Ukraine. Relations with the west have deteriorated sharply. There have been heated exchanges, sanctions and rising military tension. Mr. Putin insists Russia won't allow itself to become isolated behind another Iron Curtain. But Steve Rosenberg says the pressure is mounting on him and on the Russian economy.
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Legend has it that a thousand years ago, when Greek monks spread Christianity to Russia, they brought with them more than just the Bible. They brought a grain, a seed so magical, nutritious and so delicious that it struck an instant chord with the Slavic soul and the Russian stomach. That grain was buckwheat. And because the first people to cultivate it here were Greeks, the Russians called it grechka. Ever since, Russians have been boiling it and baking it, making porridge and pancakes with it. Loaves of bread too, and cutlets. You'll find buckwheat in kindergartens and field kitchens, plush restaurants and factory canteens. Forget vodka or beetroot soup. It's buckwheat that's really part of the Russian identity. Those fluffy brown grains deserve a place of honour on the Russian flag. I love grichka. You've probably gathered that by now. So imagine my distress this week when I walked into my local supermarket and couldn't find any. There are normally five shelves there full of the stuff. But panic buying had left them empty. Why the panic? Well, in recent weeks, buckwheat prices across Russia have shot up in some areas by more than 50%. Rumors are swirling about bad harvests and grechka shortages. The Russian authorities say there's nothing to worry about. They've accused speculators of trying to make a quick buck from buckwheat by creating an artificial crisis. Some of which may be true, but the interesting thing about buckwheat is that this is more than just a packet on a supermarket shelf. It's a barometer of the social economic state of Russia. Or to put it another way, when people feel they're coming down with a cold, they stock up on tissues. Well, when Russians sense an economic crisis brewing, the first thing they'll do is stock up on buckwheat. And right now, the Russian economy is exhibiting more than just a sniffle. Inflation is increasing, so is capital flight. While this year the ruble has lost a third of its value against the dollar. The falling price of oil is a huge problem for the country because the Russian economy is so dependent on its energy exports. Western sanctions are playing a part too, in all of this. They make it much harder for Russian banks to raise money on international financial markets. But how is this affecting ordinary Russians? Well, at the Moscow Motor show last month, one visitor told me that for the first time in a long time, he couldn't afford to buy a new car. Credit had become too expensive. He was only there, he said, to window shop. This week, a Russian teacher told me that she'll be spending her winter break at home. Because of the plummeting ruble, she can't afford to do what she normally does at New Year, and that's take a holiday in Europe. And that brings me to what is known here as the eternal Russian. Who is to blame? Who does the Russian public hold responsible for disappearing buckwheat, for rising prices and an ailing national currency? To find out, I grab my microphone and take to the streets of Moscow. Pensioner Alla Georgievna tells me that because money's tight, she stopped buying new clothes and cosmetics. All this is America's fault, she says. The United States organised the revolution in Ukraine and now the US is punishing Russia. And then I speak to Alexander. He's a builder. He complains that rising prices are eating up his salary. But he doesn't know who to blame. He says he doesn't really think about the question. All I want, Alexander tells me, is to have a regular job with regular pay. I just want stability. Stability. That's exactly what Vladimir Putin promised the Russian people when he came to power 15 years ago after what had been a decade of economic chaos. For now, Russians are not blaming their president for their current problems. Vladimir Putin's domestic approval rating remains sky high, but Russian History teaches us that just as supermarket shelves can be full of buckwheat one day and empty the next, so too can a Russian leader quite suddenly lose the support of the people if the economy crashes and if that stability disappears.
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Steve Rosenberg in Moscow the two candidates in Tunisia's presidential election have been exchanging angry words after the first round failed to produce an outright winner. The runoff vote, scheduled for next month, is already being portrayed as a battle between pro Islamists and secularists. The Arab Spring began in Tunisia, and of the countries in the region, it appears to have handled the aftershocks from those convulsions the best. But deep rifts remain over class divisions as well as religion. Owen Bennett Jones has been having a series of encounters there which offer clues to the direction in which the country's heading.
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You should go to the electronic music festival at Carthage, the American aid worker said. You'll never see so many Muslims on ecstasy. So of course I went. In fact, there wasn't a pill in sight. Maybe I was there too early, but it was an interesting crowd for all that. Would this be the liberal, rich elite? I asked a young, trendily dressed man who told me he was an architect. Yeah, he said. Well, actually a subgroup of them. The artists, the avant garde. As he spoke, various friends walked past saying hi. A woman got out of a huge 4x4 and dropped an insulated bag. Cans of cool beer rolled on the ground. A doorman spotted them and wagged his finger. She swore under her breath, shrugged her shoulders, gathered the cans and put them back in the car. The concert was in the former Roman Catholic Carthage Cathedral, the stained glass windows obscured by a vast screen with 3D images of abstract shapes throbbing in time to the music. On the stage, two musicians stood almost motionless behind laptops. It sounded like the Doctor who theme, slowed down about 20 times and flattened out a bit, or perhaps the beginning of a Pink Floyd song, but never getting to the point. Boring, isn't it? The architect said. The audience, mostly in their 20s, were so cool they verged on listlessness. Couples cuddled and lit cigarettes, the smoke rising into the cathedral's vaults. It was actually my second concert of the evening. The first had been in the splendid, if somewhat faded, French built National Theatre in Tunis. This was Sufi music, the music of our grandparents, one man told me, and it was a solidly middle class affair, with men in slightly dishevelled suits and ties, their wives with headscarves and bulky coats. Some had come with children. If you've ever heard Sufi music, you might think of it as A poignant, searing, soulful sound. The stuff of introspection and reflection. But this was more packaged than plaintive. With 50 or so men crammed on the stage, flashing lights, enough tambourines to raise the roof, and even dancing girls flicking their long hair from side to side. The women in the audience may have looked the very definition of bourgeois respectability, but as the evening wore on, they could not resist. They bobbed a bit at first and then swayed a little, some standing up, a few then even got into the isles and threw some shapes. Really? I went with a Pakistani who lives in Tunis. I don't find it a spiritual experience, she said, looking at the audience now moving in unison to the heavy beat, the women ululating, the men cheering. But it seems they do ecstasy without any chemicals. So the laid back upper classes, the enthusiastic middle classes, and some music from one of Tunis poorest neighbourhoods where hardline Islamist Salafis are well established, recruiting young men to fight jihad. In Syria I met an art teacher who's challenging that by organising some music and dance workshops. And I watched an 18 year old Nazim singing in front of a group of about 20, including some giggling, swooning young women. The extremists invade our personal freedom, he later told me, saying we should fight. But what of the agony of the parents and siblings left behind? Do they think of them? They leave me alone, said one of his friends. They know I like alcohol too much. I did meet a man in Tunis who had renounced such worldly pleasures. 20 year old Abu Mujahid as he called himself, just back after several months fighting for the Islamic State. Slight and softly spoken, he wore a balaclava. I don't trust the media, he said. You might try to photograph me. He spoke about his desire to die a martyr. I'm a journalist, I said. In Syria, your group beheads people like me. A journalist was killed because he misled people with false stories, he replied. Like you maybe. I've been talking to people like Abu Mujahid for over 15 years. In Islamabad, before 9 11, I used to have a cup of tea each week with a young militant who came to my home to chat. We both wanted to understand each other. Not that we ever did really. I later heard he died fighting in Afghanistan. But it's all different now. Abu Mujahid's generation is battle hardened. Today's jihadis are so convinced and so self righteous they won't listen to anyone. While the west is rolling with the punches in Iraq, Syria, Libya, southern Afghanistan, northern Nigeria and assuming that somehow, eventually reason will prevail. The jihadists see something else, a series of glorious God given victories. Their confidence is growing.
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Owen Bennett Jones Immigration continues to dominate the political agenda, and not just in Britain, where yesterday David Cameron unveiled plans to deter would be migrants from the rest of Europe. The German government is less concerned about incomers from elsewhere in Europe, more about what's described as an overwhelming influx of refugees. Countries like Syria, Jenny Hill tells us the cost is huge and every German state's expected to help foot the bill. But they say they just can't afford it.
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I'd heard of cow bells but never sheep bells until I arrived in the Bavarian town of Garmisch. The mountains here are just turning white with winter. The air's cold still and it would be almost silent were it not for a persistent ringing as those sheep graze on the pastures which overlook the red roofs, white church spires of the town. It should be beautiful, but I can't help wondering what a woman I met here makes of all this tranquility. Amina's eyes are dark, desperate. I guess she's in her early 30s. She seems much older. Amina's from Afghanistan, where she tells me her husband was killed by his own brothers who wanted his land and property. She grimaces and tells me they raped her and were planning to kill her children. Amina took the youngsters and fled. They crossed mountains, slept in a forest, hid among strangers. It took them a year, but finally they arrived in Germany. Amina and her children now live, for the time being, in a single room supported by state handouts. She's one of an estimated 200,000 people who'll seek asylum here this year. Germany takes more refugees than any other EU country, and the numbers are rising fast as people flee violence in countries like Syria. The German authorities house them in schools, tents, warehouses. There are plans for a city of shipping containers in Berlin, and on the outskirts of Munich they've converted an old barracks. It's a grey, bleak place. The gates bristle with barbed wire. The buildings are concrete and uniform. My attention's caught by a large red suitcase wheeled along by a pale faced man who's just arrived from Syria with his wife and two children. As his youngest son howls in protest, the exhausted family join a stream of other new arrivals pushing prams, bikes and luggage. One man stops. He lifts his hand to his throat, mimics a knife. They were slaughtering us, he calls out. Killing our children. I step into the medical center where refugees are waiting for a checkup and find a young doctor with tired eyes Katerina volunteers here when she's not working at the local hospital. She sighs and tells me that almost every patient she sees is traumatized. Just outside, a young man from the local authority is accosted by a family wanting to know where they should register. Florian Schwehmer points them towards one of the concrete buildings and explains to me that officially the barracks can accommodate 1200 people. Over the summer, they had to house 2000. He's now preparing contingency plans. Next year, he says, they must be ready for a worst case scenario of 500 to 1,000 new arrivals a day. Does he see an end to all this? I ask. Actually, no, he replies. Just look at the world. We have Syria. We have huge problems in Africa. That's why these people are arriving in Munich. And the German government openly admits it can't go on like this. Just last month, the Interior Minister urged other EU member states to take their share of responsibility. Thomas de Mezieres points out only four or five countries, including Germany and Britain, take 75% of all refugees coming into Europe. I wonder what Germans make of it all. Back in Garmish, I take a walk under the twinkling Christmas lights down the main shopping street. You can buy all sorts of tourist tat here, including, of course, replica sheep bells. A woman pauses in front of a window sparkling with decorations. There's no question we must take the refugees in and try to help them, she says. But there are a lot who try to cheat the system. Another passerby tells me, it's hard for the refugees, but it's hard for us as well. We have space, but not that much space. Each of Germany's 16 states is financially responsible for the refugees. They're struggling to cope and warn that local services, childcare, libraries, swimming pools could suffer. But Amina and her family are also helped by a charity. It's turned a disused hospital into a home for asylum seekers. Volunteers smile at Amina as she walks back down the corridor to her room. She tells me her children still wake up in the night screaming. They were there when their father was killed. And as I leave Garmish, as the sound of the sheep bells fades, I can still hear her voice saying, I want a bright future for my kids. I want them to be doctors, engineers. But most of all, I want them to be good people.
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Jenny Hill in Munich. The great sights of the world attract great hordes of tourists. The trouble is, the effect of mass tourism can be so devastating, the great sight suffers. This was hardly the case when the scientist Charles Darwin visited The Galapagos. Galapagos islands. Back in 1851, they were not on the tourist trail. Today, though, more and more visitors are coming to examine the extraordinary and in many cases, unique wildlife. Iguanas, giant tortoises, and many, many species of bird you just don't see anywhere else. The Galapagos, 500 miles out in the Pacific Ocean, belong to Ecuador, and the authorities in Quito are contemplating new rules to control tourism. And as Horatio Clare has been learning, the people who live and work on the islands are concern.
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We are standing on Seymour island, part of the Galapagos Archipelago, and the evidence of evolution through natural selection is everywhere around us. Blue footed boobies perform courtship dances, stamping their lurid feet. Male magnificent frigate birds inflate scarlet throat sacks and beat their wings, their vigour evidence of their virility, as they issue thrumming invitations to cruising females. Just offshore, bull Galapagos sea lions patrol their sections of beach, honking defiance and intimidation at other males. But my guide, Luis Rodriguez, a passionate and expert naturalist, is momentarily oblivious to all this. Just look at that break, he says as a swelling wave unfurls its energy in a shuddering release of Pacific power. One of the best on the islands. And we're not allowed to surf it, he adds wistfully. No one travels to Galapagos to see people. On the entry form for the national park, you are asked to mark your top three reasons for coming. I wondered if anyone ever ticks the box to experience local customs and culture. The 20,000 islanders are permitted to occupy just 3% of the land. They work in tourism, fishing, and overwhelmingly in the public sector as employees of the government. As a foreign visitor, you see little of their lives. Men herding cattle, women waiting at bus stops, and children playing around shacks. Rather, passers by. As we are bused across Santa Cruz island, where most people live, to Puerto Ayora, the capital, where visitors join their tour boats. When I first got here, man, it was wild, luis remembers. The fishermen were making so much money from tuna and sea cucumbers, they were lighting cigars with $20 bills. That was before 1998 and the special law. The special law saved the archipelago's peerless natural heritage. The law and its amendments regulate every aspect of island life. If you don't already have a car, there's no way you can get one, Louis says. He is a wonderfully voluble and dynamic man, known locally as champi mushroom. Everyone has an island name, and I had a kind of mushroom haircut when I arrived from Quito. The island name for the capital, Puerto A, is Puerto Cacho, Pickup port, Infidelity town. Which tells you something about the culture. Sure, alcohol and domestic violence have been real problems. Louis says people would drink from Friday to Sunday and hit their wives. But now they have massively increased tax on alcohol. And if you hit your wife, you will go to jail. Luis is an ardent fan of Ecuador's President, Rafael Correa. But like many islanders, he is apprehensive about the future of Galapagos. The president says he wants Galapagos to be the face of Ecuador, he says, so you can't have too many poor people living in shacks. Say there are 2,000 people working here without permits. They aren't going to deport them. Bad publicity. But if they cut the subsidy for heating fuel, those people are going to leave and they don't want so many backpackers. Fewer tourists paying more money is better for the islands. So that's the way it's going to go. I think. With all his permits and his expertise in languages, geology, meteorology, botany, marine biology, ornithology and conservation, and crucially, with extensive contacts and a sophisticated understanding of how the island system for tourism works, the future looks good for Luis. Next year he's opening an eco camp for children, for foreign schools first, and then for locals. We're going to teach them how to live on 25 litres of water and we're going to show them all about the wildlife and the ocean, Luis says. It's going to be great. His nine year old son recently befriended the daughter of the Galapagos incoming head of tourism. Luis doesn't say it, but the joint family trips to the beach they are planning will surely do his portfolio of tour businesses no harm. But first he must conclude his work with us. And that means a visit to the giant tortoises. We are definitely at a crossroads, Luis says as we watch the beasts graze their way through a misty morning. No one knows which way it's going, but we know change is coming. And when it does, it will be big. That's the way in Ecuador. See that one? He points at one of the giant reptiles. He's about 150 years old. He might have seen Darwin. The beast raises its head and fixes us with one of those long stairs which tortoises seem to specialize in. Like all the other residents of Galapagos, it seems his strategy is to watch and await developments.
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The giant tortoises of the Galapagos playing a long game. That was Horatio Clare. Now, not many on this side of the channel know of the town of Gemini sur Skof, or its apparently awesome reputation in the field of gastronomy. But in France, everyone who cares about their food, and in France that means everyone has heard of its sausage like speciality, the anduit de Gemini. The town in Brittany hosts an annual festival when people queue the length of the main street to enjoy a plate of this delicacy, served on a bed of pommes ecrase. So is it just a French version of bangers and mash? Our news reading colleague Carolyn Brown, who spends part of her year in the town, has been looking into the relatively short history of the Anduit de Guemnay.
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Our local anduillerie, Rivolon qui du, advertises its presence on the outskirts of town with a sculpture in the corner of its vast car park. Two giant en duits, fashioned in fibreglass, sitting one on top of the other, look like a pile of something rather unpleasant. But the locals take their homegrown delicacy very seriously indeed. A steady stream of customers, from passing tourists to lorry drivers on their regular beat, pull in to buy a chunk of this delicacy. The andouille de gemeni is a relatively new phenomenon, the recipe having been created only in 1930 by Joseph Quidoux, the son of a local farmer. But Gallic gourmands with a fascination for all elements of the gastrointestinal tract of the pig have embraced it as a classic. As you push open the shop door, you're enveloped by the aromas of fat and smoke. I suspect that just breathing the air could send your cholesterol levels into double figures. The narrow shops fitted out to resemble a Breton kitchen with pine fixtures. En duits hang from every part of the ceiling like crinkly brown stalactites. At one end is a typically huge Breton fireplace. It too is festooned with ennui being smoked over a wood fire. The stones are caked in glistening, sooty fat. Behind the counter is Benoit, husband of Joseph's granddaughter, Francoise, who, together with their children, is carrying on the tradition of the en duit de gemeni into its third and fourth generations. Out at the back, away from the public gaze, and possibly out of respect for the squeamish, is the kitchen, where the andouille are created in a modern style true to Joseph's original recipe, inspired, I like to imagine, by the act of pulling on more than one pair of socks to counter the cold, damp Breton winters. Joseph pulled one length of showdown, or pig intestine over another, and then another 20 or 25 in all. The salted intestines of three pigs, weighing in at three kilos, go into each andui, which are then smoked over oak wood and dried, sometimes for months on end, before being cooked slowly in stock. Cut through, the innards resemble pinky grey tree rings, carrying a distinctly smoky taste and aroma. Benoit had never tasted andouille until he started courting Francoise. He cheerfully admits that he at first thought it bizarre, but he saw the potential, especially when, back in the 90s, endorsement by France's outspoken celebrity chef and food campaigner Jean Pierre Koff saw demand skyrocket. Joseph made about five en duits a week. His son Laurent made about 200. Today, Maison Riverland Quidoux employs nine people, turning out 1,000 a week. The younger en duit, dried for just two or three weeks, are cut up and sauteed in hot dishes. The sausages, dried for three months, are more shriveled, more intensely flavoured and served in paper thin slices with a glass of chilled Muscadet or the local cider. Andouille de gemeni must never be confused with the ubiquitous, cheap and cheerful andouillette. These are the plump, loose, stuffed sausages which, when cut open, spill out a grisly assortment of components. Like an organic air fix kit, the andouille de gemeni is a much more sophisticated specialite with a price tag to match. They retail at €39 per kilo. this point, lest I begin to sound like an infomercial, I must state other andouille de gemenis are available. The fact is that anybody, anywhere, can make anduit, and it's happening on a commercial scale as far away as Poland. Benoit is too much of a gentleman to suggest the rival product is inferior, but he says that the production process is turned on its head. To save time and cut costs, the showdowns are dipped in a bath of liquid flavouring to mimic the authentic smokiness. Benoit is not unduly concerned. He's confident that by 2022 he will have doubled production to 2000 en duits a week, expanding his market across the Atlantic to the American state of Louisiana and Quebec in Canada. Et potetre, says Benoit Angleterre. And then he smiles to show that this is just a joke, a pleasanterie. He suspects that English taste buds will never be sophisticated enough to appreciate Vrai en duit de gemeni. But his Gallic shrug says that he doesn't see this as a serious setback to his ambitious plans.
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Carolyn Brown an organic air fix kit Perhaps Monsieur Benoit's right. Let's stick to roast beef.
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That's it.
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Further delicacies to savour next Saturday. Until then, goodbye.