← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
The Devil's Building Site
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Around the world in less than half an hour! Today: a four-day trek through the parts a...
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Thank you for downloading the latest edition
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of BBC Radio's from our own correspondent, the best in news and current affairs storytelling. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, the fear of Ebola is finally receding, but the markets left on Liberia will take generations to fade. Has the ayatollah's revolution in 1979 eventually helped Iranian women rather than hindered them? The shrimp's off, so are the burgers out of red snapper too. But Cubans hope that coming in from the diplomatic cold might heat up their menus. And all does not go entirely to plan as we trek to the mountains of Argentina in search of the world's loneliest pensioner. The Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was at the White House yesterday thanking Barack Obama for the work the Americans have put in to rid her country of ebola. Washington contributed two and a half billion dollars and nearly 3,000American troops to help the nation fight and recover from an Ebola outbreak, which in Liberia alone killed more than 4,000 people. In their talks at the White House, the two presidents discussed the lessons that could be learned from the battle against the deadly virus. Andrew Harding has sent us this dispatch from Liberia.
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Late afternoon in Monrovia, and the women's kickball league is furiously busy on a patch of rocky ground near the river's edge. There are screams and roars of laughter as the team captain, running barefoot, nearly trips on her way to first base. Around them, the roar of traffic and the strong smell of dried fish. Across the bridge, the third Division Ambassadors Football Club are playing their own practice match on another patch of dirt. The players, sweating heavily, grunt and jostle. You can sense the relief here, the delight in communal activities no longer banned now that the fears of Ebola are starting to recede. Standing by the water's edge, I'm reminded of my last trip to Liberia. It was 12 years ago, towards the end of the civil war. For a time, this same bridge in Monrovia was the front line, and I remember crossing it nervously during a lull, our car wheels crunching over a carpet of spent bullock cartridges. The rebels were called the lured young, bleary eyed. Some wore garish wigs. One I remember, a wedding dress. Their commander welcomed the lull and the possibility of a formal ceasefire and told me earnestly that they were indeed tired of fighting. But then he glanced back across the bridge at the enemy and scowled. But we are not totally tired, he said. Today, Liberia is approaching the end of a very different conflict. But some of the issues are familiar. Exhaustion, the dangers of complacency, the breakdown of trust and and ahead, the long struggle to rebuild. The country has been politically stable for years, its tiny economy growing in a familiar pattern, mineral wealth exported, new mobile phone towers in the slums, the rich getting substantially richer, and some signs that the poor are also living a little longer. Ebola came as more of a surprise than it should have. Everyone was slow to react, and more people have now died here in Liberia than than anywhere else. Over 4,000. But the fight back has been impressive. And now, abruptly, it's paying off. The tented Ebola treatment units, with their armies of masked health workers stand empty. There have been no new confirmed cases nationwide in the past week. But the end game is difficult. Eradicating Ebola requires a remorseless attention to detail, an obsessive focus on tracking down every last possibility. Step forward. Dr. Masoka Falla, a burly, gruff, profoundly earnest man. I spent a day with him as he and a team of volunteers raced around the suburbs of Monrovia, checking on their last few clusters. It sounds reasonably straightforward. Find everyone who's been in contact with a confirmed Ebola patient. Quarantine them for three weeks. Check them every day. We visited the Yardolo family. Three relatives already dead, one in hospital. Perhaps, Dr. Falla pondered, this could be the very last Liberian family to suffer. Suddenly we heard reports of a sick woman being brought to a nearby clinic, and we raced off. She was One of the Yardolo's neighbors who'd been hiding her illness. Ebola suspected. Dr. Fallah shook his head slowly as the ambulance drove off. Time perhaps, to start another three week quarantine clock on the other side of Monrovia. A couple of hours drive. In the traffic, we found a dozen women singing under some trees, a Christian group's weekly assembly. There was much talk about Ebola and prayers for the victims, but in their midst, Sani Bayan kept quiet. She's a mother of three who used to sell snacks from a wheelbarrow. But then she got Ebola, and when she survived and returned home, her husband abandoned the family. She and the children have had to move house three times since. No one, it seems, not even a husband wants an Ebola survivor living or praying next to them. Sunny Beyan has been working at an Ebola clinic, counseling other patients, but that's closing next month. Her two older children, aged 7 and 11, were supposed to return to school this month, but she can't afford the fees on her own. I am quite sure that Liberia will bounce back from the Ebola crisis. It has much to be proud of in the way communities and individuals have risen to the challenge. The economy will probably resume its 6% annual growth. The mines will keep working, investment will return. The health system will be overhauled. The real impact is harder to quantify, to put on a graph, it can be measured in a broken family, a lost job, frustrated children out of school for another year by private prejudice exposed, and neighbourhoods quietly shattered by distrust.
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Andrew Harding in Monrovia the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the United States of having given up on trying to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Mr. Netanyahu's remarks are the latest in a spat with the Obama administration over the Israeli leader's plans to address the U.S. congress next week. Kevin Connolly reminds us the the prime minister's comments come just a couple of weeks before a general election in Israel.
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Tel Aviv found itself basking in a sudden burst of hot, late winter sunshine this week, and the city came to life quickly, like a cat shaking itself awake. Suddenly it was possible to eat outdoors without wearing a parka or huddling under the gas patio heaters. By coincidence, at about the same time, things began to heat up in Israel's long parliamentary election campaign too. It was a race badly in need of a little drama. Israeli elections don't produce sweeps or landslides, they produce coalitions. It's not unusual for the weeks of horse trading which follow the vote to be at least as interesting as the months of campaigning which go before it. Even David Ben Gurion, lion of Zionism and architect of Israeli independence, never secured an outright parliamentary majority, although he did win the first five elections in the history of the state. None of the parties running this time around is likely to win more than 24 or 25 seats, and will thus occupy about a fifth of the places in the national parliament in Jerusalem. To build a governing coalition, then, takes patience and a readiness to give lots of small parties lots of big concessions to get them on board and keep them there. Whoever tops the pole usually gets first go at building a governing coalition, but there's no guarantee of success. It's perfectly possible to come first and end up nowhere if you can't tempt, bribe or persuade enough of your rivals into your tent. And that's why things are starting to hot up here. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself level pegging with the leaders of a centre left alliance which forms the main opposition bloc this time around. And what makes it particularly interesting is that the crucial speech of next week won't be delivered in Jerusalem or Tiberias or Tel Aviv, it will come. In Washington, Mr. Netanyahu's Republican allies have invited him to address the joint houses of Congress on the subject of Iran's nuclear ambitions, one of his favorite favorite subjects. For the Israeli Prime Minister, it's a priceless opportunity to stride the world stage and remind the folks back home of the strength of his international security credentials, a strong card in Israeli politics. The speech will be broadcast back here in Israel, but with a five minute delay to allow television executives to scrutinize the content for any attempt to turn this global occasion to domestic political advantage, which seems too blatant. Although it would be a plucky editor who pulled the plug after the amount of international fuss the speech has already attracted. The White House doesn't like the idea of Congress conducting its own foreign relations in this way. And it really doesn't like the idea of a foreign leader getting together with his ideological friends in Washington to criticise the administration. Mr. Netanyahu is worried that the American led world powers negotiating with Iran and are wavering in their determination to prevent Tehran from eventually acquiring nuclear weapons. It is one of the signature issues of Mr. Netanyahu's life, and he'll have plenty to say on the subject. But the Obama administration is hopping mad. Its officials didn't care much for the Israeli Prime Minister before this, and the muddling together of Iranian diplomacy with the domestic politics of both Israel and the United States is, is not going to win them over. Mr. Netanyahu argues his trip will strengthen Israeli security. His rivals here at home believe that by damaging the relationship with the United States, which is Israel's most important strategic asset, it's doing just the opposite. Israeli voters will give their verdict just over two weeks from now. But for the moment, the Washington visit has certainly brought things to life. In previous speeches to Congress, Mr. Netanyahu has sounded like a regional manager reporting back to headquarters on how things are going in a particularly difficult branch office. Israel likes to see itself as the operator of a kind of democracy franchise on behalf of the free world in a particularly tough region for sales. This time he's going to have to find a tone that carries that friendly audience in Congress provides. Israeli is watching at home with a reason to vote for him and leaves listeners in the wider world feeling it was worth all the build up and all the fuss. His rivals at home and all those irritated officials in the White House and the State Department will be waiting to pounce. So it's not just in Tel Aviv that things are starting to heat up.
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And that's Kevin Connolly. Now, the west tends to view the Khomeini revolution in Iran in a negative light. It blames his regime for giving birth to an oppressive and conservative clerical rule which he even today tolerates no opposition and not much more in the way of free speech. And yet could it be that history will judge him differently? Quite apart from overthrowing the corrupt and brutal regime of the Shah, the revolution introduced education reforms which have been of particular benefit to women. Amy Guttman's been underground in the Iranian capital to see what can be learned about the lot of women in Iran today.
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My guide, Farah, a tall, slender woman in her late 30s, wears jeans in a simple manto, the mandatory robe women must wear in public. It covers from neck to knee. Her long, straight black hair is tucked beneath her headscarf, but visible as it coils at her neck. We're going to Tadrish Bazaar in north Tehran to explore 10 different kinds of dried plums and other goodies. We choose the Metro Farah for its convenience and ay for a chance to go underground in Tehran because it provides a picture of the city most tourists never see. And as I learn, it's a double sided one where most locals don't see tourists either. It's mid morning. Women and men sit separately, but the rule relaxes during busy times like now. We, along with a few other women, clasp our hands around a pole, standing next to men, young and old in the air conditioned modern carriage. Two stops later and about 20 commuters fewer, segregation happens naturally. Women at one end, men at the other, still within view but separate. A handful of fashionable girls admire their own reflections in the glass window. They wear tight leggings under their brightly colored robes, pushing back headscarves and boundaries. We find seats next to a group of conservative women dressed in black clothes called chador. They're nothing like the other women I have met, a sisterhood of outspoken opinions, most of them liberal. We are a nation with one language, farra says, divided in two, traditional and modern. The curiosity within the metro car is mutual. Women and men watch us intently, faces full of question marks. I'm getting a spontaneous, unprompted lesson about gender equality in Iran. Farah tells me it all began not with imports from the west, but with the 1979 revolution. A confluence of access, education and a bad economy created a society where women now have independence, careers and husbands happy to help around the house with chores and children. The revolution, Farah tells me, was very good for women. The revolutionists supported women coming out of their homes to demonstrate, she says. They used women to show their strength, but they never anticipated. These women also believed in their own right to exist outside the home. Iran's genies were let out of the bottle. The same genies have gone on to become active members of theological schools and hold positions as judges and engineers. There's no greater evidence of women in the workplace than where we're sitting, surrounded by women on their way to work. It's another outcome the ayatollah hadn't expected. But with Iran's economy battered by the revolution, women had no choice but to join the workforce. It forced men to acknowledge that their wives could go out and earn money, Farah says. Growing up, Farah only remembers affluent families allowing girls to work outside the home. Now, she says, nearly all boys prefer to marry a girl who has a permanent job and a good salary. She insists. Often the women work harder and longer hours than their husbands, so the men do more of the housework, cleaning and preparing meals. A timely initiative helped change the game for Iranian women. In 1982, just three years after the revolution, the government realized the existing education system was insufficient and wasn't available to average Iranians. It also wasn't providing essential skills. So they established Azad University. The non profit national network of institutions with branches in large cities, small towns, even villages, provided girls from the middle and lower classes access to education they'd never had before. These girls, who like me, were the first in their families to go to university. They are teaching their children equality because they have grown up with it themselves, Farah says. It inspired competence and confidence. I ask Farah what she studied at university. Women's studies, of course, she answers with a smile. Women, Farah says, now outnumber men in their pursuit of graduate degrees, something that has created a societal problem. Most Iranian women won't dream of dating men who aren't their intellectual equal. There are no musicians busking on Tehran's Metro. Instead, a man walks up and down the carriage selling kitchen utensils to women too busy to shop. As we approach Tadrish station, there are no takers. Presumably, if these women need a new sponge or dust rag, it's their husbands who will go out and buy them.
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And that was Amy Gutman. The United States and Cuba could have embassies in each other's capitals in just a few weeks time. Their negotiators were hard at work in Washington yesterday, ahead of a meeting in Panama in early April between Presidents Obama and Castro. In Cuba, the idea of normal relations with the US is a mouth watering prospect for some private business owners on the island, particular the country's growing number of restaurant owners. A string of new and in some cases exciting places to eat has been opening up there, and this of course is a country where owning such businesses was banned until very recently. Will Grant in Havana says there are hopes that opening up to the wider world will mean more choices on the menu too.
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For years, eating out in Cuba wasn't exactly fine dining. During the Cold War, state run restaurants were the only legal option. Official establishments in which the waiter invariably began taking the order by reeling off a list of the items that weren't available. We're out of chicken, there's no shrimp today, and the gentleman on table 12 had the last red snapper. In 2008, however, shortly after taking over from his brother Fidel, President Raul Castro began to implement a series of reforms aimed at loosening the reins on private enterprise, including the family run restaurant, or paladar. Serving food, it seemed, was an area where the revolution was about to relinquish its white knuckle tight grip. I first came to Cuba not long after those changes were announced. They hadn't entirely filtered down to the streets yet, but I remember our first meal in a paladar. After being persuaded to follow a man waving a menu at us, we found ourselves, quite literally in somebody's home. They pushed aside the sofa and shooed away the cat, draped a tablecloth over a small table and laid out non matching cutlery. The menu was pretty simple. They were serving arroz con pollo, a Cuban classic of chicken pieces in saffron rice. We did have a choice between cold beer and soft drinks, though we chose beer. As she served our food, we chatted to the chef and owner, a woman whose name I've long forgotten, but I do remember her sense of expectation, her hopes that the new rules would make a big difference to her income. The state wage was then and is still the equivalent of just £13amonth given we'd just spent around £3 each on our plate of chicken and rice and there were five of us. Little wonder the paladar business looked appetising. Fast forward a few years and Cuba's restaurant scene, particularly in Havana, is almost unrecognisable. The sheer number and range of eateries has grown exponentially, and the quality of some of the culinary experiences on offer rivals anywhere in Latin America. Among the new arrivals is El Cocinero, a stylish restaurant built inside an old peanut oil factory with a kind of uber trendy rooftop terrace, which wouldn't look out of place in New York, Miami or London. But it's not just high end restaurants. There's Cafe Bohemia, a small Italian run cafeteria in one of Havana's oldest squares. The espressos are akin to anything you'd find in Milan, and the baguettes are positively Parisian. The owner, Annalisa, is a smiling 30 something who admits she's taken a risk. Everything from the gourmet coffee machine to the tables and chairs had to be shipped in from outside, she explains. But despite the extra obstacles of setting up shop in a country still under a US Economic embargo, she believes there is real potential to grow in Cuba. It's a feeling echoed a few blocks north at O'Reilly's 304. The restaurant walls are decked out with artwork from hip local artists, and it's reminiscent of cocktail bars in Barcelona or Berlin. The house speciality is the octopus, done on the grill with just a drizzle of oil and a splash of pesto. And their seafood pasta is pretty good, too, normally to be found running around after suppliers or attending to some administrative headache. The owner, Jose Carlos Imperatori, is a fashionably dishevelled young Cuban guy with a moustache and an easy demeanour. He admits that finding restaurant quality ingredients in Cuba isn't easy. No es facil, he says with a knowing smile, using the same line in Spanish as President Obama did recently to describe the thaw in relations with Cuba. For these restaurant owners, that thaw could be the start of something big. First and foremost, it should mean more visitors to the island, which means more paying customers. Secondly, they hope it will bring desperately needed products to Cuban stores. More spices, sauces, kitchen utensils, branded takeaway boxes, you name it. The chances are it's hard to find in Cuba. 1 Paladar La Cucheria has a 1950s American diner theme to it, with pink neon writing on the walls and a menu of burgers and thick milkshakes. The classic Cadillacs and Chevrolets parked outside lend a hint of authenticity. The Cucheria's owners recently opened up a second branch, making it arguably the first non state owned chain on the island. Still, changes in Cuba don't happen overnight. At lunch there the other day, the waitress approached me rattling off a list of unavailable items. No chicken, no burger buns and no ground beef.
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The Coca Cola one feels will be along soon enough will grant there in Havana the political turmoil which has shaken Argentina as a result of the mysterious death of a state prosecutor shows no sign of calming down this weekend. The unfolding scandal has been dominating the media in Buenos Aires for weeks. But 800 miles away in the country's rugged north, not everyone follows what's going on in the capital. In fact, some of the talk up there, close to the borders with Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay, has been about real seismic activity. There have been two earthquakes this month. One measured nearly seven on the Richter scale. Yet the locals aren't too concerned. Up in the high altitude Andean desert, this sort of tectonic upheaval causes about as much concern as a spring shower in Manchester. Chris Haslam has been to talk to one resident president about life in a part of the country they call the Devil's Building site.
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The interview isn't going terribly well. I've travelled for four days to Argentina's mountainous northwestern corner to talk to a man whom I've thought might be the world's loneliest pensioner. It turns out that he's not as lonely as I was led to believe. But we'll come back to that. This sun cured septuagenarian llama farmer is called Don Roberto Plaza and he lives on the slopes of an 18,400 foot mountain bang in the middle of nowhere. From the broken plastic chair outside his low, sparsely furnished home, he can see four volcanoes, a shimmering salt desert, and in the distance, against a space black sky, the jagged spike of the Cerro del Hombre Muerto, the Dead Man's Peak. The nearest village is three hours away along a frost shattered quake cracked track that winds through a dali esque landscape of glassy lava walls, sudden death ravines and toxic lakes of arsenic. They call this place La Puna, from the Quechua for badlands, and they say it's the place God gave the devil to show off his landscaping skills. Curiosity as to how and why anyone could live in this disturbingly beautiful yet hellish land is what brought me here. But as I mentioned, Don Roberto is being willfully obdurate. He was born on this wind scarred slope and has lived here for 74 years. He says since his parents died 30 years ago, he he's been alone. But life is tranquillo. The thermal variation here is the highest on Earth, with temperatures ranging from plus 30 to minus 30 in the space of a single day. It must be tough dealing with that, I suggest. Don Roberto shrugs. It's fine. What about the pumas? I ask. Yesterday a German explorer told me how he'd found one of Don Roberto's elderly neighbors. He lives just 55 miles down the road, bedridden with a broken hip, half starved and dangerously dehydrated, while a pair of mountain lions waited patiently on his doorstep for him to expire. Pumas, sniffs Dom Roberto. Pussycats. And so, in one of the most dramatic landscapes on earth, continues one of the world's most humdrum interviews. What about food? I ask. When I run out, I go hungry. No problem.
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Health?
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I pray to God, and within three days I'm better. Loneliness. People drop by all the time, sighs Don Roberto. Just eight weeks ago I had a visitor. Storms, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions. I make offerings to Pachamama for protection, says Don Roberto, referring to the Inca goddess. He leads me around his garden, watered by trenches dug in the turf from the glacial stream nearby. It sports guava potatoes and avocados. Don Roberto shows me his pear tree. Frost proof, he says, before bending with the suppleness of a yogi to dam a channel with a slab of obsidian. Does he have a radio? Nope. Tv? Nope. Doesn't he get bored? Don Roberto gives me a wearily incredulous look. Bored? He says. I don't have time to get bored. His daily routine involves tending his garden, praying to God, and looking after his small herd of llamas, some of whom are in the meadow. Over the back, he says. And by over the back he means a 22 mile round trip on foot over a 15,000 foot pass that's regularly closed by blizzards. That's a dangerous hike, I say. Not really, replies Don Roberto. Right. It's time to play the trump card. The last resort. The inept reporter. It works like make an irresistibly attractive hypothetical proposal in the confident expectation that the interviewee will reject it, his justification of that rejection will then reinforce the story. So if the government offered you a brand new, centrally heated, air conditioned apartment in the city of Salta, two day drive from here, with running water and a flat screen tv, would you take it? Ask. Don Roberto looks at me like I'm an idiot. Course I would, he says. And there's a reason why this seemingly indestructible old pragmatist would jump at the chance to escape. He's not quite as alone here as he makes out. Behind his house stands another. But in his laconic description of his thirty years of solitude, Don Roberto hasn't once mentioned his neighbour. When I ask, he gives me a look as dark as the storm sweeping in from the Chilean border. In he will not discuss the neighbour. The interview, it seems, is taorminado. That night in a cold diner in the dusty hamlet of Tola Grande, 88 miles north. I learned the truth. Don Roberto's neighbour is his sister, confides the waitress. No one remembers why they fell out, but they haven't spoken in 30 years. There's nothing in Pachamama's book of spells, it seems, that's more powerful than a family feud.
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Chris Haslam there. And a journalistic assignment which, like so many others, didn't go quite according to plan. That's it. More from correspondence on the Road in our programmes on Thursday and Saturday mornings next week. Do join us. Goodbye.