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From Our Own Correspondent
The Lost Orchards
00:28:02
Correspondents' despatches: Jeremy Bowen on the talks, restarting in Geneva next week,...
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- [00:00]
Kate Adie
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.
- [00:12]
Narrator/Presenter
Today, the big prize awaiting the negotiators in Geneva trying to reach a deal over Iran's nuclear power. The ghost islands off the Swedish coast some now have only one inhabitant. An atheist calls in at Martin Luther King's church in Atlanta and emerges moved and humbled. And once you could smell apple blossom on the breeze. Today we're off in search of the lost orchards of Jersey. The Prime Minister and the American President have been talking on the phone about the possibility of an agreement over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Officials from Tehran are due to restart talks on the matter in Geneva next week. Mr. Cameron and Mr. Obama agree it's an important opportunity to strike a deal. Relations between Iran and the west have thawed since Hassan Rouhani took over as Iranian president this summer. But Jeremy Bowen, who's been in the Swiss lakeside city monitoring the diplomatic comings and goings, says there are many hurdles to cross before pen can finally be put to paper.
- [01:13]
Kate Adie
The reporting of international diplomacy can come down to hanging around for titbits thrown out by the delegations on their way in and out of negotiations. At the last session, the Swiss worked hard to keep journalists out of the lobby of the Geneva InterContinental, the hotel where most of the meetings were held. But we are a devious and persistent bunch and not long after each clear out, the armchairs and sofas were filled up again with reporters with laptops twitching and tweeting every time one of the delegations marched past. Journalists are at their worst in herds. Mini stampedes can start when one cameraman moves too quickly and too purposefully up the stairs for followed by human wildebeest desperate for the waterhole of news. No wonder the Swiss try to chuck everyone out. I secured my seat near the lifts to the Iranians floor by ordering a salad nicoise and refusing to move until it was finished. I searched slowly to find an elusive anchovy among the lettuce, waiting for the Iranians to call, watching other reporters alternating between idleness and frenzy. I'd spent much of the week in Libya. From Tripoli to Geneva, from the passion and chaos of North Africa to the order and calm of Switzerland is a big step. It was a nostalgic one for me, as I was Geneva correspondent, my first job abroad in the 1980s. International meetings and negotiations are meat and drink. To a correspondent in Geneva you pick up certain skills waiting around is one of them. Negotiations run to the timetables of the negotiators, not those of the reporters who hang around in the foyer of various grand hotels or worse, in a cold and wet pen outside the front door. In Geneva in the 1980s, I learned how clever Iranian diplomats can be. They were involved in negotiations, I think, about Afghanistan. Urbane, highly educated men with neat beards and perfect English used to hand out nuanced, subtle summaries of their positions. I went to Geneva this time because I was promised an interview with the Iranian foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. He, too, has a neat beard, an American education, perfect English and a subtle mind. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned against Iranians like that at the UN General Assembly. It was an unsuccessful counterattack against the Cham offensive mounted by Iran's newly elected president, hassan Rouhani, and Mr. Zarif, his close ally. But Mr. Zarif's conduct at the talks has convinced the Western skeptics across the table that President Rouhani wants a deal on Iran's nuclear program. The talks are not going to be quick or easy, but all sides believe they're making Progress. I asked Mr. Zarif about Mr. Netanyahu's often repeated refrain that Iran's leaders want a nuclear bomb and that if they got one, the Jewish people would face a second holocaust. To start with, Mr. Zarif said, we don't want a bomb, and the Israelis have been saying we're six months away from a bomb since 1991. They're fear mongering. He also pointed out that Israel remains the only nuclear weapons power in the Middle East. The talks had started looking very serious when Western foreign ministers, closely followed by those of Russia and China, cleared their diaries and diverted their jets to Geneva. But by the time I saw Mr. Zarif, he'd toned down his optimism about an imminent signing ceremony. For the first stage of what would be a complicated agreement, France chose to highlight doubts about an almost built nuclear plant in Iran. I wondered if the foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, was trying to show some diplomatic muscle after the French were left embarrassingly exposed over Syria by the Americans. They'd promised to contribute forces to the American attack that had looked imminent until it was cancelled earlier this year. Followers of the looming smouldering crisis between Iran and the west felt Israel was unlikely to get through another year without attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. That might still happen, but Mr. Zarif and President Rouhani have been given a license to negotiate by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Selling an agreement at home, especially for the Iranians and the Americans, will be difficult. Both sides have hardliners who see only evil in the other. But I am amazed at the progress the negotiators have made. If they can do a deal, a crisis that has the capacity to become a catastrophe would be contained. That is a big prize.
- [05:54]
Narrator/Presenter
Jeremy Bowen Another set of talks aimed at ending nearly 50 years of armed conflict in Colombia is continuing in the Cuban capital, Havana. Last week it was learned that rebel leaders from the left wing FARC group had reached agreement with government negotiators on one matter at least. They've worked out a series of guarantees, conditions and support for the creation of new political parties if a final peace deal is reached. It's become clear that many children and teenagers have been fighting with the rebel groups. But now, increasingly, it seems they're deserting those ranks in favour of a new life. Tom Esselmont has been to the west of the country to see what's tempting them out.
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Tom Esselmont
We were driving at high speed, sat in the back of a white pickup truck. The warm, moist air ruffled my hair. Yucca plantations and sugar cane fields passed by in a blur. We were going too fast to enjoy the scenery. There wasn't much in the way of conversation either. I was with a tall white haired army officer, General Saavedra. He was taking us to an out of the way location to meet some newly demobilized guerrillas. This was far from the areas where they'd spent years fighting and in some cases spying for Colombia's notorious armed groups. Here it seemed peaceful. Hard to believe the country had ever been at war. The avuncular general was reluctant to talk, but I did learn we were being taken to a halfway house, a place which would be the former rebel's first stop on the road back into society. Our jeep rattled along a dead end dirt track. The general pulled down his soft army cap and pointed to a sign in the near distance. I was expecting something institutional, but the sign in bright blue lettering read hotel. Palm trees towered above its large metal gates like lookout posts. Purple bougainvillea spilled over the walls. The place had a name. I promised not to reveal it. A hotel? I asked. The high perimeter wires were clearly designed to keep visitors out. What kind of a hotel was this? There were other oddities. The receptionist was welcoming, but she had no keys. The alluring blue swimming pool contained no swimmers. The bar served no alcohol. Perhaps this was once a hotel. Now it was simply Disguised as one. Welcome to the House of Peace, said, said the general as he showed us around. I asked him why no one was using the swimming pool, the football pitch, the ping pong table. Sport, he replied abruptly, is not on the agenda right now. Upstairs, under wooden awnings, was a classroom. Its open sides allowed a warm breeze to flow through. About 20 men and women sat convivially at plastic tables, chatting. Some were young, perhaps only 18 or 19 years old. These were people who'd spent their formative years as child soldiers with Colombia's two main left wing guerrilla groups, the FARC and the eln. Snatched, kidnapped or lured in when they were adolescents, both groups still have several thousand members. They're still classed as illegal terrorist groups by the government here. Only a few weeks ago, these young men and women had been the enemy. But now they had surrendered or been captured. They had handed in their weapons as part of a government programme designed to end the country's five decades long struggle. They were being promised a new life. I looked around the classroom. The former gorillas were now learning the skills of handicrafts. They were making little yellow, red and blue Colombian flags out of tissue paper. Two women at the center of the group caught my attention. One looked tough, had broad shoulders. I couldn't quite read the expression on her face. The other, more slender, was wearing a pink blouse. She had a kind face. It was hard to imagine she'd ever been a child soldier. How did she feel about being rehabilitated by the very people she'd recently been fighting against? She looked coyly to one side, checking to see if the general was watching. Don't forget, she told me, even guerrilla fighters are normal people with families, ambitions and interests of their own. She picked up some more tissue paper and continued to work on her flag. She seemed to be enjoying it. Perhaps she was making up for lost time. The general walked around the room, shaking hands, smiling warmly at his new band of desmovilizados. No longer rebel combatants, now they were just Colombians like him. The general, it struck me, had experienced his own conversion. No longer a fighter, he was a humanitarian, looking after these men and women as though they were his own. Over a hearty lunch of plantains, egg and rice, he told me of the importance of forgiveness. If God could forgive, then so could he. As we drove away later that day, I thought, there are probably other guerrilla fighters who've known little else than conflict, who are also tempted to put down their weapons and return to family life. But clearly there are also other rebels still fighting the ideological fight. To them, the Colombian military is still the enemy, and they, I feel, will be deeply skeptical about these attempts to win them over.
- [11:17]
Narrator/Presenter
And that's Tom Esselmont. The waters off the coast of Sweden famously contain more than 200,000 islands. And while in summer visitors come to sail and drink snaps, by this time of year many of the islands are deserted, given over to the birds and the trees. Years ago there were thousands, including farmers and fishermen who lived there all year round. Today there aren't many left. People have gradually packed up and left for the big cities. But now, Steve Vickers tells us, the authorities have launched a new initiative to try to breathe some economic life back into the islands.
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Steve Vickers
Rising from the sea like barnacle covered whales, the humpbacked islands off Sweden's west coast are, in erosional terms, reasonably well protected. The tides are hardly noticeable, but the ebb and flow of people is easy enough to see. Take a ferry from Gothenburg during the summer and you'll struggle to find a seat among the tourists and young families who pile in with bikes and push chairs. Make the same journey at other times of the year, and the boats are strangely quiet. Just five or six passengers leave the ferry with me at Vronger, a green grey crag in the archipelago that stretches north and south of the city. A salty autumn breeze whispers through the yellow grass, and a lone kayaker sploshes along the shore, pushing blob like jellyfish behind her with every stroke. In the summertime we have a thousand people living here, says Johan, the blue eyed man running Vronger's only shop. In the winter it's much less. I might only earn a tenth of what I earn in the summer. He offers me a ride from the harbour to his shop. Private cars cannot be used in this part of the archipelago, and it's flarkmo pieder mopeds with large flatbeds attached to the front. Characteristically Swedish in their simplicity that keep the islands moving. Johan fires up the engine, one hand twisting gently on the throttle, two infant daughters clinging onto his legs, and a large silver cross hanging around his neck. Christianity, now shunned by so many Swedes on the mainland, still has an obvious presence on Vronger. My faith and my backside is placed in the tray at the front of the moped. From here, Vronga looks a lot like other islands on Sweden's west coast. Red cottages and rusting boats with names like African Queen wait to be repainted. Forests bursting with berries stretch across the interior, and lobster traps bleached by brine and sunlight fringe the peaceful coves. But despite this beauty, Vronger is struggling to maintain a healthy number of year round residents. The island's population, which peaked in 2003, has since fallen by almost 30. At the last count, there were only 365 people living permanently on the island, one full time resident for each day of the year. Vronger's fishing fleet has dwindled with the arrival of modern boats and wealthy families from the city now own many of the houses that fishermen once lived in. They arrive to sail and sip schnapps for a few weeks every summer and then disappear for the rest of the year. The municipality stopped encouraging people to live here, Johan tells me, visibly frustrated. They say that if you centralize everything, put people in this mass, then it's cheaper to control. Vronge's school has been shut for more than a year now, and each morning local kids have to take a ferry ride for classes on a neighboring island. The authorities say that they need more children to make a school on Vronger work. Residents like Johan and his family, keen to see the day when the school reopens, have developed a sharpened interest in local births. There are islanders who can tell you not just how many children have been born this year, but also what their names are. Was it five or six last year? They ask each other with puzzled frowns. Sara, Hanna, Olla, they say, counting the names aloud. This might sound desperate. But compared with many islands in Sweden, Wronge and its neighbours near Gothenburg are doing well. In less than a decade, dozens of previously inhabited islands, most of them far from the big cities, have been abandoned altogether. Around 70 Swedish islands now have just one inhabitant. For many islanders, pushed out of the housing market and concerned by the decline in services like schools, moving away is the obvious choice. And for teenagers who dream of nightclubs and high street shops, the lure of the city is strong. But there is hope for communities like Vronger. In August, officials in Gothenburg announced plans to turn the archipelago into a year round tourist destination. It's our Eiffel Tower, our Great Wall, said one spokesman. And on Wronge, facilities are improving. Fast ferries have cut journey times from the city, A new cafe has been built, and the island's first hostel will soon be open for business. Some of the island's people have also started working with Sweden's economic growth agency in the hope of creating more jobs, more opportunities and a larger number of year round residents. But what if the disappearing tide cannot be stopped and the population keeps dropping? Would Johan and his family ever move back to the mainland. No way, he says when we reach the shop, seemingly shocked by the thought. Well, he adds quickly, not unless God tells me to.
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Narrator/Presenter
Steve Vickers in Ytrborj, Otherwise known as Gothenburg. Atlanta, Georgia, these days is one of America's big tourist cities, the capital of the New south, some call it, although there's nothing modern about one of its biggest attractions, the church where civil rights leader Martin Luther King preached. He became a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1960, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Fifty years ago, churches like his were at the heart of the civil rights movement. They played a crucial part in reshaping the United States and continued to attract millions of African American believers. On his first visit to the American South, Andrew Whitehead joined worshippers at this church, which is now a national historic site.
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Andrew Whitehead
Fried green tomatoes it was a great film. Not so great to eat. Catfish is edible only in really spicy breadcrumbs. Avoid grits for breakfast, though. Shrimp and grits is good for lunch. And go to a Baptist service. If you're courteous and friendly, you'll be welcomed, and it's truly an astonishing experience. A friend emailed advice when he heard I was heading to Atlanta, my first experience of America's Deep South. He was right on the shrimp and grits, wrong on the fried green tomatoes, and I steered well clear of catfish, however cooked and going to church. Well, I'm a non believer. I don't go to church. Not entirely true, my wife once said. A touch for an atheist, you spend an awful lot of time in churches. They are often so magnificent their doors open. Such a good way of communing with the past. More than that, faith is so tied up with identity, community. You can't be interested in today's world and uninterested in the public expression and private meaning of religious practice. There's a personal backstory, too. In the north of England mill village, where I grew up, the Baptist church once loomed large. It was where the mill owners worshipped a squat Victorian edifice, still black with soot stains. Both my grandmothers went to church there. My uncle was a deacon. My father attended the Sunday school. My parents married there in the coronation summer of 1953. There must be a bit of Baptist in me. Strange to say, though I grew up a short stroll away, I entered the church for the first time only a few years ago as part of my personal communing with the past. At the time Gildersom's Baptist Church was being built in the mid-1860s, Atlanta was burned to the ground, the most emphatic aspect of the pro slavery South's defeat in the American Civil War. Atlanta rose from those ashes. It's now the premier city in the Southern states, home of Coca Cola and CNN, the site of the 1996 Olympics and of the grave of America's most renowned Baptist, Martin Luther King. My first morning in Atlanta, jet lagged and up much earlier than makes sense on a Sunday, I stumbled across the city to the district once known as Sweet Auburn. City guide said that in the 1930s, when Michael King, as he was born, was growing up here, this was the richest black locality in the world. Solid, respectable and deeply religious. The Ebenezer Baptist Church was at the heart of the community. Its founding pastor had been born into slavery. The old church, the one where King and his father preached, is now largely a tourist attraction. The new church across the road, opened 14 years ago, is vast and impressive. Where the older churches were a touch dark and enclosed, this one has space and light. As I walked in the lobby at 9 o' clock on a Sunday morning, it was full of activity. Outreach stalls, mission stands, a service underway in the main auditorium. I craned through the glass doors. I hadn't intended to go in. It feels an intriguing intrusion if you're not there for worship. But an usher, besuited bow tied, opened the door and beckoned me in. It was the early service and the church wasn't full. Though there would have been perhaps four or five hundred people present, I didn't spot another white face. The pastor was delivering his sermon, persuasive Oratory, about the church's new mental health ministry, tackling stigma and providing support. The choir was magical in even for someone usually unmoved by gospel music. Twenty or so men, middle aged or older, in matching suits and striking pale yellow ties, swaying as they sang. If I thought that sitting at the back, I could be inconspicuous, that's not how this service works. I want you to turn to the person next to you, said the pastor, and say, have you welcomed Christ into your life? The woman to my right grabbed my wrist, smiled, and asked, just that. I can't honestly say I have, I said, and posed the same question back. Yes, I have, she replied. The final hymn. The congregation all held hands, swaying to the rhythm, and in the final verse we raised our arms aloft. There was an energy, a joyfulness, which I found moving and humbling. I can see why the church looms so large in the lives of the congregation. It has helped take them from darkness to a better place. And it does that, after a fashion, every Sunday.
- [22:09]
Narrator/Presenter
Andrew Whitehead in Atlanta the people of Jersey, I think, are content that their Channel island rarely makes the national headlines. They don't encourage reporters keen to discuss wealthy tax exiles and offshore havens. More content, perhaps, to promote the island's reputation as a fine place for a holiday with balmy climates, sandy beaches and next to no crime. With that weather. Agriculture has always been a key factor in Jersey's successful economy. It's well known for its distinctive cattle and, of course, Jersey royal potatoes. Centuries ago, however, its most successful business was cider. Christine Finn, who was born on the island, has been on the trail of its lost orchards, starting in the capital, St. Helia.
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Christine Finn
I was standing outside the Norfolk Hotel, photographing the car park, when a young man approached me. Everything all right? He asks. Yes, thanks, I reply. When I was a child, this was my garden, I say, pointing at the black, empty off season tarmac framed by buildings and pink grey granite walls. This is Daniel. His family now owns the Norfolk. I tell him about my memories of being in that garden as a child in the 1960s, watching my maternal grandmother rolling lengths of creamy coloured pastry to make huge apple pies for the holiday makers at our guest house. Above her were the branches of an apple orchard which provided the fruit for the pies. It would simmer away in pots on the hob, the scent of apple reaching inside the dark red front door, through the kitchen and up the stairs to my bedroom. When we moved to England, the guest house was sold to the Norfolk next door. When I went back as an adult, I found the garden had disappeared, now a car park for rental vehicles. So now each time I visit the island, I go back to the site and recall the abundance of that garden. The bean poles, tomatoes, the luridly coloured dahlias, the red hot pokers and of course, the apples, all thriving in the Gulf Stream climate. On this visit in the island's archives, I'm shown a map of the area from 1834. At that time, clearly the house was set amid a profusion of orchards. The whole area was green. Apples were Jersey's bounty long before tourism, potatoes and tax legislation. And Jersey's National Trust is now trying to revive the centuries old ritual of black butter, a tar coloured sweetmeat special to the island. In farm buildings deep in the island's interior, I smell the tang of cooked apple. The ingredients are stirred over an open fire in a bachin, a cauldron type pan imported from Normandy. The apple peeling and stirring is an overnight event here I join men and women of all ages at a long table, peeling, cawing and chatting, some of them in the distinct old Norman language of geriaz. Bowls and buckets are quickly filled with pieces of apple. The peel is destined for the island's pigs long term. Islander Neil Mokand provided this year's recipe. 13 and a half gallons of freshly pressed apple juice. 1012 pounds of sweet apples, 112 pounds of Bramley cooking apples. 27 pounds of sugar 11 lemons mixed spice. Into the pot go the apples, though no longer the old varieties like des vert cadeline, des mer du menage, des tetes de cat des pommes d' empereur Alexandre. The orchard shaped Jersey's field patterns, with hedges on lanes protecting the trees. Orchards took up so many rural acres that in 1673 a law was published prohibiting the planting of new ones. Only rotten trees could be replaced. But in those days the delicious black butter was almost an afterthought. The big production was cider exported by the barrel load to the UK. Fallais, a 17th century historian, wrote. I do not think there is any country in the world that produces cider so much as Jersey does. Not even Normandy itself, the Trust director enthuses. Apple blossom could be smelled on the breeze. As night begins to fall over the watched black butter pot, the islanders trade tales and gossip and drink cider as young musicians sing in Jerryse. The bachin bubbles brimming up like volcanic lava, spitting and spewing dark liquid over white walls. The stirrers ducking the boiling spray. The bur noir certainly has a magical hold. It must be stirred continuously using a paddle called a rapot. As the mix thickens hour after hour, an elderly man in a beret plays his squeeze box. By dawn, the stirring is a two person operation, seizing my chance. While the other all nighters have breakfast, I share one end of the rapot. Push to the left, push to the right, round the edge. Instructions like a dance. Eventually the batchin is carefully lifted off the flames as it cools. Spices and the liquorice which gives the butter its colour are added. Volunteers scoop the preserve into jars. Still warm. Exclaims a woman in line at the Jersey market, buying a jar at six pounds a time. I finally get to taste it and for a moment I'm off in a reverie in imagining that hotel car park over the orchard of my childhood is topped off not with black tarmac but instead with the apple fragrant black butter of Jersey.
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Narrator/Presenter
Christine Finn Amid the lost orchards of Jersey and bringing us to the end of another edition. There'll be more correspondence stories from around the world on Saturday morning. Do join us then. Goodbye.