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From Our Own Correspondent
The Love Hunters
00:27:59
Global despatches. Today: it was Gabriel Gatehouse's local shopping mall but now the a...
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- [00:00]
Presenter
Hello from the.
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Narrator/Interviewer
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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Narrator/Reporter
Thank you. Today, the Muslim Brotherhood banned its assets seized in Egypt. The crackdown on opposition intensifies. Has Mrs. Merkel won too? Well, her election triumph means a new German government could be months away. We meet the love hunters of Shanghai, signing up spouses for China's richest men. And could you give it all up and live as a beachcomber? We're off to an isolated coral atoll in the South Seas to find out. Experts from several countries and Interpol have joined Kenya's investigation into the four day siege of the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, in which at least 67 people died. Teams from the United States, Canada, Israel and Britain are helping to carry out DNA, fingerprint and ballistic tests. The Kenyan Interior Minister has confirmed that five militants believed to be from the Somali Islamist group Al Shabaab, also died. Security has now been tightened in Kenya's other high profile buildings considered potential targets. Gabriel Gatehouse was one of the reporters covering the siege.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
For many in Nairobi, leisure time revolves around the shopping mall. Westgate is my local complex, or one of them. This is a city where an increasingly affluent middle class and large numbers of relatively wealthy expats live alongside an even larger group of people for whom a coffee in one of Westgate's cafes would set them back a day's wages or more. But for those who can afford it, Westgate offers restaurants and shops, a supermarket, even a casino and a cinema. I stopped by Westgate on average about three times a week, mostly to do my grocery shopping, but sometimes to pop into the art cafe for an espresso or to rent a video from the store on the second floor. I wasn't there last Saturday at noon when a group of men with guns walked confidently up the steps to the main entrance and started shooting. I was abroad. And so for me, the immediate aftermath of the attack unfolded in a series of still pictures which emerged on the Internet as I made my way back to Nairobi. A young woman folded into a shopping trolley, being wheeled to safety, bleeding and grimacing with pain, her head resting on a 12 pack of toilet roll. Another woman frozen in the act of jumping out of the air vent of a sushi restaurant where she'd been hiding for several hours. A group of cinema goers emerging dazed and blinking into the light, descending an escalator, their hands held rigidly in the air. And a mother, her face stretched in Fear carrying her toddler as she runs over shattered glass into the arms of a pistol toting security officer. By the time I got to the scene, 24 hours later, when Westgate had been cordoned off, inside the gunmen were holding hostages. One could only imagine under what conditions. Those who'd managed to escape described scenes of bodies sprawled lifeless over their lunch plates. The attackers had apparently called on Muslims to identify themselves. If they passed a test by reciting verses from the Quran or identifying the name of the mother of the Prophet, they were allowed to go. Some of the tales of horror and heroism that emerged as the standoff continued seemed rooted in little more than the fevered imagination of the bystanders who gathered outside the shopping centre with a knowing look. One man asked me whether I'd heard about the decapitated body that had been thrown out of a window. I hadn't, and no one I'd spoken to had seen any evidence of that. A picture emerged of a young European boy standing next to a dead body, clutching a Mars Bar. According to some newspapers, this four year old British kid had confronted one of the gunmen. You're a very bad man, he apparently told him, to which the attacker responded, please forgive me, we are not monsters, and handed him the chocolate. It wasn't clear exactly how much of this story was true, but there were plenty of real stories of extraordinary bravery and callousness. Two days after the attack, I met Kamal Kaur. She had been on one of the upper floors of the complex hosting a cookery competition for 30 or so children when the attack began. They all huddled together in a corner. Then a man came with a hand grenade. He rolled it across the floor towards the group of kids. It exploded. Then he fired off a shot. Kamal was unhurt. Her son and daughter, aged eight and 12, were injured. But right next to her, a young boy was fatally wounded. I know it's not my fault, she told me, but I wish I could have done more. She described feeling helpless as the child bled profusely and his breathing got heavier and heavier. All I could do was stroke his head, she said. And then his body started twitching. And I knew that this is it. He's not going to make it. And eventually he stopped moving and I could do nothing to help him. The siege ended in a series of stutters. Journalists and soldiers gathered outside the mall ducked for cover as periodic bursts of gunfire erupted. We heard loud blasts coming from inside, and then we saw a thick plume of smoke rising over the building into the sky. As I write, forensic teams are combing through the complex to try to piece together exactly what happened and how. There are still bodies buried in the rubble. And the full extent of the horror of this attack remains, for the moment, sealed inside the wreckage of the Westgate Centre.
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Narrator/Reporter
Gabriel Gatehouse in Nairobi. Germany's finance minister says the talks to form a new government coalition could drag on for some time. Wolfgang Scheubler whispers Speaking after the Chancellor Angela Merkel, won a third term in Sunday's general election. Her Conservatives fell five seats short of an absolute majority, but their coalition partners, the pro business Free Democrats, were voted out of Parliament. Chris Morris says Mrs. Merkel must now forge an alliance with one of the two rival centre left parties, and so far neither has shown much inclination to sign up.
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Presenter
She's known for her love of Wagner, but I'm not sure that Angela Merkel has been associated with the Totenhusen. So the sight of her dancing, or at least swaying cautiously to the sound of the German punk band, whose name translates literally as the Dead Trousers, was a bit different. Angela Merkel was letting her hair down just a little, and the assembled party faithful, sporting plastic orange hats, were loving it. She just won a resounding third election victory. And for a woman who clearly dislikes campaigning but loves governing, this was a sweet moment. Tomorrow we go back to work, she told the crowd. The day after tomorrow, they chanted. She smiled a you must be joking kind of smile and retired gracefully as the party went on into the night. And sure enough, there she was the following morning, back at work as promised, brushing off questions about coalition formations and the colour of her necklace with almost regal aplomb. But at this moment of her greatest electoral triumph, with Mrs. Merkle on course to overtake Margaret Thatcher as Europe's longest serving female head of government, there is irony at work. Sometimes you can win too well. She steamrollered not only the opposition, but her own coalition partners too. The Free Democrats, Germany's Liberal Party, have collapsed from having nearly 100 MPs to having none at all. Kicked out of Parliament for the first time since the party was formed in the late 1940s, it's a small dent in Germany's enviable employment figures and a sobering tale for Liberals and junior partners everywhere. And now Mrs. Merkel's potential future partners are understandably wary in the extreme of the black widow effect, the political danger of falling victim to the Chancellor's fatal embrace. We're neither waiting in line nor applying for the job after she ruined her current coalition partner, the chairman of the Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel observed testily. No one of course reveals their hand in coalition negotiations straight away. But stand by for weeks, if not months of this. As Europe looks for direction in rebuilding the recession ravaged neighbourhood. Angela Merkel may be struggling to sort out her own house. In the end, it is likely that a coalition will emerge, with either the Social Democrats or the Greens taking the plunge alongside Mrs. M. German politics is designed to encourage consensus. Creating compromise was built into the system after the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. If all else fails, the only option would be another election. And let's face it, the German public weren't all that enthused by this one. By and large, they expect their politicians to work together. That's given symbolic substance. In the great glass dome which rises over the reconditioned Reichstag building where the Bundestag, the German parliament, sits, people can and do watch over political debate from above, climbing the spiraling ramps inside the dome to view the panorama of the city outside and their chosen politicians at work below. But the lengthy process of forming the next German government will be closely watched from further afield as well. Across Europe, and in particular on the Eurozone's struggling periphery, it matters who runs Germany. That's because more and more economic policies in the Eurozone have become centralised and coordinated, and the rules which govern them have by and large been set in Berlin. Similarly, anyone hoping that austerity might ease a little to give their national economy a bit of breathing space, will know that without the support of the German government, any such proposal would be a non starter. Just outside the Reichstag building, the River Spree meanders through the centre of Berlin, with the route of the Wall which once divided the city still traced on the pavement alongside, the surface of the river partially reflects a mosaic of buildings and memorials. Germany's capital, in which so much of the torrid History of 20th century Europe was written, is the focal point of the continent once again. The pleasure boats carrying tourists from home and abroad chug slowly through the water, navigating around a sharp bend and sending ripples bouncing off the far bank. Nothing fancy. Steady as she goes. The face staring down from an election poster that has now served its purpose would probably approve. There's a hint of a smile playing around Angela Merkel's lips as she looks straight at the camera. The only words on the poster Chancellor for Germany. Well now the slogan has become a statement of fact again, as if there were ever any doubt. Back to work. But on this occasion, winning the election may have been the easy Part the rest of Europe will have to be patient.
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Narrator/Reporter
Chris Morris in Berlin. A court in Egypt this week banned the Muslim Brotherhood from carrying out any activity in the country and ordered that its assets be confiscated. The military backed government has taken a series of tough measures against the group since Mohamed Morsi was removed from the country's presidency in July. The Brotherhood insists it will remain a part of Egyptian society whatever the authorities do. Quentin Somerville in Cairo says tensions are running high as the crackdown against the group continues.
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Quentin Somerville
Bahira Gala's sweet shop is in Cairo's fancy Garden City neighbourhood. Delicately, she dropped eight fat chocolates into a gold lined box, each decorated with a picture of her hero. Egypt's hero, she explained. General Fatah Al Sisi. Sisi rescued the country. He is our savior, Bahira said. Sisi is the head of the military who ousted President Mohammad Morsi. Would she ever make Morsi bon bons? Never, was the unequivocal response. He and his Muslim Brotherhood ruined Egypt, she said, and they probably wouldn't sell. The Brotherhood's fall from power has been swift, dramatic and bloody. For 85 years it was a banned group, but under the former president Hosni Mubarak, it was at least tolerated. But after one short year in power, every effort is now being made to destroy the group which millions of Egyptians voted for. Most of its leaders, Mr. Morsi included, are now in jail. The organization is being outlawed and the hunt is on for the rest, many of whom are routinely branded terrorists. Kadasa is a little town on the way to the pyramids. There, in August, as the government attacked Muslim Brotherhood camps at the Rabba mosque in Cairo with brutal and deadly force, the police station at Cardassa was set upon. Eleven officers inside were butchered. A local man said it was outsiders who were responsible. But he added, 11 people from this village were killed when they cleared Rabah and 11 police died here. I stood on the roof of the burnt out station last week, just after the army and police rolled back into town to retake Cardassa. I was struck by the devastation all around the building. The shells of armored vehicles were piled up at the entrance and it said rocket propelled grenades were used against the building. It reminded me of the aftermath of the complex guerrilla attacks I'd seen in Afghanistan. This didn't appear to be the work of an unprepared mob. On the hot Thursday afternoon I was there, a firefight broke out. By nightfall, 80 people in the town had been arrested. A terrorist hotbed cleared, proclaimed the increasingly partisan state media A few days later, an Egyptian court in effect outlawed the Brotherhood and all of its affiliates. The group's daily newspaper was raided and closed in the middle of the night. The Muslim Brotherhood failed at government. Millions of Egyptians wanted its removal and took to the streets to bring it about. The army delivered the fatal blow. A leading member of the Brotherhood, Salah Sultan, in an article called Excuses to God and Apologies to Our Egypt and Our People, admitted significantly for the first time that the group had made mistakes. It was too exclusive and it hadn't fulfilled the hopes of young people and women. Too little, too late. Those Brotherhood leaders who aren't in jail have gone into hiding. The group's welfare activities, hospitals, charities and schools provide for Egypt's sick and poor. When asked what the ban would mean for them, an administrator at one hospital said unconvincingly, you've got it wrong. We are nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. So pushed out of the democratic space, where does the Brotherhood go next? I don't know who threw the homemade explosive that landed next to the group of policemen meters away from me in Cardassa. But I do know that many in Egypt expect more violence. The car bomb which missed the Interior Minister's convoy on September 5, may not be the last. There's no accommodation for either side in Egypt's crisis, just greater polarization. The nation has gone awry. There's no room left for civilized dialogue. An Egyptian friend took her child to start school the other day. The teacher explained to the class and parents that if a pupil wanted to speak, they should hold up one finger if they needed the bathroom, two fingers and so on, until she held up four fingers. Chaos erupted among the parents. The teacher, a young American woman, wasn't to know that in today's Egypt that hand signal is a protest sign commemorating the dead at the Rabba mosque. They died as mortals. Shouted one parent, adding to the uproar. My friend said, shaking her head, this is how they were behaving in front of 6 year olds. I felt ashamed. The children looked on, frightened and confused as to where all this anger had suddenly come from.
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Narrator/Reporter
Quentin Somerville in Cairo. China is moving forwards at an astonishing rate, but it lacks one vital commodity young women. When ultrasound technology came to China in the 80s, it led to sex selective abortions and a dramatic gen gender imbalance. The problem has been exacerbated by the one child policy designed to curb population growth. Today, 118 boys are born for every hundred girls. So men of marriageable age are confronted by a shrinking pool of women. And the competition to find a bride is fierce. Lucy Ash has been finding out how China's new rich have come up with their own solution to the girls shortage.
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Lucy Ash
Clutching his iced coffee, Pengtai strolls down the street and disappears into a shopping mall. Halfway up the escalator, he surveys the scene below. What about that girl in a yellow dress? I venture, he says. Too short. And the girl in micro shorts coming out of the shoe shop? No way, he says. Too skinny. I'm looking for girls with nice skin, nice white skin, he adds. They shouldn't be too thin and not too chunky, with a normal way of walking. A minute later, he sidles up to a fashionably dressed 20something girl trying out perfumes. Are you single? He coos. Looking for love. She quickly shakes her head and walks away. He gets the same brush off from a few more young women. Some look embarrassed, others impatient. Pengtai rejoins me by the entrance and sucks dejectedly on his drink. The girls shouldn't look angry, he tells me. We don't want one with a sour face. Suddenly he spots his prey, a very young girl in a sleeveless top with platform heels. Cautiously he approaches her, all smiles. She listens wide eyed to his opening gambit and looks intrigued as he takes down her details. Then, iPhone in hand, he moves in for the kill and snaps her picture in the doorway of the mall. Pengtai has a quota, three suitable girls a day. He's what's known as a love hunter, working for the Diamond Bachelor's Agency. This Shanghai outfit has hundreds of wealthy single men looking for wives on its books, and the joining fees range from 15,000 pounds to more than a million pounds a year, depending on the level of service required. Pengtai and dozens like him remind me of small fishing trawlers scooping up what they can in their nets. But their catch then needs to be specially prepared for the customer. And China's billionaires are a notoriously fussy bunch. One client insisted on a girl who looked identical to Zhang Siyi, the star of the hit film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Another, a real estate tycoon, paid the agency to search nine cities and interview 10,000 girls to find Ms. Wright. Of course, she had to be stunning, but she also had to be between 22 and 24 years old and have a master's degree from one of the top universities in Beijing or Shanghai. Pengtai's work is performance related, but the rewards can be huge. The top love hunters can earn bonuses worth tens of thousands of pounds, but I wonder if he ever worries about treating women as commodities. I don't care what the girls think, he says. This is my job and we're providing a much needed service. While China's wealthiest men contract out the search for a spouse and have plenty of choice, at the opposite end of the scale, some have no choice at all. Firstly, the country's inexorable economic rise has put marriage out of reach for many men. In the early days of the People's Republic, a bride would be satisfied with the so called three rounds, a bicycle, a watch and a sewing machine. Then in the 1970s, grooms were expected to provide a fridge, a TV and a washing machine. And now it's a car, a good salary and real estate. One young engineer I met in a Beijing park told me he'd have to save up for 200 years to afford a one bedroom apartment, and that's without eating or drinking. But China's bachelors face a more formidable obstacle than a mere lack of cash the shortage of young women. Many families value boys over girls, as sons traditionally provide for parents in their old age, carry out funeral rites and continue the family line. Men in the poorest, least developed areas suffer the most from the skewed sex ratio because of another inescapable trend in modern mass migration. In the past decade, 300 million people have left the countryside for the cities and for many young women, it's a one way ticket. They marry up and never return home. There are 700 inhabitants in the village of Tanzhen in the mountainous Guangxi Province, and as many as 60 of them are single men. Most expect to die bachelors. Sitting in his courtyard, 30 year old Wei Teng Guang says virtually all the eligible young women are working in factories on the coast. He admits he's never had a girlfriend. I try not to think about it, he says, lighting his umpteenth cigarette. When my mum nags me, it just makes me more depressed. I ask if he has an ideal woman in mind. Any requirements? No requirements at all, he says. I would marry any woman prepared to live here with me. Anyone.
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Narrator/Reporter
And that was Lucy Ashe. Now, who hasn't dreamed of packing in the rat race and going instead to live under the azure skies of an island in the South Seas. It's a dream which quite a few Europeans and some Americans have explored over the years. One of the most notable perhaps was the French artist Paul Gauguin. He died 100 years ago on Tahiti in the English speaking Pacific islands. They call such people beachcombers. But is this kind of beachcomber still to be found there today. John Pickford's been trying to find out his mission began far away in the Pacific Ocean on Christmas Island.
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Narrator/Interviewer
Come in, come in. It's a glorious welcome, considering Perry Langston isn't expecting me. He stands outside his simple home and warmly shakes my hand. His house is near the lagoon, single storey with a half covered entrance yard and a corrugated tin roof. Perry first came to Christmas island in 1966, just a few years after the British stopped using it for nuclear tests, which makes him one of the island's most enduring residents. He's now 74, slightly stooping, spectacles on nose, a sharp, intelligent face. He has a few front teeth missing. Lack of access to dentists is a drawback of island life and a completely unselfconscious smile. He introduces me to his silver haired Micronesian wife. She exudes calm and grace. They've had seven children together. One son lives next door and grandchildren are nonchalantly passing in and out as we're talking. Sit down, sit down. Perry points to a battered armchair. There's a map of the Pacific and an old map of England, both much repaired, pinned to the wall. He shows me a photograph of the red brick farmhouse in Warwickshire where he grew up. And I think, how far can a man travel in one lifetime? But this journey happened without a plan. Perry trained as an agronomist and went out to the Solomon Islands in the twilight years of Empire to work in a technical capacity for a Catholic mission. After that, his whole life in the South Seas involved practical work, the sharp edge of development. He seemed to revel in his lack of material wealth. He quoted Gandhi to me, meet your needs and limit your wants. He may be poor by Western standards, but surrounded by his island neighbours and his grandchildren, he will never fear a lonely old age. 20 minutes away lives another beachcomber with a rather different lifestyle. Scotsman John Bryden runs a successful grocery and provision store and has been on the island almost as long as Perry. He came out to visit his brother, met a local woman and didn't go home. John is 70 and looks 50. But my teeth need fixing, he says. That missing island dentist again. John has a microlight aircraft. The Runway is a field behind his shop. When I came to see him, he just returned from a flight round the island. Saw lots of turtles and sharks this morning. He says he keeps his microlight in a big steel framed shed which he bought from the Kiribati government. It's a building with quite a history. It was the bomb assembly shed. During the British nuclear testing era on the island. John Bryden and Perry Langston are different characters, but both are capable, practical men. If pressed, they could build a house, fix a car, catch fish in the lagoon. They are not dreamers or bookish intellectuals. But 35 years ago on Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, I met another sort of beachcomber. I was making some programmes on Captain Cook and people said, you must go and see Des Clarke. He has a wonderful library of books on the South Seas. Des was also an island trader and married to a local woman, a queen, in fact, one of three traditional chiefs, or ariki on Aitutaki. I remember vividly the surprise of his office at the back of his shop. One wall was covered with books. Cook's journals, Melville Stevenson, A cornucopia of Polynesian Scholarship, Fiction and traveller's tales. I returned to Aitutaki this year and heard that Des was still on the island. In fact, I was to be renting a small house from his wife. The evening before they came to see me, I was sitting on the veranda reading Robert Louis Stevenson's in the South Seas. The sound of the cicadas, the ocean breeze rustling the treetops, the wide and starry sky, even the smell of the mosquito coils. Not a bad place to live out your days, I was thinking. The next morning, Des arrived in a battered truck, slowly climbed the steps to the veranda, brushed back his tousled grey hair and sat down. His wife Gina swatted mosquitoes as we talked. What about your books? I asked. He gave me a long look. They're gone, he said. You can't keep books in this climate. The bugs and the humidity get to them in the end and they always win. Then he threw me another sharp eyed look. If you choose this sort of life, he said, you've got to know what you're giving up. And you've got to be prepared to pay the price.
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Narrator/Reporter
And with that from John Pickford in the Cook Islands, we've reached the end of this edition. I'll be here again with another collection of dispatches from far and wide on Saturday morning. Do join us. Goodbye.