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From Our Own Correspondent
The Stradivarius Tree
00:27:36
Colour and insight from reporters around the world: the man who'll find you a violin...
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Gabriel Gatehouse
Hello from the from our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've
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Programme Announcer
downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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Correspondent (Various) / Presenter
It's introduced by Kate Ady in this edition. Birds of prey gather ominously as Kenyans usher in a new political era. A culture clash in the Malian capital Bamako. As some wonder when will those northerners go home? The Mexicans who don't trust the police to protect them from the country's murderous drug gangs and the Rosa are flowering now in Lashkagar. But in the Jura Mountains there's a gardener whose efforts won't bear fruit until the 24th century. The time has come to ask not what community you come from, but what dreams we share. Those were the words of Uhuru Kenyatta this week as he took office as Kenya's fourth president after another disputed election that was in the end resolved peacefully. They're hailing it as a new beginning, an end to the old politics of ethnic division and violence that have bed Kenyan elections since independence half a century ago. But as the country settles into its second Kenyatta presidency, some are beginning to question whether the son of Kenya's first post independence leader and one of the country's richest men really represents a break with the past. Gabriel Gatehouse was at the inauguration on Tuesday wondering what the future holds.
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Gabriel Gatehouse
The kites were already circling while the sun was still low and the stadium not yet half full. These medium sized brown birds of prey are quite common in Nairobi in pairs or threes. But I'd never seen them in such concentrated numbers as on this morning of the inauguration. Was it perhaps an omen? Driving home from the office the evening before, I'd been contemplating this word inauguration. Before embarking upon significant affairs of state, the ancient Romans would consult the auguries. Signs of nature would be studied to determine whether the enterprise was auspicious, whether it augured well. The men who specialized in such matters were known as augurs. They would look first and foremost at the flight patterns of the birds. Extreme weather and the behaviour of other animals would also be taken into consideration. Sometimes the entrails of a sacrificial beast would be examined. If the auguries looked favorable, then the path was clear to proceed to inauguration. If not, then the proposed enterprise must be re examined for fear of offending the gods. This tradition does not survive here and I am no Uyghur, so I cannot tell you what exactly the signs meant that presented themselves in the hours leading up to the inauguration of Uhuru Kenyatta as Kenya's fourth president. But signs there were aplenty. As I got out of my car that preceding evening, the heavens opened and produced a downpour so severe and so sudden that I was soaked to the skin in the 10 seconds it took to reach my front door. As I fumbled dripping for my keys, a burst of lightning revealed a horrible sight. Lying dead on my porch was a huge black rat. Next to the rat was Noodle, my cat, looking damp but really rather pleased with herself now. Noodle had been adopted and passed on to me by my predecessor but one she had saved the kitten from drowning, a ball of black and white fluff just a few weeks old. My colleague had gone on to witness and report on the terrible violence that followed the vote in 2007, which had cast its long shadow over this election like a doom laden thundercloud. Many had warned that another disputed result would pitch the country back into a frenzy of killing. The result was indeed disputed, but those dire predictions had not come to pass yet. The man Kenya was about to swear in as its new president was also the man who stood accused of masterminding some of those deaths. Why had Noodle decided to deposit this piece of vermin on my doorstep this particular evening, just as I prepared to attend what everyone hoped would be the concluding chapter of that apocalyptic event? Or could it merely be the beginning of a sequel? My mind was racing. I went to bed and slept fitfully. The following morning the clouds had cleared. A rainbow hung over the city as a guard of honour made its final preparations. The kites continued to gather in ever larger numbers, swooping right down into the stadium itself, picking off giant bugs that had hatched in the overnight rain. The outgoing president, Mwai Kibaki, arrived to cheers from the crowd. Ten years ago he had promised Kenya a fresh start, but he'd squandered that optimism first in corruption scandals and then fatally wounded whatever hope the people might have had of a new beginning by presiding over that discredited, stolen election and the 1,300 deaths that had followed. He tottered unsteadily across the pitch to inspect the troops for one last time as commander in chief. He looked beady eyed and lugubrious. The word comes from the Latin lugubris, meaning mournful, but also bird of ill omen. And then he was gone. Uhuru Kenyatta took to the podium, grasping in his right hand the very same Bible his father had brandished half a century earlier. In 1963, Jomo Kenyatta oversaw the lowering of the Union Jack and the dawning of a New post colonial era. Fifty years later, the new president pledged to be a leader for all Kenyans. And whether they'd voted for him or not, whether they belonged to his or to any other tribe, could Kenyatta the son finally fulfill the promise of Kenyatta the father and govern a nation at peace with itself, a country of greater fairness, of equality and opportunity for all? The crowd seemed truly to believe he could as the oath of office was pronounced. Surging and cheering at every sentence, the birds continued to circle and to swoop, hunting their prey oblivious.
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Correspondent (Various) / Presenter
Gabriel Gatehouse. In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, had some faint praise for the Afghan security forces this week. He was responding to the warning from the Commons Defence Committee that Afghanistan could slide into civil war once the British and other foreign forces leave the country next year. The Afghans, Mr. Hammond maintained, had made significant progress. As some British troops start to pack up their kit, others are continuing to arrive in Helmand Province. Caroline Wyatt's been to see them and to talk to Afghan politicians about the future.
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Caroline Wyatt
Summer has already arrived in Helmand. It's several degrees hotter than Kabul, and the garden at the British headquarters in Lashkar is in full bloom, the reds, oranges and yellows of the roses standing out against the sandy soil. The Afghan gardener waves a cheery hello as we pass by, and I wonder aloud what will happen to him when British for his leave? I am told that with his skills and the Afghan love of gardens, he will easily find another job. It is not clear what will happen to this military base or many others, as they are handed back by British and American troops. These days, Hellman's capital is a sprawling place with a busy market that has grown every year. There are even, I am told, some houses that cost more than a million dollars in one of the poorest corners of one of the poorest countries in the world, where unemployment is 40%. It is not clear whether the houses are paid for by the poppy harvest, aid money or success in business. We watch the handover ceremony to the new British Brigade serving on what's known as Operation Herrick 18. That means that 18 brigades, each, several thousand strong, have fought here. Now two. Each year, just two more will raise their flag before British combat troops pack up and leave by the end of 2014, counting the costs of this long campaign. So what will happen post2014? It's a date that comes up every day, a phrase rolled up into a single word, always with a question mark at the end. A presidential election year and the year that NATO withdraws, the date, which creates an uncertainty all of its own. Back in Kabul, I talk to Habiba Sadat, one of two female MPs for Helmand Province. The handbag she places on the table is of the no nonsense kind. It reminds me of one of Margaret Thatcher's. While Habiba has a similar, somewhat steely gaze, she's not an optimist, she says, about Helmand or Afghanistan. Things have got better, she concedes, but security isn't 100%, and she worries about post2014. The real problem, she says, is corruption and patronage in high places, when jobs go to relatives and friends. If people don't get the sense that things are fair, they'll rise up in a new struggle against the government, she worries, not least while Pakistan and Iran interfere in Afghan affair affairs. Habiba picks up her handbag and departs. But her pessimism isn't shared, at least publicly, by Masoom Stanikzai, an advisor to President Karzai and a man with a job not many would want. He's on the Afghan High Peace Council, which seeks to find ways towards peace and reconciliation. That means talking to the Taliban. He was injured in the blast that killed the head of the peace council, former President Romani, when a suicide bomber posing as a peace envoy detonated a bomb in his turban. We searched carefully before we are allowed in. Masoom Stanakz I studied at Cambridge and speaks softly in fluent English as he insists that nobody here should give up hope of peace. He believes that some of the Taliban leadership are ready to talk, although when or how remains opaque. They can't come forward in public, he says, at least not yet. We speak during one of the bloodiest weeks here, each day bringing fresh news of casualties. The daily diet of death is wearily familiar to Afghans, although the scale of one insurgent attack more than 40 dead and 90 injured still have the power to shock Massoum. Stanakzai shakes his head in sadness. People here are fed up with the increasing ruthlessness of insurgent groups, he tells me, and claims that's even making some fighters think again. Talk of splits in the Taliban leadership is echoed elsewhere, although many think that no real peace talks can happen before elections are held and and much will depend on them. So will there be Civil War again post2014? No, he says with certainty. There's now a new, younger generation of Afghans who don't want war, just education and jobs. The peace negotiator who survived the Taliban's turban bomb remains an optimist, although Perhaps he has to be in his job. 2014 won't be the end of the world. He smiles. It isn't D Day. It's just a date. And it will be up to us, to Afghans and our neighbours. Already we're standing on our own feet and not waiting for others to help. We're not just eating the fish, we're learning to fish for ourselves. I only hope he's right.
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Correspondent (Various) / Presenter
Caroline Wyatt A withdrawal of foreign troops is also underway in Mali, where thousands of French soldiers have spent the last four months taking on Islamist extremists in the north of the country. The French are expected to be replaced by an African force in the weeks ahead, a force, it seems, which has failed to impress in Washington. A senior Pentagon official, Michael Sheehan, this week told a congressional hearing there that the ECOWAS troops were completely incapable. The conflict in Mali has seen many people flee their homes in the north. Some are reported to be living in deplorable conditions in a camp in neighboring Mauritania. Others have been seeking refuge in Bamako, the Malian capital, which is in the south. Alex Duval Smith says accommodating them has had its difficulties.
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Alex Duval Smith
Before the military coup a year ago, my neighbourhood was popular with retired ministers, diplomats and expats. Le Podrome was known for its quiet, leafy streets and as being handy for the French school. Many residents had quite a payroll of staff guards, gardeners, cleaners and cooks. My Malian neighbour, Umu, a single professional woman in her 50s, lived alone in a four bedroom villa inherited from her parents. Umu has two brothers living in France. A feminist and staunch defender of Mali's status as a secular republic, she prefers Bamako because there are still battles to be fought here for freedom of speech, for women's and girls rights. Umu is like me. She smokes and drinks beer and wears trousers. But a year ago came the advance of secessionists in the north of Mali, followed by their Islamist supporters. Lipodrum declined as foreigners left, rents plummeted and domestic staff were laid off. A local football pitch became a repair stop for long distance lorries. The street next to mine turned into a sort of timber yard where broken furniture gets put back together. There's a lot more hammering, sawing and welding going on than you'd expect in a leafy neighbourhood. My local baker, having hit on hard times, has let his shop to a car mechanic, so collecting one's baguette involves negotiating a floor littered with oily black car parts and legs sticking out from beneath vehicles. Umu's life has changed beyond recognition. In October last year, her brothers in France sent cash to their aunts who are farmers in Timbuktu, and ordered them and the those they cared about to get on a bus and make the 500 mile journey to Bamako. Not just Bamako, but Ippodroom and the large family house next to mine. Umu was expected to accommodate eight people, ranging in age from six to 70. You could argue that living on her own, Umu has three bedrooms to spare. It's not that I mind, she says, but the people of the north are different. Their lives are governed by the seasons and the religious calendar. Coming from the desert, where they're used to communicating over vast distances, they don't talk, they shout, they don't laugh, they cackle uncontrollably. And they do all of this out of doors. I know, I live next door. Umu's pots and pans have been moved out of the kitchen into the garden, the natural place for farmers to cook over a coal burner. Her pet dog, Coco, is now obese, having given up eating carefully measured portions of pellets in favour of delicious scraps of food discarded around the garden. To call it a garden is an exaggeration these days. It's a yard of brown compacted dust where a big hole has been dug for household rubbish to be dumped in. The relatives spend their day lounging on straw mats and cooking dishes that are delicious, but take all all day to prepare. And to Ummu's disgust, they've not sent their children to school yet. Their involuntary flight from the north could have offered the opportunity for the girl, lively, pretty 13 year old Bintu, to learn to read and write. This culture clash between educated middle class Malians and their rural relatives is happening all over Bamako. One of the peculiarities of Mali's war is that it's not spawned many camps for the displaced. There are one or two in the country and more over the border in Niger. But the vast majority of the estimated half a million people who fled their northern homes have simply moved in with family members like Umu. Malians say this is because of the country's tremendous tradition of hospitality. But sometimes when I see Umu in our local bar eking out a single glass of beer to avoid going home to the relatives, and I think she must be wishing it were otherwise. France began its military intervention in January and is already talking about scaling back troop numbers with a view to leaving. But few people believe the north will be safe to return to anytime soon, especially if the discredited Malian army is the one keeping the peace. The relatives are bored and want to go back up north, where their priorities are determined by the seasons and the religious calendar. But Umu knows that when they finally leave our hippodrome neighbourhood, one of their first priorities in Timbuktu will be to organize the delayed wedding of 13 year old Bintou.
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Correspondent (Various) / Presenter
And that's Alex Duval Smith. In Bamako. The Mexican president has been warning that vigilante groups have no part to play in his country's battle against drug violence. Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office last December, inherited a drug war which over six years has killed some 70,000 people. But his message this week that crime and punishment are best left to the authorities may have limited impact in communities which have lost confidence in the ability of the police to curb crime and violence. Thousands are now taking the law into their own hands, manning checkpoints, patrolling streets and in some cases, handing out summary justice, as Linda Presley's been finding out. In towns and villages in the mountainous
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Linda Presley
southwestern state of Guerrero, Comandanti Ernesto strides ahead of us, pistol at his waist, two phones in one hand, walkie talkie in the other. I do a kind of skippity trot to keep up with him while trailing my cables in dust the colour of burnt oranges. The Comandante is the regional commander of a growing number of vigilante groups that are formed in the town of Ayutla and the villages around. Whenever he appears, a motley assortment of his men assemble. They're farmers, agricultural workers, small business owners dressed in raggedy work clothes, some of them in khaki T shirts with a faded community police motif. They all carry guns, but the Comandante is cut from altogether different cloth, well fitting navy blue trousers and shirt and an extremely close shave. He used to be with Mexico's Federal Anti Narcotics Police, but left soon after the training, sickened, he says, by the corruption in the politics. Now he's the operational commander of a volunteer force numbering thousands. I try to make friends with him, but I only seem to be able to engender polite impatience. The Comandante stops in front of a tumble down building with a concrete veranda. A boy is sitting on the wall, waiting for us. He's slumped, his face obscured by a baseball cap. When he looks up shyly to say hello, he doesn't smile, and his recently broken voice belies his 12 years. This is Andres, not his real name, a child who, even within the depravity of Mexico's drug wars, has witnessed some truly shocking scenes now, what were you doing when you were 12? Going out on your bike collecting stickers? I had my first Saturday job, washing up in a local cafe. Andres has already had his first job too, carrying guns from one killer to another and identifying potential kidnap victims. For five months before he escaped, he was forced to work for an organised crime gang linked to the drug cartels. If he didn't join them, they said they'd kill him and his family. I saw how they murdered people, Andrei says, and when he closed his eyes because he really didn't want to see, the gang hit him and told him to open them. Look, they demanded. Or wasn't he man enough? What kind of man will Andres be? He says when he's older, he'd like to join the Commandantist Self Defence Force, presumably fighting drug gang members like the ones who've trashed his childhood so completely with their casual, bloody violence. For now, to compensate for the crimes he's committed, Andres is in a re education program, a traditional system of rehabilitation with its roots in ancient indigenous Mexico that's linked to the Self Defence movement. It means he's put to work doing odd jobs and spends time with community elders who are trying to get him back on track. Senor noe, a tidy 50 something man with delicate features and a pencil thin moustache, is overseeing the rehabilitation of Andres. At first he tried to escape, says Senor Noy, but now Andres is becoming less rebellious. The boy's mentor is confident he'll overcome the horror he's seen, but he can't live in his own village. When I ask this fragile boy about his family, he says they're proud of him, but they're being threatened. The gang are trying to find out where Andres is. They want to kill him. It's only now that I realize that the look on his face that I'd interpreted as distance, a certain aloofness as a result of his experiences is in fact fear. And fear is the prevailing emotion we encounter in these rural communities in the foothills of the Sierra Madre. It's also at odds with the noisy cockerels, rampant bougainvillea and brightly painted one story homes. But everyone knows someone who's been the victim of crime. Kidnap, assassination, robbery, extortion. It's why most of the people we meet support the new self defence groups. They see them as a last chance to beat the murderous forces around them. There is a flip side though. We hear about people who are scared of the vigilantes, but they are too frightened to tell us directly about their claims. Of intimidation, torture, even at the hands of the comandante's men. When I ask him about these allegations, Comandante Ernesto bats them off with a definitive denial. Politely impatient again. Now we're beginning to get under his feet. He looks at me directly. We're tired of the abuse of power, he says, and we won't tolerate it among our volunteers. I think perhaps the comandante is the only person we meet in the Sierra Madre who isn't scared of anything.
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Correspondent (Various) / Presenter
Linda Presley. And she'll have more from Mexico in Crossing Continents next week. That's here on Radio 4 on Thursday morning. Now there are in the Jura Mountains, which span the borderlands between France and Switzerland, men who can look into a tree and tell you if there's a violin inside. Antonio Stradivari, the most famous musical instrument maker who ever lived, farmed the wood for some of his violins in the ancient spruce trees here. The forest in the Jura, which provides the prized tonewood, as it's called, is the Rizu. And John Laurenson's been exploring this most musical of locations.
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Programme Announcer
Lorenzo Pellegrini shook his head and walked away, knee deep in snow. He wasn't going to waste his time on that tree. Too many branches. Branches mean knots in the wood, and knots in the wood spoil its resonance. Pellegrini is a tree picker. He'll find you the spruce in 10,000. That's just right. He'll find you the Stradivarius tree. L' entiment. Lantaument. Lantiment, he says. Slowly, slowly, slowly. That's how violin trees should grow up in these mountains. They grow so slowly. Sometimes they stop growing altogether. They just gather strength. There are trees up here that are a thousand years old. His blue eyes are wide with wonderment. Can you believe that? Pellegrini's been working the forest since he was 9, growing up in Italy's Abruzzo mountains. He and his family would go deep into the woods each year, hours and hours from the nearest village, build a cabin to live in and stay there for eight months, cutting down trees, chopping up logs. I used to give my leftover polenta to the wolves, he says. When he was 30, he discovered the Rizu forest and never wanted to leave. Now 83, he still climbs trees like a squirrel and and tends the forest as if it were his garden, weeding out the beech trees that would smother his precious spruces. For the trees to grow slowly and regularly, you have to let them grow close together, like the hair on Your head, he says, and there shouldn't be too much water. The tree's heart should stay dry. That gives the best wood solid, enormous resonance. Pellegrini gardens the forest, as he puts it, but he gardens for people who won't be born for hundreds of years, so that there'll be fine, resonant spruce in the 24th century. Once you've found the perfect tree, he says, you have to wait for the perfect day to cut it down. That day comes at the end of autumn, when the SAP has sunk back into the ground, and when the moon is lowest on the horizon, when it's furthest from the earth, because apparently the moon's magnetic field doesn't only tug the waters of the sea and make the tides, it tugs up the SAP. On that day, the tree is as dry as it can be. A ceremony is organized with the other foresters. It's usually the youngest who has the honour of felling it. Driving down to Le Brasseux, a little mountain town near the forest, Jean Michel capped, points to a mountain shrouded in cloud. They say that when you can see that peak, it's going to rain, he says, and pauses, letting us voice a little enthusiasm. And when you can't, it's raining already. Capt is a craftsman and an inventor. He uses the resonance wood Pellegrini finds to make fine guitars in his workshop. He shows me a strip of tone wood from a tree at least 350 years old. It's grain, its lines are dead, straight and close together. Put your finger on one line, that's the British army going over the top at Ypres. On another, that's Louis XIV building Versailles. This one takes you right back to the Pilgrim Fathers. To demonstrate the wood's acoustic qualities, he takes out a little musical box, winds it up and it tinkles. He places the tinkling box on that strip of wood and the tune suddenly fills the room, not only much, much louder, but warm and full. Later, we walk through the village, past schoolchildren whose teacher is taking them off sledging to meet one of the many musicians of the Rizou Forest. By the side of a wood burning fire, by a table he made from a giant spruce, David Guignard takes out his cello and plays a bit of Bach, no pun intended. Round here, you wouldn't be surprised to learn that people wear paper shirts and great wood shavings on their spaghetti. My father was a forest warden and my grandfather built a cabin for us in the woods. He recollects. So the best moments of my childhood were in the forest. I was happy to live at the foot of those trees. It was Ginyard's music teacher who taught him that wood is never quite dead. It's always reacting to changes in temperature and humidity, always evolving. I listen to the crackle of the fire and the sound of cello strings making the wood sing and think, I'll never quite hear this music in the same way again. Because around here, when you hear an instrument like this, you think of the snow and the wind and. And the cuckoos and the bees in those tall violin trees.
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Correspondent (Various) / Presenter
And with that from John Lawrence and amid the ancient spruce trees of the Jura, we've reached the end of another programme. There'll be more from our own correspondence next Saturday morning. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.