← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Transglobal Express
00:27:39
Over the past year, BBC correspondents have reported on upheaval in Egypt, war in a in...
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- [00:00]
Program Host
Today, a special programme at the end of an eventful year. War in Syria, upheaval in Egypt, a new pope in America, a government shutdown, and here a royal baby in 2013. Our correspondence have brought you dispatches from more than 120 countries. Today, though, let's put to one side some of those big stories in the important work of politics, commerce and conflict. After all, the job of a foreign correspondent is to pay attention to so much more than that. So in the next half hour, I'll be taking something of a back seat as we turn the program over to our correspondents for a rather different look at some of the other stories from the last 12 months. Let's start with Nick Thorpe and a journey through the Sahara.
- [00:47]
Nick Thorpe
The Frenchman picked us up in Adra, an oasis town in the south of Algeria, where we'd been waiting three days for a lift. There was no road across the desert. You followed the tracks of other vehicles in the sand. At Bidon Sank, an abandoned supply point, we fed migrating swallows and butterflies with water from the lids of jars. Often we had to push the cars when they broke down. I remember their raised bonnets in a line as though the cars were prostrating themselves, worshipping the sun. The nights in the desert were the best the the stars filled the whole sky right down to the horizon, as though we were balanced precariously on the crust of a small planet.
- [01:40]
Emma Jane Kirby
Flying into Lagos at night, you'd never know there's a city of 20 million people down there. There's no orange glow as you see on approach to smaller cities such as New York or London. There are few streetlights, so there's no glittering web to entice you. As Petula Clark sang downtown now, waiting for you tonight on the streets of Lagos is darkness.
- [02:18]
Peter Day
At Lagos Station, I felt as though I'd walked into a museum. Many signs are relics of the colonial era, and outside the ticket office was the long list of bylaws dating back to 1955. A flight from Lagos to Kano City in the north takes about an hour and a half. The weekly train journey lasts a minimum of 29 hours. I went for the first class sleeper. We began slicing our way across Lagos with the driver constantly blasting the horn to clear the route. The trains are so infrequent, the tracks are busy footpaths, and as we clickety clicked our way right through a market, we only just missed the colorful array of tomatoes, chilies, yams and chickens. Men with red flags struggled to stop cars and motorbikes making a dash for it where roads crossed the tracks. It took well over an hour to get clear of Lagos, and soon we were heading through dense bush. In the restaurant car, women stirred enormous pots of spicy chicken soup on gas stoves, and in the small bar, a sound system was blaring out the latest hits. At each stop, the platform morphed into a loud, lively market. Just for the three minutes that the train was there, grandmothers and six year olds rushed up and down, balancing platforms, plastic buckets and bowls on their heads, selling food and drinks through the windows.
- [03:41]
Peter Meanwell
There are some journalists I know who rely on serendipity.
- [03:45]
Fergal Keane
I'm not one of them.
- [03:47]
Nick Thorpe
I'm a planner.
- [03:48]
Peter Meanwell
I'll leave a little bit to chance, but not much.
- [03:51]
Emma Jane Kirby
Sometimes the story lands right on your doorstep.
- [03:55]
Correspondent in Montenegro
But I've learnt that it's best not to predict people's reactions. People talk, or not, for reasons you can't possibly imagine, until you meet them. And so when the first meeting was finally arranged, I didn't stop to question it. I did pause, however, when I was told I had to travel alone in a local taxi to a deserted war memorial on the outskirts of Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. I wasn't allowed to take a mobile phone. I didn't know who I was meeting. It was okay, I was told. They were not a violent gang. That is not how they work. When I got to the memorial, I thought immediately, what a good place for a meeting. It was private, discreet, hidden by trees. But as I waited, I began to get nervous. It was also a good spot for a drug deal, a heist, a murder. Slowly, a beaten up old blue Peugeot estate pulled up alongside me. Please excuse my car, said a man in perfect English. We like to travel quietly down here.
- [04:52]
Correspondent in Colombia
I have 27 children, my guide, Carlos declared. It seems slightly out of the blue. We'd been driving for about five hours through La Oajera desert, the wilderness where the Colombian and Venezuelan borders meet. All around were endless tall, thin cacti and tiny trees bent into the sand like hunched old men sheltering from the desert wind. Then a sudden flash of the brightest red or yellow I'd ever seen, stunning desert birds darting in front of the weathered green of the cacti. We were on our way to Punta Galinas, so cool because the land forms the shape of a chicken's head. This is South America's most northerly point, where huge sand dunes of rich burnt ochre color tumble into the milky green Caribbean se. 27 children, Carlos repeated. He flashed a cheeky smile and assured me his wife knew about the other women and their babies.
- [06:14]
Fergal Keane
Nearly 10 years ago, I made a rash vow in a report from our own correspondent. I'd been on a reporting project that had taken me twice around the world. I'd queued at dozens of airports, taken lots of planes. But the worst thing about air travel, I then determined, was what happened in row 21, when the seat belt signs are switched off and the passengers are free to move around. Immediately, zonk. Back comes the seat as the person in front assumes relax mode as a default position.
- [06:47]
Fergal Keane (continuation)
You're all familiar with the Ankshu white knuckled passenger who winces every time the plane bumps. Well, that's me. For 20 years I've grabbed the hands of unsuspecting strangers and held on for dear life. Through countless choppy landings, I've gripped hundreds of arm rests as though they alone were keeping us airborne. This well established fear of flying recently beat me altogether. On a flight from New York to San Diego on America's west coast, we experienced six long hours of turbulence. Tornadoes in Kansas, blizzards in the south, and high winds across the western mountains made this a roller coaster ride. The reassuring pilot apologized frequently but couldn't find any smooth air. I sat in silent misery.
- [07:40]
Fergal Keane
So, faced with the anonymous unpleasantness of the passenger in front of me, I made a public vow in that piece. Never again, I promised listeners, would I press that tempting shiny button on the right hand side of the armrest. One curious privilege remains to be enjoyed pretty exclusively by the economy class passenger which BBC reporters are eternally obliged to be. It is a seat with a view, and more and more as I travel. The view is the only thing I want. The splendors of a daytime flight home from Beijing over the snowy Gobi Desert and Ulaanbaatar from 35,000ft, and then the Urals and the magnificence of a snowbound St. Petersburg laid out like a map below. Genuinely thrilling. A seat with a view is even worth the unpleasantness of sticking to my 10 year old vow of abstinence from tilting my seat back to relax. Relaxation is an overrated activity anyway.
- [08:39]
Fergal Keane (continuation)
As we strapped ourselves in for the return journey to New York, the pilot explained that we'd experienced severe turbulence cross country. That was enough for me, and I got off the plane.
- [08:58]
Correspondent in Portugal
Somewhere on the line between Porto and Lisbon. My train slowed again and pulled into another station. I glanced up briefly from my laptop, yawned, and rubbed my eyes, and when I focused again I saw them standing on the platform, clinging to one another. The smaller man must have been pushing 70, white haired, wearing a faded candy striped short sleeved shirt, and his face, half buried on the taller man's shoulder, was screwed up in grief. From the way the taller man's back pulsed with irregular jagged shudders, I could tell he was also crying. They were hugging so fiercely that watching them I found myself gasping for breath. As they pulled apart, I saw the same high forehead and finely chiselled nose on each face and it became clear they were father and son and that this perhaps was their final goodbye. Now I don't know these people, but given the background to what's happening in Portugal at the moment, I bet I know their story. How the tall son, weary of rejection letters, panicked about the rent arrears, had gone to his father and said, dad, there's nothing else for it. I don't want to leave you, but I'm moving to Angola to find a job. It might have been Mozambique, of course it might have been Brazil, but Portuguese professionals are leaving their country in their thousands to beg their former colonies for work.
- [10:29]
Correspondent in Malabo
An almond falls on my head and before I can find it, a little boy in Superman underpants rushes across the packed dirt like a Wimbledon ball boy and squirrels it away under his armpit. I'm in a poor barrio or neighbourhood in Malabo. Dirt alleys run between the wooden and concrete block buildings and we're overlooking a river from our makeshift bar. It is Sunday afternoon and under a canopy of mango and almond trees a group of musicians are playing and singing the music of their little island, Annabon. They sing a bit of a song called Daj. The lyrics have to be rude, they tell me, and when you do it for real it everyone cross dresses. The men wear stuffed bras and wigs, the women paint on moustaches. The complete Daj though, is only performed twice in your life, once when you marry and then again when your husband or wife dies. And the cross dressing the Annabonese believe that when you marry you become one, and because you can't swap bodies for you physically, you swap clothes for the dance. It was full on, says Scott. He starts to talk about Fat Boy, Street Bob and Fatty Low. Australians have a certain fault fondness for politically incorrect nicknames, so it takes me a minute to realise he's not talking about his mechanics. They've got the look that everyone likes, he says, walking along a row of the low slung chrome piped machines slouching on their kickstands. That tough muscle look and the sound too. Scott turns the key in a fat boy and the engine roars to life, a fierce explosion tamed by masterful engineering, channeled into an air warping rumble, fat and low.
- [12:51]
Program Host
James Fletcher on motorcycle business revving up in Australia. Before him, you heard from Peter Meanwell, Emma Jane Kirby, Peter Day, Will Ross, and several other reporters around the world. You're listening to a special end of the year edition of From Our own Correspondent. And let's hand back to the correspondence now and to Fergal Keen, recalling the very beginning of his career.
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Peter Day
I was 18 years old when I first climbed the stairs of the Limerick Leader and Chronicle newspaper. The place smelled of ink and cigars. I was wearing my only suit, purchased hastily the previous week. Knocking tentatively on the door of a room bearing the sign Editorial Department, I awaited my summons. A gruff voice beckoned, come in.
- [13:39]
Emma Jane Kirby
The maestro is sitting on the floor. He's a small, slight man with a sweeping mane of white hair and a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. It quickly becomes clear that he hasn't lost any of his sharpness or his wit. He gestures to a strange instrument beside him and offers to play. This is his favorite instrument, the dan chan, or Vietnamese zither. It's certainly a beautiful thing. The zither is made of polished blond wood. It's about a meter long and 15 cm wide. The surface is convex and it it has 17 strings, each supported by two wooden bridges. The old man bends over the instrument and begins to pluck with one hand while the other presses and bends the strings. His hands move surprisingly, swiftly and precisely, but the result is not what I expect. This is not beautiful music. I hear an almost random cascade of sound. There's little rhythm and many of the notes sound to my ear, at least distinctly out of tune. I think he realizes I found the music difficult. You have to forget the idea of absolute pitch, he explains. He tells me Vietnamese musicians tune the instruments as they see fit, or according to the vocal range of the singers who accompany them. He says Vietnamese music is a product of the tonal nature of the Vietnamese language.
- [15:22]
Correspondent in North Korea
I'm sitting on a rug under a tree, being plied with food from a small barbecue and a variety of plates by a smiling family. I add a little offering of my own to the spread, a packet of chocolate eggs. The father of the family examines them closely and then hands them to his three year old son. The boy steadily consumes the entire pack with deep concentration. Chocolate is not common here. Neither are foreigners. We are picnicking in the park in Pyongyang, capital of North Korea. You can only visit North Korea on an organized tour Wandering off is not an option. Today in the crowded park, though, is an exception. We wander at will. While some of us picnic, others join in a tug of war, sharing much sweat, laughter, and high fiving with local teammates. This is probably set up, but the picnic and the game of Frisbee with local teenagers is certainly not. Plenty of wine and soju, the local rice alcohol, has been consumed. Music fills the air. Boomboxes compete with traditional flute and drum. The music is mostly folk and very much Korean. There's nothing I recognize as Western pop, and people sing and dance.
- [16:47]
Correspondent interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev
I've been interviewing 82 year old Mikhail Gorbachev. He's already warned us he can only spare 30 minutes, and sure enough, half an hour into the interview, the former Soviet leader announces, that's enough. He gets up, but he doesn't appear in any particular hurry to say goodbye, so we continue to chat. Mr. Gorbachev admits his finding life much harder these days, but he's trying to stay positive. He's just published the latest volume of his memoirs, which he's dedicated to his late wife, Raisa Maximovna. She died in 1999 of leukemia. They'd been married for nearly 46 years, and from the tender way in which she talks about Raisa, it's clear that Gorbachev misses her greatly. He invites me to sit down next to him at a table and shows me the book. Page one contains an entry from Gorbachev's diary. One year after Raisa's death, my life has lost its principal meaning, he writes. I have never had such an acute feeling of loneliness. But Gorbachev's eyes seem to light up as he points out the pictures of Raisa which are in the book, the holiday snaps, the family photos, the pictures of her accompanying him on official trips abroad. While Gorbachev and I have been looking through the book, our camera operator, Rachel, has been looking at the grand piano in the corner of the room. Can you play that? She asks Gorbachev. No need to. It plays itself, he replies. Gorbachev walks over to it, presses a few buttons, and the piano keys burst into life. All by themselves, of course. You can also play it like a normal piano, he points out. Can any of you play the piano? He asks. I tell him I can. Then please sit down. Play something, gorbachev says. Then the man who helped to end the Cold War smiles a broad, beautiful smile. Raisa loved my singing, he says.
- [19:13]
Nick Thorpe
Sometime after midnight at the Tehuza Pass, high in the Carpathians, the from Transylvania into Bukovina, the temperature touched -17 Celsius. Hallucinating from the cold and the tiredness of a 19 hour drive, we imagined grey wolves watching us from among the pine trees and brown bears grumbling through the ruins of a souvenir shop, we were welcomed with open arms at the slaughter house in Botochan. I have no secrets, swore Mr. Kazakuts, the owner. So we had to visit every part of his super modern facility. There were moments of tenderness, even for me, a vegetarian of 37 years. The moment the cow being led to the slaughter stopped to be nuzzled by another through the bars, kissed on the nose in a motherly farewell, I watched the stun gun fell beast after beast, watched them roll, watched them hauled to the roof, witnessed the knife to the throat and the gush of blood, the final spasms, the stripping of the skin, the entrails. After several hours of this learning the difference between a four day old horse and cow carcass, the kind lady who showed us round led us to a warm room where we could remove our hair nets and overalls and take comfort in a bowl of vegetable soup. This specially laid on for me while the others ate steaming steaks, only a few hours old, as it were, from the halls below. We've never had anyone here who turned down meat before, said the cook.
- [20:44]
Peter Meanwell
As the monastery clock strikes nine, Father Patrick sweeps in. He ushers me along a cloister, up two flights of stairs and through a corner door. We're here, high up in the organ loft at the west end of this vast monastery church. I gaze at the ranks of pipes and then at the console, the nerve center where I'll sit to play. There's a bewildering array of keyboards, stops, pedals, gauges, dials and buttons, making this organ console not dissimilar to the cockpit of a jumbo jet. I momentarily lose my nerve and suggest to Father Patrick that I'll listen while he plays. No, he says. Climb on and play. I take a deep breath and play a first chord. There's no sound. Use this pedal, commands Father Patrick, but draw it towards you to increase the volume. Gingerly, I do as I'm told, and suddenly the whole place resonates with an enormous sound, shaking the very foundations of the church and doubtless sending shock waves through the mountains as well.
- [21:47]
Correspondent in Georgia
Mark Neukirchen, picturesque with its cobbled streets and a church bell which, told, it seemed to me interminably, is an unlikely manufacturing hub. Today there are 113 makers of musical instruments there. 113. Take Vogt brass, a company which makes trombones. Jurgen Vogt learned to play the trombone at the age of 10 and then how to make a trombone from his uncle at the age of 14. But his daughter Kirsten now runs the business. She told me instrument making was in her blood. Some of these manufacturers are the world leaders in their particular field, worth a fortune, though you wouldn't know it when they shuffle round town as craftsmen in a family of craftsmen. It is the unflashy way of the place.
- [22:53]
Correspondent at Apollo Theater
In 1965, when he was 15, Billy Mitchell went to work as a runner at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Like so much else about this legendary theater on 125th Street, Mitchell's career at the Apollo, he's held pretty much every job and is now its historian, happened by chance. One of 14 kids from a desperately poor family. His mother had sent him to get food money from his grandma, who lived on 126th street opposite the Apollo stage door. The owner saw him and offered him a job running errands. The performers needed their clothes dry cleaned and somebody to run out for coffee and cigarettes, says the compact, elegant Mitchell. The Apollo, painted cream and gold with dark red seats, was built in 1914 as a grand burlesque theater. By the 1920s, with the Harlem Renaissance going full blast, Harlem had become the African American capital of the usa. The Apollo was ground zero. Over the decades, there's been every kind of show at the Apollo, but nothing has ever been quite like amateur night. It goes on still, and now it has also morphed into a TV show called Live at the Apollo. Now, as then, good performers receive ecstatic applause. Lousy acts are booed off the stage, and before each performer goes on, he or she will rub a gold painted stump known as the Tree of Hope.
- [24:34]
Correspondent in Georgia
It's 6am and a dishevelled crew of 25 men pitches up in two weather beaten Ford Transit vans to collect me. Their faces are etched by lifetime's exposure to the elements in these raw, subalpine climbs. They are swans, revered and once feared throughout Georgia as a warrior people. Behind them, dawn rays pierce the gloom and light up a snow capped mountain range, the Caucasus, that separate Georgia from looming, mighty Russia. It's chilly out here and the men in rough jackets and traditional rural headwear congregate in two camps, young and old. Tellingly, in a country where smoking seems as natural as breathing to many, very few of these guys are puffing on a cigarette. The voice is sacred and needs to be protected. But they have loaded up hearty provisions of meat, bread and crates of beer from the local store for the three hour drive along just 17 miles of bumpy dirt track and then the long day that stretches in front of us. We all pile back into the two vans and huddle. My travelling companions, having shaken off their dawn stupor, are now in full song. This is a musical tradition that's thousands of years old, predating Christianity. War feasting and hunting are regular lyrical themes. That is when these guys know what the lyrics actually mean. Some of the Swanetti language is so obscure even the singers don't know what they're chanting, but they do so with gusto nonetheless, because this is a Georgian polyphonic cho
- [26:19]
Program Host
O.
- [26:43]
Correspondent in Malabo
Right on time. We pull into the station in Dublin. Meet anyone interesting on the journey? Asks a friend. Well, there was a Norwegian and his jellyfish and a tearful teacher and a Latvian girl with a lovely smile. Oh, and a brace of giggling pensioners on a day out, I say. Oh, you weren't stuck for company then? Never a dull moment, I reply. The time just flew by.
- [27:11]
Program Host
Kieran Cook, at the end of his journey, brings this special program to a close. Before him, you heard Rajan Dutta, Reggie Nadelson, Stephen Evans, Justin Rolatt and many of our other reporters. For the full list of contributors and a chance to listen to their stories in full, please visit our website. We've enjoyed taking you around the world this year on from our own correspondent and we'll be back as usual next week, next year with more. Do join us. Goodbye.