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Private Notes
This week food writer Stefan Gates cooks his way around Afghanistan, finding out how the country's reconstruction is going. He samples the testicles of the legendary fat-tailed sheep, known to the locals as the Afghan Viagra; narrowly avoids being blown up by abandoned Soviet scud missiles; and has dinner with a former Taliban commander.
Is there anything wrong with eating dogs? Stefan visits a farm where over 2,000 dogs are raised for their meat. He also picks up a few recipes from "Dr Dogmeat" and hears allegations that dogs are tortured to death. But when it comes to the crunch, will he tuck in?
In the third episode Stefan visits a camp for internally displaced people in war-torn Northern Uganda, to find out how people survive on meagre UN food rations. The UN gives them just 60% of their daily needs, so where do they find the rest? With rebels patrolling the nearby countryside, finding food is a matter of life and death.
Why are some people in the South Pacific eating themselves to death? In Tonga he finds the fattest people on earth - 91% are overweight - and goes kickboxing with the princess who is determined to whip her subjects into shape. In Fiji, he tries the local narcotic - cava - and slaughters a piglet for lunch.
Finally, Stefan travels to China, finding out how the rapid pace of modernisation is changing the way people eat. He spends a day working at the Kung Fu fast food joint and samples the menu of a Beijing penis restaurant. He also attempts to shake off his Communist party minders to talk to one of China's poverty-stricken farmers.
In Cameroon he discovers a rampant appetite for bushmeat that is causing ecological catastrophe, with great apes facing local extinction. He nearly causes a riot when he tries to film a bushmeat chef buying porcupine. Travelling to the forest, Stefan eats civet cat with hunters who are living in extreme poverty and rely on bushmeat. He also visits a sanctuary which is looking after 57 chimpanzees, who have been orphaned by hunters. Taking the train back to the capital, Yaounde, Stefan accompanies forest rangers searching for and confiscating smuggled bushmeat. And in Yaounde, he meets an entrepreneur called Paul who believes he may have found a solution to the bushmeat crisis. The animal is delicious, but it has an image problem. Its name: cane rat. Ethiopia On the eve of last year's Ethiopian millennium, Stefan investigates why the country still needs so much aid nearly 25 years after the 1984 famine. PROGRAMME TRANSCRIPT Read transcript [124KB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here While the rich diaspora has returned for a spectacular party, the rural poor struggle to grow food on exhausted soil. Seven million Ethiopians depend on aid to survive. Travelling with a World Food Programme aid convoy, he meets women trapped by their dependency on short-term aid. Stefan shares a meal of fresh goat's blood with pastoralists suffering from years of tribal conflict, crippling droughts and the pressures of a rapidly expanding population. And in the capital, Addis Ababa, Stefan nearly causes another riot by trying to film with homeless children, and meets slum-dwellers who suffer from unemployment and crippling food inflation. He has to conclude that Ethiopia's problems have not been solved - in fact, they are getting worse.
In Haiti Stefan visits the notoriously violent slums of Cite Soleil with Brazilian UN soldiers. He tries mud cakes made of pure clay, which are eaten for their high mineral content, and helps out with UN food handouts. Later on, he is invited to a voodoo ceremony, a practise which is widespread in Haiti. He then travels to the once-successful rice-growing region to discover what happened when the US persuaded Haiti to remove rice import taxes. The price of rice plummeted and local production collapsed, causing widespread poverty. Many local women now have to walk for hours up mountains carrying 25kg sacks of food aid. He also visits the luxury resort of Labadie which is out of bounds to everyone except wealthy cruise ship passengers. But despite the inequality, the income from tourism could be one of the few ways for Haiti to develop economically. Mexico In Mexico, Stefan discovers that free trade with the US means Mexico is importing corn and exporting people. Vast numbers of Mexicans are leaving the countryside where agriculture has collapsed and jumping the US border. He visits an illegal immigration theme park where people pay to experience what it is like to try to break into the United States. Stefan travels to Mexico City, where there have been riots over rising food prices, and in the rural south he visits a village where 45 people have died during conflict over farmland. He also meets Zapatista rebels who want greater rights for Mexico's indigenous communities. They are blaming the US for the Free Trade Agreement that has spelt disaster for 1.5 million farmers who cannot compete with subsidised US food. Finally, in Tijuana Stefan meets former farmers about to jump the border and are angry that US trade has forced them off the land, but then refuses to give them work permits.
In Israel and the occupied West Bank, the conflict is rooted in land and expressed in food - or the lack of it. Stefan gets his first taste of tear gas when a protest against Israel's security barrier turns violent. The Israelis say it is essential to keep suicide bombers out, but it cuts some villagers off from a large proportion of their land, and it has been declared illegal in a ruling by the International Court of Justice. As the protesters storm the barrier, Israeli soldiers fire tear gas and rubber bullets at them. In the isolated, ultra-orthodox Jewish settlement of Itamar in the West Bank, 15 residents have been killed by armed Palestinians. Many are members of Gush Emunim, a settler movement which argues that there is a religious imperative for Jewish people to settle the West Bank. In the adjacent village of Yanoun, whose Arab residents are unable to harvest their olives after violence and armed intimidation from settlers. After visiting both villages, Stefan travels to the West Bank city of Nablus and stays with a baker who explains how the Israelis control the food supply, and often there simply is not any flour to bake an Arab staple: flatbread. In Israel, Stefan meets the victims of a Nablus suicide bomber at a falafel stall. In the Negev desert, Bedouin tribesmen are being forced off land they have lived on for centuries. They barely survive raising goats and camels, one of which Stefan tries to milk. Finally, he meets up with the aid workers trying to get food into Gaza where a violent power struggle is unfolding. The Israelis have closed the border, causing extreme hardship: the fighting is making the food situation for Palestinians more desperate than ever, and Stefan finally retreats when a rocket flies above his head.
