In the Danger Zone Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  HELLO

  AFGHANISTAN Testicles and the Taliban

  UGANDA Dining with Refugees

  CAMEROON The Bushmeat Paradox

  ETHIOPIA Famines and Feasts

  CHERNOBYL Cooking with Radiation

  SOUTH KOREA The Dog Eaters

  IGLOOLIK, ARCTIC CANADA Walrus and Pizzas

  HAITI Hell's Kitchen

  MEXICO The Tortilla Crisis

  BURMA Cooking with Rebels

  INDIA The Rat Eaters

  CHINA Cooking with Communists

  ISRAEL AND PALESTINE God's Pood

  So that's it, is it?

  A note on sources

  IN THE DANGER ZONE

  Stefan Gates

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781407022024

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  This book is published to accompany the BBC television series Cooking in the Danger Zone.

  Published in 2008 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.

  A Bandom House Group Company

  Copyright © Stefan Gates 2008

  Stefan Gates has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  The Bandom House Group Limited Beg. No. 954009

  Addresses for companies within the Bandom House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9781407022024

  Version 1.0

  Endpapers Front (top to bottom, left to right): making dumplings in a factory, Henan Province, China (Ruhi Hamid); making friends with a market stall holder, Gulu, Northern Uganda (RH); milking a camel with the Bedouin, Negev Desert, Southern Israel (Marc-Perkins); meeting the Zapatistas, Oventic, Mexico (Alex Mackintosh); holding the tail of a Beluga whale, lgloolik, Canada (MP); taking a break on the way over the Thai-Burmese border (MP); practising Tai Chi, Henan Province, China (RH); eating rat, Paraiya, India (Chris Alcock); target practice with the US army, Kabul, Afghanistan (MP); Harry holding a walrus penis-bone near Igloolik, Canada (Stefan Gates); dogs being sold for meat at an auction, Seoul, South Korea (Alex Mackintosh); sitting on The Pig, Nablus, Occupied West Bank (Alaa T. Badarneh); eating betelnut, Ei Tu Ta refugee camp, Burma (MP). Back: patrolling Cite Soliel with UN MINUSTAH soldiers (Galium McRae); Fatah rally, Nablus, Occupied West Bank (SG); eating camel's hump in Beijing, China (SG); drinking honey wine in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Julie Noon); eating humus in the Old City, Jerusalem (MP); milking a goat in Yanun, Occupied West Bank (MP); bushmeat seller, Yaounde, Cameroon (SG); tuk-tuk driving lesson in Mumbai, India (CA); waking up in Y'alebo, Ethiopia (JN); preparing civet cat for lunch, Cameroon (Olly Bootle); eating banana tree pupae in Karen village, Burma (MP); Arab members of the Israeli Defence Force on the boundary with Gaza, Israel (SG); eating deep-fried scorpion, Beijing, China (RH); drinking deer penis juice in Beijing, China (Yan Yan).

  HELLO

  Bang! An explosion temporarily blinds me. I see a guy sprawled up ahead, covered in blood and screaming hysterically in Arabic, part of his leg blown off. My heart beats out of control as I realize that I'm slap-bang in the middle of a minefield. F**k. There's a place and a time for swearing, and it's here and now. F**k, f**k, P*k.

  It hasn't been the best of days: I've already been caught in a mortar bombardment, robbed at gunpoint and administered first aid to two blood-drenched women at the scene of a horrific car crash. To tell the truth, I'm no longer just scared, I'm really f**ked-off and scared, which is a rubbish combination. I'm immobilized by The Fear, an involuntary contraction of both sphincter and brain power. I search my memory for someone to blame for sending me to a place this absurdly dangerous, but it's my own stupid fault. My kids will have to say, 'Daddy died writing a cookery book,' as their mates suppress their giggles. I miss my kids. I miss my wife. I miss my cat. I miss my coffee machine. I despise myself for being here at all. I'm just a weedy, bookish food writer from north London – I wasn't built for war zones.

  The adrenalin recedes and I let out a deep sigh. I'm in a pyrotechnic minefield in Herefordshire and the screaming Arab jumps to his feet, right as rain, and berates me in a broad Welsh accent for failing to notice the obvious signs of mines. He watches me go through the motions of sticking my penknife in the ground at an angle as we playact getting out of this sodding mud. Needless to say, I am now thoroughly humiliated and not a little miserable.

  I'm on a gruesome course called 'How to Survive Hostile Environments', which is supposed to prepare me for visiting Category I conflict zones like Afghanistan and rebel-held Burma. I've spent the morning with roughty-toughty ex-paras being pistol-whipped and bundled into car boots and watching scratchy videos of people having their fingers cut off by kidnappers. I am now feeling nervous, exhausted, nihilistic and, for some reason, a tad misanthropic. What have I got myself into?

  • • • • •

  I am about to embark on the craziest project of my life: two years of travelling to the world's most dangerous and complicated countries, using food to understand a world in crisis. I've always believed that food is a window onto emotion, morality and society, but I suspect that it can also reveal the intimate reality of how big issues like war, disaster, religious conflict and hunger have a tangible effect on real people.

  We rarely see more than a shallow, macro view of the world and its big issues: we see Afghans on the news, screaming and bloodied in front of burning cars; Palestinians burning flags; refugees mournful and powerless. These people are often stripped of their personality and dignity by the needs of the media. I want to meet, talk and live with ordinary people in extraordinary situations to try to understand the world a little better. Perhaps if I sit down to eat with them I'll find them more like me.

  But five days before I leave for Afghanistan, The Fear returns. I'm in the middle of presenting a chirpy TV series called Food Uncut, which couldn't be more different from the project I'm about to start. The coming two years will be a cycle of two weeks avoiding bullets in the most godforsaken hellholes of the world, followed by two weeks in this cosy TV studio reading autocues and making cheeky banter, then back to the godforsaken hellholes again. I'm hoping it's a way of staying sane.

  Anyway, here I am, about to reveal 'What's Hot and What's Not in the World of Food this Week' (marmalade with gold flakes is in, but Asda wet fish is out), when I get an urgent telephone call from my executive producer Will Daws. His voice is unusually sombre.

  'I don't know how to say this, Stef, but the BBC high-risk security team has intelligence that 38 would-be suicide bombers have just entered Afghanistan from Pakistan. On top of that, there's a specific group that's actively looking for a Western hostage and things are pretty hairy. It's entirely up to you. If you want to pull out, you can. Have a think about it and
call me back.'

  So an already crazy idea has become even crazier, and I stumble through the rest of the day's filming barely paying attention to my script. That night I sit down with my wife Georgia and break the news to her. Actually, I'm ashamed to say that I don't give her all the details – in fact, I've largely played down the danger of the whole project, so I just say that things are looking a bit rum out in Persia, but not to worry because I'll be fine. I feel terrible. I've only just come to terms with the prospect of spending two weeks of every month away from her and my two daughters. And now this.

  Perhaps I'm stupid, cavalier and selfish to even think about flying around the world searching for danger when I've got two beautiful, bright-eyed little girls who need me. Christ, I'm homesick and missing them like crazy, and I haven't even left my front room. And to top that, I'm now enduring a prolonged, involuntary contraction of my sphincter. This is to become a familiar feeling over the next two years: this is The Fear.

  But the simple reality is that this project feels important and useful. I'm also an incurable optimist who believes that good things will happen and that somehow or other things will end up fine. And yes, goddammit, the little boy in me who always wanted to explore the world and do dangerous stuff and get trapped on a desert island and use every tool on his penknife is so excited that he can barely think straight.

  I call Will and tell him that I'm going.

  I visit the BBC Safety Stores – an extraordinary emporium that sells everything from fluorescent tabards to flak jackets. It's run by two young ladies whose sense of humour is generally in inverse proportion to that of their customers, who are always on a last-minute shopping expedition to somewhere awful, looking for odd items that might help them survive.

  The ridiculousness and seriousness of the trip hits me as I look at my reflection, wearing a bright blue flak jacket and matching bright blue helmet – on paper it sounds kinda conflict cool, but the reality is I look and feel like a bright blue, dorky tit with a surprised, speccy look on its face.

  There's all sorts of other kerfuffle involved with going to war zones: security briefings, visas, endless injections, army accreditation, water sterilization pills, press passes. There's so much stuff to sort out that before I know it, bugger me if I'm not in Kabul, stuck in the most chaotic traffic I've ever seen. I mention to our driver that insurance must be difficult to arrange in this country. He guffaws at my ignorance. There's no insurance here,' he says, gunning the engine and mounting the mud kerb. Traffic jams are dangerous for Westerners – high danger of kidnap, so it's best not to get stuck. But our driver says, 'You're safe with me – no one's ever been kidnapped from a car when I've been driving.' Then his brow furrows and he adds, 'Actually, now that I think about it, there was one. But just the one, so far.'

  My arse cheeks tighten once again as The Fear shivers through me. Welcome to the Danger Zone.

  Hang on a minute. . .

  You may or may not be aware that this whole escapade is also a BBC TV series, but it's not like any telly I've ever made before. The crew is just me, a local translator/fixer, plus ONE multi-talented genius who is producer, camera operator, director, sound recordist, health-and-safety officer and drinking buddy all rolled into one. There's a fantastic team back in London who run the production, but on location we are very much alone. We use small cameras, hidden radio mics, and carry a couple of satellite phones, and that's about it.

  These lovely telly people don't appear in this book anywhere near as much as they should because I tried to avoid just writing about the making of a TV programme. But the truth is that there are 16 separate trips with seven different producers, all of them long-suffering heroes of documentary film-making.

  But here's a thing: whereas the BBC TV series of Cooking in the Danger Zone has been subjected to the highest, most rigorous standards of BBC Current Affairs journalism, and subjected to the whip-cracking terror of BBC editorial policy to eradicate any hint of bias, this book. . . hasn't.

  On the contrary, this book tells the story of one man's personal journey around some of the world's most awful places. And that man was often exhausted, terrified, exhilarated, irrational, overly sympathetic, sentimentally attached, homesick, angry and hungry. He was also writing whilst very emotional at the end of a horribly long day.

  And he was occasionally a little drunk.

  So I hope that you read these essays for what they are: a polemic, unreasonable, emotional reaction to events as they unfolded to a man at the end of his tether. They are biased towards my personal experience, but they are hopefully of a lot more interesting for it.

  Stefan Gates

  London, October 2007

  AFGHANISTAN

  Testicles and the

  Taliban

  POPULATION: 27 million

  PERCENTAGE LIVING ON LESS THAN $2 A DAY: 53%

  UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: not available

  CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX POSITION: 117 out of 159

  GDP (NOMINAL) PER CAPITA: $335 (164/179)

  FOOD AID RECIPIENTS: WFP aims to provide food aid to 6.6 million Afghans between Jan 2006 and Dec 2008 at a cost of $372 million

  MALNUTRITION: 54% of children under five are stunted

  I'm nursing a deep-rooted, fear-related nausea, as I toy with my flak jacket, which weighs a ton. I wonder whether I'll be able to walk in it, let alone run from flying bullets if the situation arises. The flight into Kabul is a peculiar, disconcerting affair. I'm on a UN jet complete with air stewardesses, South African pilot and dark blue leather seats with ample legroom. It's plain and unadorned yet discreetly luxurious. I've hitched a lift using the UN's journalist's arrangement: I pay the full market cost of the flight, and could get bumped up at any time. I sit with my arse muscles tightly clenched, as they will continue to be for the next two weeks, wondering why on earth I didn't get around to writing a will. I glance over at Marc, my producer on this trip, but he's already fast asleep. Bastard.

  There's tension in the air, even up here at 35,000 feet. I ponder morbidly on ground-to-air missiles and adventure-versus-idiocy ratios. My misery only increases as we start to descend over Kabul.

  I look at some photos of my daughters to distract me, but just then the plane makes a violent lurch and pulls a 90-degree turn. What the hell was that for? My heart pumps like the clappers and I grip the armrests. Suddenly we flatten out just as violently, and I see the runway hurtling towards us. Without pausing to pitch, roll and tickle, or whatever it is those nice cosy BA pilots do, the plane dumps itself with a crash onto a strip of lumpy concrete. My teeth are clamped so tightly together that my gums are about to bleed. I look over at Marc again. He yawns and wakes up before giving me a friendly grin. I'm going to have to work on this relationship.

  During my high-risk training I was told that airports are extremely dangerous – I'll be a great kidnap target and I'll be disorientated so I should take the utmost precaution. It's pitch black when I step onto the tarmac at Kabul International airport, and as the other passengers amble off the plane, I stand there trying to wriggle into my flak jacket and helmet. Everyone stares at me. Marc quietly suggests I put the flak jacket away – I'm only going to draw attention from potential kidnappers. Oh God, I'm so confused. I want to go home!

  The airport isn't a great advert for Afghanistan. It's crumbling, chaotic, bewildering, filthy and full of angry-looking shouty blokes, closed offices, and people with guns but no obvious affiliation.

  We struggle into the car park and throw all our gear into the back of a 4×4. Our driver hoons at breakneck pace through the dark streets – I suppose we're being treated like VIPs, with a special dispensation to flout traffic rules and speed limits in order to avoid kidnappers and Improvised Explosive Devices. Our security is more important than the safety of other road users – we are from the BBC after all. But I soon realize that he just always drives like this, and when I'm finally brave enough to look out of the window I realize that everyone else drives like this too.


  There are three places to stay in Kabul. One is the Intercontinental – a vast corporate number to the west of the city, built by the British in 1969, and now in a state of creeping decrepitude. It's perched on a big hill and has a wonderful view across Kabul. And here lies the problem: it sticks out like a fluorescent crucifix on an imam. You couldn't create a better target for missiles in a lawless city if you wrote 'Contents: valuable journalists, diplomats and government ministers' on its side. During the war, all the journalists gathered here to enjoy its bar, pool (women not allowed) and room service, and it remains popular. Every now and then someone bombs it, or casually takes a pot-shot at it with a shoulder-held missile launcher: the last rocket attack was only two weeks before we arrived. A forlorn sign at the entrance says 'No Weapons'. You takes your chances.

  The second place is the recently opened, absurdly luxurious Serena. There's nothing wrong with this place, as long as you can get your pretty little head to sleep on those goose-down pillows when outside 6.6 million Afghans go hungry on a daily basis. (I don't mean to sound preachy, but the contrast is a lot to bear.) The Serena has a small army of security guards at the door, bristling with modern weaponry, and inside the prawn cocktail is safe to munch, and the loo roll is of perfect pile. All of which puts it firmly out of the BBC's hotel budget.

  I'm booked into the third option: the Gandamack Lodge, a legendary Kabul institution also known as Peter Jouvenal's Place, and the favoured drinking hole of the international press. It used to be the home of Bin Laden's fourth wife and family, but now it's become a small, nicely down-at-heel hotel (although in Kabul terms, it's high luxury) with a colonial feel designed to please grouchy British war correspondents, who enjoy its collection of military souvenirs and antiques.

  There are machine gun-toting guards at the low-key entrance, which is both comforting and horrific, but I don't really care any more. I'm exhausted from The Fear, and I'd quite like it to stop.