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From Our Own Correspondent: Uganda and Colombia

Uganda and Colombia

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Uganda and Colombia

Owen Bennett Jones introduces personal stories and insights from Rob Young and Huw Cordey.

Owen Bennett Jones with insights from correspondents abroad. Today Rob Young hears Ugandans bemoan the rising price of green bananas; Huw Cordey finds Colombia a lot easier to travel than it once was.

Owen Bennett Jones presents personal stories, wit and analysis from  correspondents around the world. In today's edition: while Rob Young hears Ugandan complaints about the relentless rise in the cost of a staple food, Huw Cordey finds that Colombia is now a lot easier to travel than it used to be.

Steamed green bananas 

Matooke - a mash of cooked green bananas of the East African Highland variety - is a staple food across a swath of Africa - from Uganda to Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi. And as with any staple food, when it gets too expensive for the ordinary pocket, the ordinary citizen feels not just hunger, but outrage. 

Rob Young recently visited the Ugandan capital Kampala - and found some unexpected echoes of anti-capitalist protests in London and New York. In the US and Europe, the people protesting tend to demand jobs and greater fairness. In Uganda, they say they just want to be able to afford basic foods and fuel.

Where strangers no longer fear to tread

Just ten years ago in Colombia, some places - even quite big towns - had no police presence of any kind. In fact in 2002, the government says, as many as 168 municipalities had no police at all and 400 city and town mayors were unable to work safely. For decades the country was a byword for drugs, terrorism and guerrilla and paramilitary violence. These modern-day plagues not only hollowed out the state - they also besmirched Colombia's image abroad and deterred all but the most hard-bitten visitor.

But as Huw Cordey has been finding out, things are beginning to change.

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