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From Our Own Correspondent: Somalia and Greece

Somalia and Greece

23/12/2013

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Somalia and Greece

The lost spectacles that made it back from a Somalian battlefield, and hope for Greece

How a lost pair of spectacles made it back from a Somalian battlefield, and have Greece, and Greeks turned an economic corner?

Mark Doyle went to report on the war in Somalia, that is fought between African Union peacekeepers, and the al-Shabab army, as he prefers to call the al-Qaeda affiliated militants, arguing the more usual description of them as insurgents is inadequate. Mark travelled with the African Union soldiers, and somewhere on the battlefield he lost his reading glasses. After casually mentioning this to a Ugandan army officer who was accompanying him, Mark was stunned when several days later, he got a call to say his glasses had been found. But by then he was in back in London.

Greece has lost a quarter of its economy after six arduous years of austerity and recession. During this time there have been large, often violent protests, against the cutbacks, and much suffering as people lost jobs, income and hope. But as Mark Lowen found, there is now light at the end of this long tunnel, as the government predicts that the economy will start to grow again. And, he hears that many Greeks have come to accept the change that the crisis brought.

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