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CNN Live At Daybreak
Catherine Bond Out of Africa
Aired August 30, 2002 - 05:48 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Now that Eli (ph) has given us his "International Wrap" this morning, the correspondent joining us now has had a big hand in how we gather some of that news.
Catherine Bond is our Nairobi bureau chief.
Good morning -- Catherine.
CATHERINE BOND, CNN NAIROBI BUREAU CHIEF: Good morning.
COSTELLO: Thanks for being with us because I know how tired you must be.
BOND: That's a (ph) pleasure.
COSTELLO: What's it like living in Nairobi, first off?
BOND: It's fine, actually. It has a high crime rate, but a very nice climate. It's always in the 60s or 70s. It never gets too hot; it never gets too cold. You can keep your windows open all year round.
COSTELLO: So when you say high crime rate, what do you mean, how high?
BOND: There's a lot -- a lot -- yes, a lot of armed crime, a lot of unreported crime. It's because of poverty. Kenya's become increasingly poorer over the past 20 years, and a lot of people are without jobs.
COSTELLO: So when people look at you, how do they feel about you? Do they just assume that...
BOND: Well people are very nice on the whole. I mean they're still more honest people than dishonest. And on the whole, people are very, very nice, very well informed about world current affairs and very pleasant, very polite. They have very nice manners, I think, in Kenya.
COSTELLO: Logistically, isn't it difficult to cover the news in the whole of Africa?
BOND: Yes, it can be. We have had a couple of accidents in the past few months, a train accident in Tanzania, a bus accident in Uganda in which very large numbers of people were killed. And it took 30 hours for pictures from those accidents to get out to the outside world. So that gives you an idea of how long it took for crews to fly and then drive to the scene, 30 hours.
COSTELLO: Thirty hours.
BOND: Yes.
COSTELLO: So what did that 30 hours entail? I mean...
BOND: Entailed a flight either to Uganda or Tanzania and then a drive. In the Tanzanian case, there was actually no transport. But luckily we managed to get a couple of vehicles from a local Member of Parliament and have them for the day. And in Uganda, it was a five- hour drive from the main airport.
COSTELLO: Do you think most Americans are aware of what really is going on in Africa?
BOND: Perhaps not. I think there's a greater awareness of Zimbabwe. I find that people seem to know what's going on in Zimbabwe. So it does...
COSTELLO: I think of something very controversial is going on there right now.
BOND: Yes.
COSTELLO: But as far as the AIDS crisis, do you think people realize how serious that is?
BOND: I think that's quite difficult to absorb. I mean even when you're living there you don't want to constantly be reminded of the fact that perhaps one in every four or five people is HIV positive and has a limited life span because of it. So I think that's very painful. It's a very, very sort of difficult subject to embrace. But yes, it affects the lives of most people in many parts of Africa now.
COSTELLO: And the political situations in many of the countries within Africa, like Rwanda, are -- I mean many Americans don't understand because it's just so violent and so crazy.
BOND: It used to be. It's actually quite a peaceful country now and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) badly. You'd be incredibly surprised if you went to Rwanda. It's...
COSTELLO: But didn't...
BOND: ... looking very good -- yes.
COSTELLO: When you were covering the political strife there though, wasn't it dangerous for you?
BOND: Yes, it was extremely dangerous. And in fact when people talk about the genocide and how the outside world didn't know that it was going on, there was a reason for that. I mean there were journalists there and there were people like me were trying to say listen, you know there's a very high degree of killing and the outside world should intervene. But we actually couldn't really even get down the road at the time because there were militia roadblocks absolutely everywhere on every street corner. And they would kill you. I mean they were killing so many other people, they wouldn't have much compunction about killing a foreigner either. It was very difficult.
COSTELLO: Some don't care that you're a journalist either.
BOND: No, no, no.
COSTELLO: No. No.
The volcano in the Congo, that must have been an incredible sight and a sad one, too.
BOND: An incredible sight. It actually went through the commercial district of Goma so it took out people's businesses. And, in that sense, destroyed a lot of people's means of living. That was really the main problem. It didn't kill many people. We didn't run into many Congolese who had lost a relative, which was, you know, a relief -- a great relief.
And also, the Congolese were extremely resourceful in the way they handled it. They traipsed over the border to Rwanda and after a couple of days they traipsed back again. And actually walked over this still flowing, still hot...
COSTELLO: Oh that's just incredible.
BOND: ... river of lava.
COSTELLO: And the town itself is completely buried.
BOND: The commercial district is very badly affected and still has -- still has huge sort of lava flow stuck on its main streets, but not completely buried. Many of the residential areas survived.
COSTELLO: Not completely buried.
What are you covering now?
BOND: We're covering a couple of stories in Kenya. And we're looking at Sudan where actually the Bush administration has its most developed peace initiative in the world and is working hard to bring the North and the South of the country together to end a 19-year war.
COSTELLO: And that would be a good thing.
Catherine Bond, thank you for stopping by this morning. We definitely appreciate it because we know how tired you must be.
BOND: Thank you.
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