Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Kenya's tree-planting holiday

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

Our weekly collection of the happiest stories in the world. This week, Kenya hands out 100 million saplings and calls a public holiday to plant them. Also: a new drug to treat two rare blood disorders, and a woman from Scotland who walked across Europe and met the Pope.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. The Global Story is your new daily deep dive into one big news story. And it's coming soon, Monday to Friday, from the BBC World Service. Search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts to find out more.

The Kenyan government gives out 100 million saplings and calls a public holiday to get everyone planting trees. Taking part, our correspondent in Nairobi, Anne Soy. I love fruit trees and I've tried to plant quite a variety of them at my home. Apart from having tree cover, you also get to eat from that tree. Also in the happy pod, Geraldine, who walked across Europe and then met the Pope. I had kidnappers, as I call it, kidnapped with kindness. And people were literally taking me in. A possible cure for two rare blood disorders, a gene therapy drug approved for the first time.

The patients on the trials are absolutely thrilled because in more than 90% they no longer had pain crisis or needed transfusions. And... I was in a state of disbelief, I think, that it actually happened. Turned to the umpire, looked at him and he just shook his head, looked at me and walked up and went, that's unbelievable. An extraordinary cricket over in Australia. Hello, I'm Harry Bly and this is our weekly collection of positive and uplifting news stories. The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.

Let's begin with trees and lots of them. Kenya wants to grow 15 billion trees by 2033. And this week they took the first step with the government calling a public holiday to allow Kenyans to plant tens of millions of saplings. Our senior Africa correspondent Anne Soy spoke to me from her home just outside Nairobi about the special tree planting holiday. It took everyone by surprise. It has never happened in this country. And many people were sceptical initially. I was one of them. But on the day, going to the sites where trees were being planted and watching the enthusiasm, I actually realised that really people needed something like this. It was very ambitious, 100 million trees. And in the mathematics

the government had done, they said, well, this is a nation of 55 million people. So even if 5 million don't take part, if the other 50 million plant two trees each, then they'll hit that target. What kind of trees are these saplings, these 150 million? Is it a range of different species? That's right. The government had created an internet application called Jazamiti, which is Swahili for, you know, fill up the space with trees. And this app was to provide people with information about the trees that are appropriate for the places that they live in, because we have people who live in the high altitudes, in the highlands, near mountains, and in the Rift Valley. And then we have people in the lowlands, like, you know, coastal regions, and therefore the climate is different there. The advice had been given by government and also the

seedlings that they were providing were suited to every climatic condition. But lots and lots of people were also planting fruit trees and that is actually what I preferred myself because apart from having tree cover, you also get to eat from that tree. I'm sitting in my backyard and just behind me is an orange tree. It has some fruits now that I'm waiting to ripen. There are two purple trees in front of me. There's a lemon tree. There's a problematic mango tree, problematic because it's been attacked multiple times by beetles that are eating the fruits. So I love fruit trees and I've tried to plant quite a variety of them at my home.

And that is what people are doing and there's a national drive actually to get school children to plant fruit trees in their schools because it's good for nutrition so it's not only environmentally sound it's good for the children's nutrition so they can you know just pluck them whenever they need whenever the the fruits ripen and when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s in primary school, I had a tree that I was looking after, as did every child in this country. So we have grown up with that tradition of planting and looking after trees. It's such a wonderful idea. And it's been received well by the public, it sounds like. Yeah, absolutely. A friend of a friend actually

posted on social media saying that he had planted 300. He lives on a farm near Mount Kenya in central Kenya. You know, 300. That is way, way beyond what the government had asked people to. So I'm not surprised if they hit their target or even surpassed it. Anne Soy talking to me from her backyard just outside Nairobi. Staying with improved air quality, a company in the US has opened the country's first commercial facility that pulls carbon dioxide from the air. It uses calcium oxide made from heating limestone, which then absorbs CO2. This isn't a totally new concept. Another direct air capture facility opened in Iceland two years ago,

but this one claims it will remove 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Already, Microsoft has signed a deal with Heirloom, the company that runs it, to remove more than 300,000 tonnes of CO2 from the air. The facility in the state of California consists of 12-metre-high racks of trays of white calcium oxide powder, as Noah McQueen, the co-founder of Heirloom, explained. What we do is we heat them up, we take off their CO2, and they become very thirsty for more CO2. So these minerals naturally take up CO2 in nature. What we do is we accelerate how fast they take up CO2 and put that into an engineered process. So you have this calcium carbonate, we break it apart into calcium oxide, which is our sponge for CO2 and permanently store that CO2 away from the atmosphere. You can think of this process like laying out a sponge to take up CO2 and then

bringing out the sponge and storing it away from the atmosphere. Just two years ago, you captured your first grams of CO2 in a Petri dish in a lab. And now you've opened your first commercial plant. How's that process been? It's been pretty exceptional. In 2020, we were capturing CO2, less than one kilogram of CO2 in Petri dishes. And now we have the first commercial direct air capture facility in the United States. And that facility can capture up to a thousand tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. And for us, you know, this is the pace that we need to iterate at, the pace that we need to scale at to really meet global climate goals. And what's the expected impact that this could have? I've read that it could reduce 200 cars worth of CO2. Yeah, so this facility alone can reduce, you know,

up to 1000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. But, you know, it's a it's a first step. It's not the end game. You know, the end game is removing billions of tonnes of CO2 and heirloom has the goal to remove a billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2035. What's next for heirloom is to keep scaling, you know, we went from that one kilogram to a thousand tons and we need to continue to build larger and more efficient plants. Noah McQueen. Now let's hear from 54-year-old Geraldine McFall, who walked 3,200 kilometres from her home in Glasgow to Rome. She spent six months trekking through the UK, then through France, Switzerland, over the Alps, into Italy and finally to Rome and to the Vatican, where she was honoured with a surprise audience with the Pope.

I made the route up as I was going along. I did roughly plan out the route from Glasgow to the Scottish borders over at Hawick, just so that I knew for the first week or two I had a bit of a plan. And then after that, each day, Google Maps was out working out roughly how far I could go, where there were fewer hills and where I could stop camp. I had a trailer, which is actually a buggy for running parents. So I had this buggy strapped around my waist and pulling it from behind. I packed too much when I left Glasgow but in essence I packed what I would normally have in a rucksack. What were the best moments along the way? I imagine going through France, going through Switzerland, you must have seen some extraordinary views.

Oh, the views and the scenery and the countryside all the way through the journey were incredible. And yes, particularly Switzerland. But my big highlights really throughout the journey were the people that I met. Even just a hello, what are you doing? Or a chat in a cafe or staying with people. I had kidnappers, as I call it, kidnapped with kindness. And people were literally taking me in, whether it would be allowing me to camp in their garden or even more taking me in for the night and letting me have the spare room. The scenery was beautiful but the people were even better. When you reached the south of France and Switzerland of course and Italy you hit the Alps what was that like?

That was a worry. I had no idea how I was going to get around the Alps but I definitely wasn't going over them and it wasn't until I had started the journey and people were saying you do realise there's no option but to go over the Alps and the Alps were beautiful but I did have three days with no trailer to get myself over the Alps. Tell me about meeting the Pope and how that came about. Meeting the Pope was such an incredible, surreal situation. It came about unbeknown to me, the Archbishop of Glasgow, William Nolan, had contacted the Vatican household and asked if I could be presented to Pope Francis. I didn't know about any of this.

I knew that I had a ticket to the general audience, so I knew that I would be in the crowd. But it was only when I collected the ticket on the Tuesday afternoon that I was told I would be presented to Pope Francis. Even better than that, my 94-year-old godfather and his daughter, they were permitted to come up with me, so they got to meet the Pope as well. And of course, the tears were just flowing from the pair of us. But Pope Francis, he was wheeled round on his wheelchair, and he had a beaming big smile when I met him and shook his hand. It was just an incredible experience. Geraldine McFall and her long walk that raised more than $13,000 for two charities supporting people with dementia and malnutrition in developing countries.

Next, a medical first, gene therapy that aims to cure two blood disorders, sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia. Kazjevi uses a gene editing tool known as CRISPR, a technology that won the scientists who discovered it the Nobel Prize in 2020. It's expected to be expensive, but could offer a functional cure to these life-limiting conditions. I spoke to our medical editor, Fergus Walsh. They're both inherited genetic blood disorders, so they're passed on by your parents. And they're both caused by a faulty gene. And with both sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia,

the red blood cells end up being misshapen. And they're both lifelong and life-limiting conditions. And Fergus, this new drug uses gene editing to try and cure these two conditions. So how exactly does Casgevi work? So Casgevi is the first drug using a gene editing technique known as CRISPR, which, if I remember rightly, is an acronym that stands for Clusters of Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Now, it works by,, effectively what happens is you take the stem cells,

these are special cells found in the bone marrow, you take them to the laboratory, and then using what we call molecular scissors, it's an enzyme called Cas9, it runs down the whole DNA. We've got three billion pairs of DNA in each of our nucleus. And it spins down it and finds the exact point where the faulty gene is. And it makes a snip. and a replacement gene starts working and the patients start to produce healthy haemoglobin and have healthy blood. What does this drug look like? I'm guessing it's not just a simple pill that you take.

No, the drug is an infusion and it's a personalised medicine created from a patient's own cells. It looks a little bit like you're having a blood transfusion but in fact your blood is is going out it's being spun around in a centrifuge to separate all the different parts and then this tiny number of bone marrow stem cells are collected and then sent to a laboratory there There's two in the world. There's one in the US and one in the UK,

where they are then gene-edited using this CRISPR technique. And then the drug itself, which is made from the patient's own cells, is called Cas-Jevi. Like you mentioned, it's a lifelong condition. And there were trials last year which clearly have been successful. So what are patients saying? The patients on the trials are absolutely thrilled because in more than 90%, so only a few dozen patients, but in more than 90% of sickle cell and in beta-thalassemia,

they no longer had pain crisis or needed transfusions. And the hope is it is a one-off permanent fix. BBC medical editor Fergus Walsh. Still to come... What was so special about this ice is that the lake bottom doesn't have any vegetation and it's rock instead of soil. And so the water is really clear. Once in a decade, crystal clear ice, good enough to skate on.

We're off to the US state of Alaska and the Gold Coast of Australia. To be continued... podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. What would you buy if you won the lottery? Some winners go big, a mansion, a supercar. Neil Jones from the UK bought himself a new pool table. He was working as a tiler and had just $16 to his name. But in 2010, Neil and his partner Julie won almost $3 million in the UK's national lottery. And after a bit of practice on his new table, Neil Jones is now captaining England at the European Pool Championships in Malta. He's been talking to my colleague,

Caroline Barker. More than happy to play for the county, you know, the county A team, because they have got a really good side. And then next thing, with Covid came in, there was an open trial for anybody who wanted to trial for England, and I managed to do really, really well at it. I'd just got in. That's when it became real. Was it a phone call was it face to face when someone says to you how do you fancy captaining England for the European Championships? I got told by my captain he said he'll be getting a phone call off the England manager you've got through so I said I can't believe this so he messaged me I was literally sobbing for three hours honestly not just tearing sobbing I was just too emotional. Well hours. Honestly, not just tearing, sobbing.

I was just too emotional. Well, I know you've had a lot of wins in your life now with the lottery, with being captain for England, but I might have one that might top that all. We put a little note round to everyone in the office to come up with suggested pool nicknames for you. I don't know if you've got one. Have you already got one?

I have actually. Don't read it in wrong way it's chopper because if a ball's just over the pocket i can cut it in so fine and i've always been good and they call me chopper jones i don't know that we can top that i'll try are you ready yeah go on so the obvious one is jackpot oh right yeah the potteries potter no yeah okay these aren't going the terracotta potter I like that

somebody's been really thinking about that I know I know we don't know of course we have too much time on our hands what will mean more to you

that that lottery or are they hand in hand I guess that lottery win or stepping out as England captain it's got to be on par because any sport you strive play for your country and you don't even think of that if it

happens it happens when you think about how many people have tried and had trials over the years people have been playing like this game 40 odd years and they've never had trials for England and I've been playing them rules for three years and I've managed to get it you're getting emotional again Neil yeah it gets to you because obviously like when we walked out at Bridlington it was all news to me I didn't know anything and you're on this massive arena like a theatre type thing and there's another tier of seating above you

and I'm thinking like if my father was above there he'd be absolutely buzzing because you walk out to Rocking all over the world's theatre square they say please welcome the Team England and you all walk out there's about 60, 80 of us. It's just overwhelming, really. And you just think, I wish my dad was here.

Pool table owner turned pool champion, Neil Jones. Cricket fans love statistics. The records of runs scored and wickets taken, the improbable and extraordinary. So how about one over, six balls, taking six wickets? It happened on Australia's Gold Coast in the Premier League Division Three. Nick Robinson spoke to the history maker, bowler and team captain, Gareth Morgan, and began, of course, with congratulations. Oh, thank you very, very much. I'm playing for Madhubar Narang, playing against Surfers Paradise.

They looked very comfortable for the entire innings and they were four for 174, needing to get to 179 to win. One over to go, six balls. It is your over and the umpire said something to you. Yeah, so I took the ball, walked up to the umpire, gave him my hat. He said to me, well, Skipper, I think you probably need a hat trick to win this one. It was a bit of a laugh at the time. A hat trick? How likely did you think that was? Extremely unlikely. So take us through the over then because it was a lot more than a hat trick.

Yeah. So first ball then I came into a guy who was batting well. He's in the 60s. Put one down there for him, hoping that it might entice him to punch it down the ground for a single, but he hit it over as a deep mid wicket where one of the young fellas took a really good catch on the boundary. One ball down, one wicket. What about ball two? Ball two, I decided to change from what I traditionally bowl in bowling offspin and thought I'll actually try and bowl a couple little cutters.

Stuck a bit in the wicket, the batsman had to check his shot and he's ended up lofting the ball to a mid-on fielder in a regulation position. Two balls, two wickets. What about ball number three? Ball number three was very similar to ball two except the batsman managed to turn it, pop it up to a short mid-wicket who dived forward and took a really good catch, a hat-trick worthy catch.

Ball four, tell us what happened. Left-hander came out, confused the situation, had to move the field around. I tried to sort of push it up onto off stump to contain him to, again, hit it down the ground for a single. And he took a bit of a swing at it and it flew out to point. And another good catch was taken. Four balls, four wickets ball

number five were you just in total disbelief at this stage a little bit but i was also very focused on trying to remind my team one decent hit out the middle of the bat it goes the boundary and the game's over so i decided they're going to have to try and hit this because they now really don't have any options for singles. So I just went at the stumps and hoped if he missed, I'd hit. And that's what happened. And final ball of the over. Then what? Before this one, I said to the team, well, this ball's going to be the same as the last one.

I'm just going to go nice and full at the base of the stumps. This is the first time I was confident where I thought maybe I might actually be able to pull this off and get all six. Good credit to him. He didn't just block it out and take the game. He tried to play a shot, went through him, beat him, and knocked the stumps over. And then what happened? Then it was a little bit chaotic.

My team, they were more excited than me, I think. I was in a state of disbelief, I think, that it actually happened. Turned to the umpire, looked at him, and he just his head, looked at me and walked up and went, that's unbelievable. Cricket history maker Gareth Morgan, next to an ice window in Alaska, where the transition into winter has been unusually cold and dry, allowing one of Alaska's alpine lakes to freeze in a way that's left the ice completely see-through. Luke Mell is an ice rescue instructor in the state. He and his wife were skating on Rabbit Lake and shared their footage. So usually these lakes are all covered with snow by the time the water freezes.

And I've been skating for about 12 years up here, and I've never seen it like that. So this was a very unusual, sort of unusual environmental conditions. The combination of being able to look down three or four meters and see what's on the bottom, I've never experienced that in the 12 years that I've been doing this. I think what was so special about this ice is that because it's up in the alpine, it's up in the mountains, the lake bottom doesn't have any vegetation and it's rock instead of soil. And so the water is really clear. Luke Mell skating on Rabbit Lake. Ballet has been around for centuries.

You mostly find it in major cities like Vienna, Paris, Moscow and New York. Almost 45 years ago, a different kind of ballet opened. London City Ballet was based in the capital, but its mission was to bring dance to new audiences who had little to no access, touring smaller towns and cities in the UK and abroad. It closed in the late 1990s, but next year it's reopening, thanks to a former professional ballet dancer turned choreographer turned artistic director, Chris Marnie.

I had no experience of dance before I went to see London City Ballet, but there was something about it that captured my imagination. Because it's had that reach, so many people have been affected by the work that they have seen it do. It's a special thing to bring it back. London City Ballet started life as a small dance company, putting on lunchtime performances at the Art Theatre in London's Leicester Square. It was a popular lunch break activity among local workers. Jane Sanig danced for the company for 12 years.

We toured extensively here and abroad, which was very exciting. I also got taught by a lot of wonderful teachers. Again, because the company was small, we got great opportunity to dance. London City Ballet quickly expanded and began touring Britain and beyond. Here's Chris again. It had amazing support from its audiences, loyal audiences. The other element of support was, of course, Princess Diana, who was their patron and really stayed by their side and supported the company. She loved dance, but she believed in the transformative powers of dance, in a sense, that there should be a company that is taking dance

to perhaps areas that don't always have the easiest access to live performance. But 18 years later, in 1996, the company was forced to close in part due to mounting debt. In his mission to resurrect the company, Chris has spent more than a year fundraising and rebuilding London City Ballet. Next year, it will move into purpose-built studios at Sadler's Wells Theatre in North London, where the original company was based. The first tour will include visits to many of the old company's featured venues in the UK and around the world, including Italy, Portugal and the United States.

And it's not just the company itself Christopher is hoping to recover, but lesser-known and rarely performed works that he fears are at risk of being forgotten. And one of those pieces in particular is by a great choreographer, Kenneth Macmillan, and this work is entitled Ballard. It's a work for four dancers, it's a one-act ballet, and it's one of those pieces that I feel should not be lost. It has too much of an important history not to be seen. So it's a sort of hidden gem of the repertoire. Choreographer and artistic director Chris Marnie.

And this, the music you can hear, is from the ballet Chris referred to, Ballade in F-sharp Major, Op. 19, composed by Gabrielle Fauré. And that brings this edition of The Happy Pod to an end. But we'd love to hear from you. Is there some good news where you live? Something uplifting you want to share? Send us an email or a voice note to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. That's globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

Or on X, we are at globalnewspod. This edition was produced by Anna Murphy and Tracy Gordon. It was mixed by Graham White. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Harry Bly. Until next time, goodbye. Food is incredibly important in the world. It's about survival. Thank you. If this kind of food is lost, a community will lose its identity. This is an incredible journey. Search for The Food Chain wherever award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads?

Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.