Ashes to Masses: Notre Dame’s stunning return

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The economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Ghana has been something of a trailblazer in Africa, leading the way in ditching dictatorship and maintaining relative political and economic stability. Our correspondent says that shine is coming off as voters head to the polls tomorrow. And John Kinsel was among the last of the wind talkers of the Second World War, Navajo Native Americans who developed a cipher that Japan's best codebreakers never cracked. Our obituary editor looks back on the words that helped to win a war. But first.

On April 15, 2019, I was working in the Paris office. I remember it very clearly because we were waiting for an announcement by President Macron on a completely different subject. And suddenly a news flash came out tonight. Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is completely engulfed by fire. You can see those pictures of the flames and the billowing smoke. We do know that visitors, the residents, they've responded.

We hear them singing. They're praying.

Notre Dame, an 850-year-old Gothic cathedral, went up in flames and shocked and saddened the whole world.

Sophie Petter is our Paris bureau chief, back with us for the second day in a row, not this time on the collapse of a government, but on a welcome moment of hope for France, the reopening this weekend of one of the world's most iconic buildings.

In the end, the firefighters worked through the night. They managed to save, astonishingly, all the stone structure on the inside. It then had to be consolidated for a long time, but the roof itself and the spire came crashing down. President Macron himself rushed the scene. He described the world, watching part of us burn. He said right from the beginning that he wanted Notre Dame to be rebuilt within five years. And there was a feeling that that was just ambitious beyond what was normal. So after the fire was put out, which was a huge effort by the Paris firefighters, there was a big debate about what to do. You know, do you just restore or try to replicate the original, or do you try to do something a little bit more modern? There was a debate also about who would fund it. It was always going to be the most ambitious project that France had ever undertaken to restore a historic monument. And the most arresting part of this was just the timescale. Fast forward five years and against the odds, the French have rebuilt Notre Dam, and it is going to open in a ceremony on the weekend, and the first Mass will be held on Sunday. Now, President Macron has already taken cameras inside to show the world really what it looks like. And I think people are astonished, really. I can remember when I first went into the interior on a visit earlier this year, I was really taken aback by the colour. It's the luminosity of the stone. It's been cleaned and scrubbed. It's almost unrecognisable. If everyone thinks back to the Notre Dame, they knew that glue, that sort of grime on the pillars. Some people liked it that way. It's part of the atmosphere. But it's what they've done is restore it to what it must have looked like in medieval times. I think one of the most impressive features of this restoration project is the fact that they went back and have been completely faithful both to the original designs, but also to the techniques that the artisans, the craftsmen in medieval times would have used. So they recreated the axes and the tools so that the craftsmen would be rebuilding the roof, rebuilding the spire exactly as it was. And when I went to visit, I went on a very cold day in the winter. I had to climb up to the top of this scaffolding, which is quite a hairy experience, up about 96 meters above the ground to the top of the spire where the craftsmen were finishing off. They were putting hooks on the lead roof and they were fixing the very sort of top of this buyer into place, what the French call the flesh. And it was the care and the quality of the materials and also the skill of the craftsman. I spoke to one of the carpenters, who was called emile. He was 30 years old. He was incredibly proud of what he was doing. For the roof. Above the medieval nave and the choir. A total of 1,200 oak logs were individually selected from forestry plantations and they were hewn by hand into these square timber beams that were then used. They were brought by boat on a barge on the River Seine. So it's not just the color of the stone that is astonishing to see, it's also all the detail. If you look at, for example, the colors of the wall paintings on the chapels on the inside of Notre Dame, those were a work of the 19th century, but they have been repainted with the original pigment, so there's a bright sort of vivid feel to the color. And when I visited the workshop earlier this year, I found sculptors and specialist stonemasons. They were all working by hand with their chisels and their brushes to restore and clean the gargoyles and all the sort of decorative stone elements that were then going to be put back in place for the opening of Notre Dame. All the way through over the last five years. President Macron has just taken a great personal interest in this project. I guess it's in part because he made that promise about rebuilding, and so he has kept the pressure on the project to stick to the deadlines. When he went on a tour of the site last week, it was his seventh. And this time on that visit, he gathered all the workers who'd made it happen, and he used it as an occasion to thank them, Telling them that they should be proud and not forget that they've been part of what he called the most beautiful project in France this century. There were more than 2,000 workers who took part from 250 firms. Many of them were very small family firms from across France. And it was a real showcase, in a way, for French craftsmen. And Macron said, you've transformed ashes into art. For President Macron, it's come at a particularly difficult time for him because he has just lost another government which has fallen over a budget. So, politically, France is not in a good way, and I think everybody in the country needs this as a source of inspiration and a little bit of positive news at a difficult time. There was a lot of skepticism at the start that this would come together, especially given the time frame. Why did it work? I would say that it was partly because of the public structure that was set in place. The state actually owns Notre Dame, and the public structure was run by a military general, Jean Louis Georges, who ran it until he died in 2023. He had an office at the presidency, which gave him a sort of direct line to the president, and that helped cut through some red tape when it needed. But it was also interesting, I think, as a project, because it required almost no public money at all. It was financed in the end by incredibly generous private donations, both from some of France's biggest corporations, but also from individuals around the world. Notre dame raised nearly 900 million euros in contributions for French Catholics. It's obviously incredibly important that the cathedral will be open again and hold its first Mass in time for Christmas, but I think it touches people way beyond the Catholic world. It's a monument that's A testament to human ingenuity, to medieval engineering. It's a testament to resistance. This is a cathedral that has survived centuries. It survived revolution, it survived the terror, it survived Nazi occupation. And it has been rebuilt in a way that is a tribute to the fact that it means so much to so many people, both in France and all around the world.

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Last month I was in Ghana's capital Accra.

My former co host Ore Obanbee is our Africa correspondent.

Ahead of this weekend's election I was gauging the mood amongst voters. Are you going to vote in the election? And non voters, why are you not voting? We keep seeing the same thing each.

And every now and then.

After all the promise.

The man currently leading the polls is former President John Mahama who I also spoke to.

My focus is to come and reset Ghana. We need to reset our governance. We need to do a constitutional review.

He was defeated in 2016's election by the current administration led by President Nana Akufo Addo who's now stepping down as the Constitution requires after two terms. When Muhammad left office, his reputation was in tatters. Power blackouts, high inflation and the falling value of the Cedi against the dollar cost him reelection. But the administration that succeeded his has fared far worse and now he's on the ballot again. And thanks to a global anti incumbent census and a healthy dose of nostalgia, he could actually win.

Now. Ora, you said the current administration has actually fared worse than Mr. Muhammad's. How so? What do you mean by that?

Well, I think Mr. Akufu Addo's stewardship of the economy will probably go down as some of the worst in Ghana's democratic history. Inflation is rising. It hit 23% in November. There's a cost of living crisis and the weakening currency against the dollar makes that even worse because lots of consumer goods are imported. Ghana has also defaulted on billions of dollars in external and a bit more unusually, also domestic debt.

So Mr. Mohammad is back in the scene, back on the ticket. The current incumbent president is stepping down. So who else is on the ticket?

So it's pretty much a two horse race. Mr. Akufu Addo's vice president, Mohammadu Baoumiyah is from the National Patriotic Party. And if he wins, he could be the country's first Muslim. But the challenge with him is he's struggling to distance himself from how his party has handled the economy, especially since as the vice president he doubles as the head of Akufu Addo's economic management team. So he's trying to campaign by pointing to a few signs of economic recovery. But most of the economic recovery can be put down to a recent IMF bailout and also the restructuring of domestic debt, which actually costs the middle class a chunk of their savings. So even though the vice President is trying to convince voters that Ghana is doing a little bit better, polls suggest that the voters aren't really convinced.

So to your mind, Mr. Muhammad, has it zipped up?

Well, I think Mr. Muhammad's got a pretty good chance of winning. Ghana typically boots out incumbents after eight years anyway. So if history's anything to go by, it's the ruling party's time up. And When I interviewed Mr. Muhammad, he talked a little bit about his experience pulling Ghana out of adversity. That's a key part of his campaign. He's trying to convince voters that he's done it before and he can do it again.

I have confidence that Ghana is a good place to do business. We just have to put in the right environment to make it attractive to investors. We've done it before and he thinks.

That he's going to be able to do this even in just a single term in office. Because he's been president before, he can only stick around for four more years.

I believe that four years is good time enough to lay the foundation for a new start. Once I get it to where I think, you know, we've laid a good foundation, somebody else can take it and continue.

But the thing is, elections in Ghana are always pretty close. They're won by Only a few percent. When I was in Accra last month, many frustrated citizens told me that they just wouldn't vote and that could swing things.

So when you say citizens are frustrated, you mean with the economy, with how they're faring?

Well, yes, but it's not just the economy. They're also quite annoyed about the politics as well. So corruption has come up with a lot of voters. Public trust in the government and its institutions is at an all time low. Ghana as a country is a corrupted country. So even the officials know those they are going to give their power to. So Ghana has become, should I say, a corrupted country without apologies. That's the lady you heard from earlier telling me that she wasn't going to vote. And 95% of respondents to a survey by Afrobarometer agree with her that some or all of the presidency is corrupt. And actually 74% of respondents say that corruption has increased over the past year. So President Akufo Addo, he bloated his cabinet at one point. He had 120 ministers and deputies. He even made his cousins cabinet ministers. So people are quite annoyed at that. Another person I spoke to, a journalist called Manasseh Aguni, he says he's not voting because the choices are just that bad.

The biggest indictment of our democracy is that the repulsive Muhammad of 2016 has become attractive in 2024 without having to do anything about it. The only reason some people are looking to Muhammad is that this administration has sunk so low that all hope is lost.

And is there an international dimension to this? Is what's going on in Ghana right now sort of important outside Ghana?

I think there's definitely regional implications. Ghana is considered a bellwether state for African democracy. So all this chat about corruption and losing trust in public institutions is bad news for their political legacy. But it's also bad news given the state of things in the Sahel. West Africa needs strong diplomacy and strong democracies more than ever. Three countries are set to drop out of the regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States, in January. And Mr. Mohammad says that he hopes to coax them back in.

I'll bring a new perspective and see how we can use more diplomatic means to nudge them back into the fold. I think ECOWAS should reach out a more understanding hand to them and see how we can cooperate.

The region needs to cooperate to stop the spillover of jihadist violence into other countries. And with only a few other strong democracies around, Ghana should be helping to steer that.

But I guess the first point is that Ghana has to get its own house in order. What prospects do you think either of the sort of two horses in the race have at fixing things?

Well, this is the thing. Neither Mr. Muhammad or Dr. Baumia's plans for the economy are likely to bring very much change. Their plans for the economy aren't especially bold. They're bound by an IMF program, which is obviously quite constraining in its own ways. But beyond the economy, I think what is especially important is that any transition of power is peaceful from the people I spoke to. People are more worried than is usual for Ghana about electoral violence, about ballot snatching and about contested results, all of which were real issues in the last cycle. And so as citizens head to the polls this weekend, there's a lot at stake to make sure that Ghana remains the poster child for African democracies.

All right. Thank you very much for your time.

Thanks for having me. Jason.

On the day John Kinsel came back from the Second World War, his mother immediately called in the medicine box.

Anne Row is the Economist's obituaries editor.

It wasn't because he had a bad leg, though. He'd been hit by a boulder in a big explosion when he was on Iima, and he'd then walk seven miles on it to get back to the Navajo reservation and his family. No, she needed to get the medicine man, because when he went off to war, John Kinsel had really left the tribe in every sense, as far as the tribe was concerned, had left it culturally and spiritually and in every way, and had to be initiated again back into it by the medicine man. When he had gone off to war, the same ceremony which was called the Enemy, had been performed. And there the dances and the chants were all meant to give him protection in whatever situation he found himself. And he felt sure they'd work, because when he was hit in the explosion in Iwo Jima, he could easily have been killed, but wasn't. And then when he picked up malaria in Guadalcanal, he also managed to survive that, although he expected to die and it certainly hurt as if he was going to die. When he came back, though, the focus of the ceremony was on laying the ghosts, all the awful things that he'd seen, the number of corpses, the bodies he'd smelt, the way he'd come under open mortar fire when he was trying to cross a rice paddy, all these bad memories of war would be smoothed out and they'd be driven from his mind and the evil spirits would be laid to rest. All that Said he felt he'd had a rather easy war, relatively. He'd gone through basic training like the rest of the marines. But because he was going to be a radio man, he was going to be a translator into code. A lot of his training after the basic weeks was actually just sitting around learning how to find the best words that could put various military concepts and anything he might need to broadcast into Navajo. This idea of translating in order to make a code had been suggested not long before, and it seemed an excellent idea because Navajo is a particularly difficult language. It's never been written down. It simply survives as a spoken language. When he went to Camp Elliot, which was the Marine training base, he was not the first of the translators to arrive. There'd been an original cohort of 29 who'd come in May 1942, and they'd drawn up a list of 211 words that were going to be the cipher or the code. When John Kinsel got there with his 25 colleagues, they were the second cohort, and they added 200 more. So they all had 411 words. Had to memorize them completely, because when they got a message in English, this message simply had to be memorized in Navajo. So everything had to be known exactly. Nothing was to be written down. He was especially proud of three words that he'd had a particular hand in. One was turtle, which was the code for tank, and it suited the lumbering slow motion of the tank very well. Another one was bird carrier, which was the code word for aircraft. And that, again, seemed utterly suitable for what it was meant to describe. The one he was most proud of, though, was one that seemed to be all his own work, which was the word rabbit trail for a path or a route. He'd spent much of his early childhood up in the mountains, where he was herding the family sheep and goats. And he'd noticed how when there was a light covering of snow or when there was sand on the ground, the rabbits would come out and go this way and that and leave their paw tracks. He could even see a sort of white sand track that had been worn through the rocks, which was an animal trail. So it was obvious to him that rabbit trail was the word that was suitable for it. In general, though, he didn't talk about his own doings in the war. He always thought of we rather than I, because he thought of all the Navajo radio men as one group of people, very special and very different from the rest of the marines, even though they'd been through much the same arduous training to get there, but he was secretly very proud of what he'd done. He had gone away from the tribe in order to fight, but he had had all this spiritual protection around him. When he came back, although he had to be reinitiated into the tribe, he returned as a hero. And so, to cite the Navajo prayer that ended the ceremony of renitiation, it all finished in beauty.

Anne Ro on John Kinsel, who's died aged 107. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors are Chris Impey and Jack Gill. Our deputy editor is John Joe Devlin and our sound designer is Will Rowe. Our senior producers are Rory Galloway and Sarah Larnuk. And our senior creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Maggie Khedifa and Benji Guy. And our assistant producer is Henrietta McFarlane. With extra production help this week from Emily Elias. We'll all see you back here tomorrow for the weekend. Intelligence.