posted January 04, 2004 05:48 PM              

Those that survived the journey, made it to places like Korem and Mekele on the great spinal road north where help might have been, if help had come.

But it hadn't, and tens of thousands of them died there instead.

Korem is still just a couple of rows of mostly single storey mud and stick buildings with corrugated iron roofs.

In 1984 we arrived there at night and got up before dawn to find 40,000 starving people out in the open.

Save the Children had set up a small supplementary feeding centre for babies, but it was completely overwhelmed.

There was a French doctor from Medecins Sans Frontieres, bewildered and crying.

"I know nothing of politics", she told me, "I am just a witness of Korem and thousands, millions of these people are going to die."

They were already dying all around her; the keening and wailing cut right to your heart.
...
The population in the highlands has exploded. It is heading for double the size it was in 1984.

The ever-rising numbers are putting more pressure on the land, pushing people further up the mountains to the margins of fertility.

The thin soil is exhausted; the trees that bound it to the hillsides have long since been chopped down for firewood. When it is dry it blows away as dust and on satellite pictures you can sometime see a red cloud heading out over the Indian Ocean.

When it rains, the topsoil is swilled away by the rivers. All Ethiopia's rivers run dark brown.

There's a chilling symmetry in the statistics; the percentage rise in population is exactly the same as the percentage loss of topsoil; both 2.7% a year.
...

STATS:
*Average income in 1984: $190
*Average income today: $108
*Six million Ethiopians are fed by international aid each year
*Annual population rise: 2.7%
*Annual topsoil loss: 2.7%

Michael Buerk will answer your questions about Ethiopia in a live interactive discussion - click here to send e-mail: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/3357301.stm#Email

posted January 08, 2004 02:02 PM            

quote:

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The thin soil is exhausted; the trees that bound it to the hillsides have long since been chopped down for firewood. When it is dry it blows away as dust and on satellite pictures you can sometime see a red cloud heading out over the Indian Ocean.

When it rains, the topsoil is swilled away by the rivers. All Ethiopia's rivers run dark brown.

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