Bob Geldof

1984 

Ethiopia, Africa 

 

It is the first day of my trip to Ethiopia and already I still see the signs of poverty

that have marked the land for decades. I walk to a doctor who is treating several

children with no results, and I can see one of them who looks four months old,

yet the doctor tells me he is 2. He is squatting down going to the toilet on a block of baked mud and diarrhea is just coming out in a continuous stream. He is discharging his insides into a pile on the floor, his feet sinking into other piles of feces. He has a small, dusty piece of cotton clothing that goes from his shoulder to his stomach. 

 

His mother is also squatting over a mud brick behind him. She is falling over a lot like most of the others. I look back at the child and realize he’s dying. Right there. Right in front of everyone's eyes but no one takes notice except for me and in that moment all of the grief, despair and rage for humanity I have makes me tired. Tired of how the world is today and I know I must do something. His body falls to the ground, a dry bag of skin and bones. No big deal to the people who have noticed. His mother is too weak and can't see that he has died. Men come and tie his hands and legs and wrap him in anything that burns well so the diseases from the flies feasting on his body don’t spread.  

 

At 2 am the cold is at its peak. The children's bodies are too skinny to produce heat, they are too poor to afford clothes, they cannot digest food and they cannot speak because they lack water. They are full of despair and do not feel the need to live. As the day brightens a cauldron is shown and the only thing you can hear is the shuffling of feet towards the soup too little in amount to feed even a hundredth of them. The buzzing drone of the flies circling overhead looking for bodies to feast upon starts to roar as fresh food falls to the ground. Dead bodies in line are simply stepped on. 

 

The weather changes crazily going from burning hot in the day to freezing cold at night. They each get a handful of grains but no water or anything to eat a meal out of. They eat it raw and don’t complain because they don’t know if this could be there last meal. The grain rips at their already skinny stomachs barely digestible but they push through. I am taken to another camp where there are 10,000 starving people on one side of a wall which is about waist height and on one side is a nurse, she has 300 tins of butter. Yes butter. I wondered how they could digest it but realized they were dying and had no choice.  

 

Then again the scene flashes into my mind. 10,000 people 300 tins of butter and a choice so hard to make its easier not to. She points her finger randomly and the rest who haven't been picked sit down and accept their fate death. The others who have been picked to survive another day are showered in shame, not from the others but from themselves and they cross the wall to receive their rations and sit down looking at the ground not bearing to look the others in the eye.  

 

These people have all most likely died the time I am writing this. Just 2 months ago the E.E.C spent 265 million dollars to destroy 2 million tons of fruit and vegetables because they say it's easier than delivering all that food to Africa and thus the famine begun.  

 

And if we live in a world that threatens peoples lively-hoods for money and power, then there isn't much hope, other than for peoples generosity and good will.