This World: Ethiopia – A Journey with Michael Buerk Tx Date: 11th January 2004 This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 10.00.00 This World Theme Music 10.00.05 Title Page thisworld 10.00.10 Music 10.00.15 Michael Buerk This is a story of a forgotten people in a lost land. 10.00.18 Music 10.00.21 Michael Buerk The story of how hundreds of thousands died of starvation on a planet choked with food. 10.00.26 Music 10.00.28 Michael Buerk Of tyranny and neglect. 10.00.29 Music 10.00.34 Michael Buerk Yet it’s also a story of how three million iron age families were saved by the power of television. By our shame that made us feel their pain in a way that’s never happened before and has never happened since. 10.00.47 Music 10.00.51 Michael Buerk By a foul-mouthed Irish rock singer who staged the biggest spectacle on earth. 10.00.56 Music 10.01.01 Michael Buerk By the greatest rescue operation in history. 10.01.03 Music 10.01.09 Michael Buerk It’s a story of suffering. And survival. 10.01.14 Music 10.01.17 Michael Buerk Of a saintly aid worker who became famous for having to play God but was really a woman going through hell, who’s hated herself for what she did ever since. 10.01.25 Music 10.01.29 Michael Buerk It’s a story of betrayal; twice as many Ethiopians are hungry now as there were then. Twenty years on I wonder if all we’ve done is create a nation of half starved beggars. 10.01.42 Music 10.01.48 Title Page ETHIOPIA A journey with Michael Buerk 10.01.58 Music 10.02.19 Michael Buerk In Ethiopia death is always waiting just beyond the fire light. 10.02.22 Music 10.02.29 Michael Buerk Hyenas here prey on the living; they stalk people weakened by hunger. They’re the harbingers of famine. 10.02.36 Music 10.02.40 Michael Buerk Outside the old walled city of Harar, the hyena man feeds them like this every night; it’s always been done. 10.02.47 Music 10.02.50 Michael Buerk They say it stops them eating the children. But it’s more than that; it’s an offering to the cruel fates out there in the darkness that never go away. 10.03.00 Music 10.03.33 Michael Buerk Addis Ababa; it means ‘new flower’ in Amharic, though all I’ve ever smelt here is the stench of diesel and desperation. 10.03.45 Michael Buerk I’ve been coming here for a quarter of a century; rushing through to the latest war or famine with no time to dwell on the past or wonder about the future – until now. 10.04.02 Music 10.04.04 Michael Buerk People don’t generally starve in cities. Outside Addis, they still live as they did two thousand years ago. It’s the largest pre-industrial society left on earth and the most vulnerable. 10.04.16 Michael Buerk The world’s sympathy doesn’t seem to have changed much at all. 10.04.19 Music 10.04.35 Michael Buerk Two decades ago now, I came through a war-torn country with my friend and cameraman Mohammed Amin to this plain outside the little town of Korem and stumbled on the biggest human disaster of the late twentieth century. 10.04.51 Michael Buerk Time has closed over the most dreadful things that I ever saw. You can barely make out the graves now but I only have to close my eyes. 10.05.03 Aston Korem 23 October 1984 10.05.08 Michael Buerk Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem, it lights up a biblical famine, now, in the twentieth century. This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth. 10.05.28 Michael Buerk Thousands of wasted people are coming here for help. Many find only death. They flood in every day from villages hundreds of miles away, dulled by hunger, driven beyond the point of desperation. 10.05.43 Michael Buerk Fifteen thousand children here now; suffering, confused, lost. Death is all around, a child or an adult dies every twenty minutes. Korem, an insignificant town, has become a place of grief. 10.06.04 Michael Buerk The relief agencies do what they can. Save the Children Fund are caring for more than seven thousand babies. Every day they weigh them on a sling then compare their weight with their height. By this rule of thumb one in three is severely malnourished; starved to the point of death. 10.06.23 Michael Buerk There’s not enough food for half these people. Rumours of a shipment can set off panic. 10.06.31 Michael Buerk As on most days the rumours were false; for many here there would be no food again today. 10.06.39 Michael Buerk Two months ago there were ten thousand people here; now the latest harvest has failed there are forty thousand. There’s nothing like enough food in the country, not enough transport to move it if there was. 10.06.55 Aston WOLDE RUFAIEL Voice over I remember when we went there. I remember there was not a grain of food left in our village and how we became terrified. If we stayed we would died. Korem was days away. I decided we must go there even though the journey was dangerous. 10.07.25 Wolde Rufaiel Voice over We set off. My wife, son, daughter and my old father. On the road we met many others also going to Korem. We had to walk slowly because my father was very sick. We carried only a bit of bread but on the second day thieves stole it from us. We eventually arrived in Korem having not eaten for days. 10.07.49 Music 10.07.54 Michael Buerk Some of the very worst are packed into big sheds, seven thousand now, most apparently dying of malnutrition, pneumonia and the diseases that prey on the starving. 10.08.04 Music 10.08.08 Michael Buerk This three year old girl was beyond any help; unable to take food, attached to a drip but too late, the drip was taken away. Only minutes later, while we were filming, she died. Her mother had lost all her four children and her husband. 10.08.32 Wolde Rufaiel Voice over In one of the sheds my son became very sick. They told me it was measles; that’s how he died. My father had started vomiting with diarrhoea and in the night he was gone too. 10.08.52 Michael Buerk Those who die in the night are brought at dawn to be laid out on the edge of the plain. 10.08.56 Music/Mourners 10.09.03 Michael Buerk Dozens of them; men, women and children, under blankets or bound in sack cloth for burial in the local custom. 10.09.10 Music/Mourners 10.09.29 Michael Buerk This mother and the baby she bore two months ago wrapped together in death. 10.09.43 Wolde Rufaiel Voice over How do I feel about it today? Well death is death isn’t it. They all died. What more is there to say? 10.09.58 Michael Buerk As body after body was brought down, the grief became almost tangible. By Korem’s standards it wasn’t a bad night; thirty-seven dead. Tomorrow there would be more, the day after more still. 10.10.13 Music/Mourners 10.10.34 Michael Buerk A tragedy, bigger than anybody seems to realise, getting worse every day. 10.10.41 Michael Buerk Ethiopia is turning into the worst human disaster for a decade. A disaster begun by nature but compounded by man. This is Michael Buerk for the six o’clock news in Korem, Northern Ethiopia. 10.10.57 Bells 10.11.08 Michael Buerk Wolde Rufaiel’s church has an explanation for his suffering. The faith is old and unforgiving. They respect their God and fear him. Offending him has terrible consequences. They don’t blame the weather, the cruel government, an uncaring world, they blame themselves. 10.11.31 Wolde Rufaiel Voice over I think we had been evil and unrepentant. God is great and generous. He gives and he can take. He deprived us of rain; perhaps he was angry with us. 10.11.45 Singing 10.11.52 Michael Buerk That year God was evidently pleased with us. The grain harvests all over Europe and America were the biggest ever recorded. In Britain it beat the previous record by more than four million tonnes. Most of it went to pile up huge surpluses, mountains of food nobody would eat, locked away. An embarrassment. 10.12.13 Michael Buerk Ethiopians scratched seeds from the dirt. They appealed for food but the Western governments didn’t believe the figures and didn’t deliver anyway. Ethiopian officials and charities on the ground saw disaster coming. 10.12.26 Aston DAWIT WOLDE GIORGIS Head of Relief Commission 1982-85 I couldn’t understand the indifference of the international community. How much lead time does the world need to respond; one year, eight months, seven months? And every day over one thousand people were dying; for just one year every day over one thousand people were dying. 10.12.43 Aston PADDY COULTER OXFAM Head of Communications 1982-87 I remember coming back from holiday, walking into Oxfam House to be greeted by a cable from one of our most experienced colleagues in the Disasters Office who was in Ethiopia, saying we must charter a ship full of and fill it full of food aid and at the end of it he said, this is no joke, repeat no joke. Well, Oxfam doesn’t get in the business of chartering fleets of, of, of boats. 10.13.10 Gunfire 10.13.14 Michael Buerk The hungry lived on a battlefield; the highlands were scourged by viscous endless civil war. 10.13.19 Gunfire 10.13.23 Michael Buerk Million of peasants were caught in the middle. When their crops failed and food ran out they abandoned everything and started walking. 10.13.30 Explosions 10.13.36 Michael Buerk These were the biggest battles in Africa since El- Alamein. They left the people marooned, beyond the reach of the outside world. 10.13.46 Michael Buerk When famine came they could die in their villages or risk dying on the road; not much of a choice really. 10.13.54 Michael Buerk They buried their dead. Deserted the elderly, left behind to die alone in the ruins of their lives. 10.14.03 Michael Buerk Amongst the crops that had failed them. 10.14.08 Michael Buerk They moved mostly at night, fearing attack by government planes. Hunger was a useful weapon for the government; it stripped the rebel areas of people and the rebels of support. 10.14.22 Man Voice over They said you are living under the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front; so you are from the bandit’s side. You are with the enemy so we will not help you. 10.14.34 Music 10.14.36 Michael Buerk Whole populations walked hundreds of miles to find somebody who would feed them, leaving their dead scattered along the way. 10.14.45 Woman Voice over We walked for two months to get here and on the way my baby son died. What have we done to deserve such punishment? 10.14.55 Michael Buerk The zig-zag trail up the steep escarpment into Korem was the end of what came to be known as ‘the famine road’. Only the strong made it to the top where I had found them, dying in droves, waiting for the world to wake up. 10.15.12 Michael Buerk Britain had been cutting back on aid to Africa for years and was choosy where it went. Unsavoury Marxist governments were bottom of the list; if they were on the list at all. 10.15.22 Aston SIR TIMOTHY RAISON Minister Overseas Development 1983-86 I do think it is important to remember the very complicated political process and after all our aid programme for very good and understandable reasons tended to be focused on commonwealth countries, on countries which had been British colonies, Ethiopia had never been a British colony. And I mean it’s well known that Mrs Thatcher didn’t regard the aid programme as one of her top priorities. 10.15.48 Paddy Coulter You have to view this as an ideological thing. Really we’re still in Cold War, here is an avowedly Communist regime and this British government is damned if it’s going to give it anything more than the most minimal gesture of aid. 10.16.05 Music 10.16.09 Michael Buerk A decade before, Emperor Haile Selassie had been shown eating cake as another famine gripped the land. The army used the images to get rid of him. They strangled him and buried him under the palace lavatory. 10.16.20 Music 10.16.23 Michael Buerk Ten years on a Marxist Emperor called on his people to celebrate the anniversary of his revolution. He spent a hundred million dollars taxed from his starving peasants on weeks of pageantry. 10.16.35 Michael Buerk Colonel Mengistu was an African Stalin. His cruelty like his statuary was monumental. A viscous little tyrant who murdered anybody in his way and thought his people were expendable. 10.16.47 Dawit Wolde Giorgis Despite the fact that we had over ten million people starving, Mengistu never allocated budget to cover the crisis. And he said the Ethiopian revolution was made in the image of the Soviet revolution. And he went on, the Soviet Union became a great country because it paid a price, they weren’t prepared to sacrifice. Millions died of starvation and this for Mengistu was a sacrifice that we had to pay for the success of the Ethiopian revolution. 10.17.23 Michael Buerk The price of Mengistu’s greatness was already being paid on the famine roads and in the death camps. But few were there to see it. The government wanted everybody to concentrate on its celebrations and wouldn’t let ‘feringhees’, foreigners, go north. 10.17.36 Music 10.17.37 Michael Buerk It took months of pleading with Mengistu’s officials for permission for us to go there. 10.17.42 Music 10.17.42 Aston Tigray 24 October 1984 10.17.46 Michael Buerk Tigray Province, a wild place, racked by war, scorched by drought, visited by famine. Makalle, a village swamped by eighty-five thousand starving people, food for less than a third that number. Death a reality now for some, an immediate prospect for thousands of others. Forty people died the day we were there. 10.18.13 Michael Buerk These are religious people, trying in their destitution to give some respect to their dead. There is no room in the tiny church and in the graveyard for so many victims. 10.18.26 Michael Buerk In a wide sweep around Makalle the people lie without food, without water and without hope; most relief agencies are not allowed here because of the war. Supplies only come in armed convoys; the last arrived here three weeks ago. The food has almost run out, no one knows when the next will arrive. 10.18.43 People crying 10.18.49 Michael Buerk Officials pick out the handful from amongst the thousands that they can help. The gift of life, the lucky ones wail their thanks. 10.18.56 People wailing 10.18.59 Aston SIR BOB GELDOF I remember there wasn’t the journalistic objectivity; there was no attempt at that. It was like a suppressed rage. I made of it then as I make of it now, something unimaginable that, that we allowed to happen. It’s intolerable. 10.19.24 Michael Buerk This feeding centre is surrounded by a low wall. Inside the small group allowed food, outside those who are not. In unconscious cruelty the hungry can watch those who have food. 10.19.37 Michael Buerk It’s a haunting divide, so few inside the wall, so many kept out. Those outside desperately display their children, hoping someone will notice and let them in. 10.19.49 Children crying 10.19.53 Michael Buerk But there is nothing for them; aid from abroad is drying up, just the sacks left to shelter people from the scorching sun. The Red Cross have picked out five hundred mothers and children out of the thousands and are treating them in an improvised shelter. It’s run by an Anglo-Swiss nurse from Hertfordshire. 10.20.12 Sir Bob Geldof I think I remember a young white woman. She had, I think, x amount of butter oil or something that she could distribute to this hoard of people outside this wall. 10.20.25 Michael Buerk She has to choose who amongst the hundreds who camp outside should be let in, which babies will be saved. 10.20.34 Claire Bertschinger I feel terrible because it’s sending them to a certain death. It’s terrible; I can take just, just what we can. 10.20.43 Michael Buerk How badly are some of the people who you do send away? 10.20.47 Claire Bertschinger They will die within the night maybe even. In fact they might be even too bad for us to take, that’s sometimes why we won’t take them. 10.20.54 Sir Bob Geldof In her was vested the power of life and death; she, she had become God-like which is unbearable to put upon anyone at any point but certainly so young in such a devastating circumstances. 10.21.08 Michael Buerk But making that decision day after day, does that do anything to you? 10.21.11 Claire Bertschinger Yes, of course it does. What do you expect? Yes, of course it does. It breaks my heart. 10.21.18 Sir Bob Geldof She chose the ones who in effect would live and she could only choose a few, there was no protest from the others and the ones who were chosen for life in effect shamefacedly sat down on the ground inside the wall and put their head down. And then she had to stop choosing and I remember a little chap who had not been chosen. Just lay his head down in exhaustion. 10.21.42 Music 10.21.45 Sir Bob Geldof And there was immense dignity in both the chosen for death and the chosen for life and the awareness of what was happening were in the adults’ eyes, the parents’ eyes. 10.21.56 Music 10.21.58 Sir Bob Geldof It was immensely significant piece of reporting. It… 10.22.04 Music 10.22.21 Michael Buerk Ethiopians call their cruelly unpredictable rains ‘God’s Tears’. 10.22.25 Music 10.22.29 Claire Bertschinger I’m very apprehensive about coming back here. I didn’t think I did a good job and I don’t know what they’ll think of me. I’ve had it all with me for twenty years now. 10.22.42 Music 10.22.55 Michael Buerk I’ve brought Claire Bertschinger, the girl I met in the death camp, back to Ethiopia. Back to her old Red Cross feeding centre, now just a junk yard, haunted by memories. 10.23.06 Claire Bertschinger It was just a mass of misery. There were just people lying on the ground, moribund, dead and columns of people walking up the road. 10.23.17 Music 10.23.22 Claire Bertschinger This was the kitchen, the kitchen had no chimney as such and it was awful to go in because it stung your eyes. There was some sort of hole in the roof but it didn’t work very well. 10.23.31 Michael Buerk So it was full of smoke? 10.23.32 Claire Bertschinger This was all opened and that’s where you interviewed me. 10.23.35 Music 10.23.41 Michael Buerk Making that decision day after day, does that do anything to you? 10.23.44 Claire Bertschinger I mean how could you ask this question? There are kids screaming out, they’re vomiting and got diarrhoea and they’re, how could you ask how I felt, did I really and you knew that I had to select these people. What did you think I, you know, it was horrendous, so the question I thought was, stupid. 10.24.06 Claire Bertschinger It breaks my heart but at least I can see some of the ones that I am helping here and that helps when you do see the ones that survive. 10.24.14 Music 10.24.15 Claire Bertschinger You got the right answer. It broke my heart. 10.24.21 Music 10.24.33 Aston CLAIRE BERTSCHINGER ICRC 1982-92 Often we didn’t take the ones that were the worst. Because they would die anyway. I didn’t take them. I made sure I didn’t take them because if I took them I would have kept them and that wasn’t fair. I had to go up and down and pick the right ones and the right ones weren’t necessarily the most malnourished, moribund ones because we knew they would be dead within twenty-four hours. 10.25.00 Music 10.25.03 Claire Bertschinger I didn’t feel that I was doing good here. I felt, I felt like a, like a Nazi sending them to the death camps because that’s what I was doing and that’s lived with me. 10.25.16 Music 10.25.20 Voice over This is London… 10.25.22 Music 10.25.32 Claire Bertschinger I live in the Castle Hotel, which is on a rise on the edge of this town. 10.25.36 Music 10.25.41 Claire Bertschinger I look out and see the smoke from the fires of dung and eucalyptus, hanging like a blue curtain over the area. And I listen for the sound of a horn which signals a death in the family. At night I can hear the hyenas howling in the distance. 10.25.57 Music 10.26.04 Claire Bertschinger I can’t think of anything really amusing to put in this letter. What’s amusing about a starving father running into the road and kneeling down with his skin and bones of a baby son in his arms begging for me to help them? Or the others just lying on the road, too weak to walk. All they ask for is a bit of food and water, just enough to survive, not chocolate mouse or colour television or even shoes for their feet, just a bit of food. 10.26.31 Music 10.26.45 Claire Bertschinger People didn’t know what was happening here. We were hidden. That’s what it felt like; people didn’t know. And then you arrived. 10.26.57 Michael Buerk The situation in Ethiopia has gone well beyond the stage at which words like tragedy and disaster have any meaning. It’s a situation that’s out of the control of the government here or of the international voluntary agencies. It will be nearly a year before Ethiopians can expect proper rains again. By that time thousands of people perhaps even millions of people may have died. 10.27.21 BBC News Music 10.27.30 News reader The Save the Children Fund offices were handling calls from the public this evening after the first showing of the BBC’s reports from Ethiopia. 10.27.38 Aston PADDY COULTER OXFAM Head of Communications 1982-87 I’m getting calls from international media to my home asking for briefings on the situation from people who are in tears, who are very affected by it, who have just seen this. 10.27.50 BBC News Music 10.27.53 Nicholas Witchell Britain’s church leaders have called on the government to do more to help the famine victims in Ethiopia. They want an emergency airlift by the RAF. 10.28.02 Jeremy Paxman Today’s remarks from Britain’s most eminent church leaders have again drawn attention to the huge quantities of grain lying in the warehouses of the European Community. With this year’s bumper harvest the Community’s member states harvested a record seventy million tonnes of wheat; it’s far more than the community needs and because there’s a world glut of wheat they can’t export it either. The authorities in Brussels say they can’t give it away because it doesn’t belong to them, it belongs to the national governments and it’s up to them to donate it. 10.28.36 Aston SIR BOB GELDOF Doing nothing made you complicit in what could be viewed as murder. I know that’s an extreme term but two thousand miles south people were dying. So I thought it requires something more than the charitable impulse and it required an effort of self and all I could do, badly as it was turning out, was write a couple of tunes. 10.28.58 Music 10.29.06 Michael Buerk Bob Geldof was a clapped out singer then; just starting to realise it. 10.29.09 Music 10.29.11 Michael Buerk The Boomtown Rats were over the hill according to the ruthless timelines of pop music. 10.29.16 Music 10.29.18 Sir Bob Geldof If I wrote a song it just wasn’t going to be a hit. The Boomtown Rats were not going to have a hit but if the same people who were friends of mine did a song it would be a hit. So it was very logical and we’d get it out before Christmas, this was October, really at a push, which is the biggest selling time, we’d make seventy to eighty thousand quid. 10.29.39 News reader In London sack full upon sack full of donations arrive every day at the fund. 10.29.44 Paddy Coulter It was like being in the eye of a hurricane, people were giving you things right, left and centre. I mean people were, people, it had touched an extraordinary cord. 10.29.53 Paddy Coulter The government really wanted to cut even further its aid budget and it really took the power of the BBC footage to turn that on its head and expose it. It was the British people who shamed the government into responding, belatedly, as it ought to have done months before. 10.30.12 Nicholas Witchell People in Britain are donating about one hundred thousand pounds a day to help the famine victims. 10.30.18 Jeremy Paxman The Attwood brothers, Stephen and John, are trying to raise one million pounds in the north west; they’re asking one thousand companies in the region to provide one thousand pounds each. 10.30.26 Nicholas Witchell Children in Sheffield have donated a tonne of grain to the appeal for the famine victims; it’s a contribution from the harvest they helped to bring in. A charitable trust said the children rang to ask for the donation to be made. 10.30.38 Nicholas Witchell Fifty demonstrators tried to stop a delivery of barley to a common market grain store; they said they wanted it to go to Ethiopia via nearby RAF Lyneham rather than join an EEC grain mountain. 10.30.49 News reporter It had taken just seventy-two hours to get the plane ready, raise four thousand pounds for fuel and landing charges, obtain permission from the Ethiopian authorities and organise the supplies from Save the Children Fund. 10.31.01 News reporter For one young woman last night’s departure meant the end of three days of exhausting hard work. 10.31.06 Liz Amos I was very upset at all the famine and starvation and wanted to do something to help and felt that as we had an aeroplane perhaps we could actually fly something out to the starving people. 10.31.18 Aston LIZ AMOS I think I felt guilty in a way that I had so much. I had a roof over my head, I had meals, I had a job, I had income and a lot of these people had absolutely nothing. 10.31.31 News reporter It might be just a tonne of supplies but the medicines and tents could mean life to many Ethiopians. 10.31.42 BBC News Music 10.31.45 Nicholas Witchell Good evening. In a statement within the past few minutes the Ministry of Defence has said that a feasibility study on an RAF airlift is being undertaken with the utmost urgency. 10.31.55 Blue Peter music 10.32.04 Michael Buerk Blue Peter; the conscience of Britain’s kids. Strange how the children seem to feel it most. 10.32.11 Karen Ely Dear Blue Peter; I just thought that you’d like to know how my brother and I have decided to help people in Ethiopia. We went out collecting a penny for the guy, we took it in turns to dress up as the guy, we collected eighty-seven pounds, eighty-one pence on Saturday. I was kicked, prodded and stepped on and a dog nearly went to the toilet on my brother. People couldn’t tell whether we were real or not. 10.32.32 Aston KAREN ELY I think being a kid, the way that you look at things, it’s not a case of there’s somebody here who’s very different to you that’s suffering and therefore it’s nothing to do with you. It’s a case of they were showing pictures of kids, which is something that you could have identified with. 10.32.45 Janet Ellis The grand total is two million, ninety-six thousand, nine hundred and twenty-four envelopes of stamps, which is three times what we originally asked for. 10.32.55 Simon Groom We’ve been able to provide fifteen water storage tanks and these will be invaluable in the camps and villages where water supply has been a terrific problem. 10.33.06 Michael Buerk The kings and queens of pop queued up to sing for somebody else’s supper; to do Bob’s bidding. 10.33.14 Sir Bob Geldof How do you do it without being absolutely, you know, corny and what are we trying to say. We are trying to say feed the world, you know and yet it’s Christmas and we’ve only got two weeks to sell this so, ok, you know. So in the taxi I, I wrote; it’s Christmas time and there’s no need to be afraid. And I thought, I don’t know what it means but it sounds, I’m on to, I’m on to something here. 10.33.35 Band Aid It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time But say a prayer, to pray for the other ones At Christmas time, it’s hard but when you’re having fun There’s a world outside your window And it’s a world of dread and fear Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom Well tonight thank God it’s there instead of you 10.34.57 Sir Bob Geldof It doesn’t matter if you think it’s shit, it really doesn’t matter. It’s the perfect Christmas gift, no one can say oh thanks very much, you know, because you’re giving, you’re doing a charitable thing. It’s a very cheap Christmas gift, it’s a little bit of pop history, you know, here is everybody on it. It’s not a bad tune, you know, more importantly for your one pound seventy, whatever it was at the time. What is pathetic, and I still do think this, is that the price of a life that year was a seven inch piece of plastic. 10.35.30 Band Aid Here’s to you praise and thanks for everyone Here’s to them underneath that burning sun Do they know it’s Christmas time at all? 10.35.43 Sir Bob Geldof Butchers in Plymouth rang up and said what do we have to do to buy records. Fortnum and Masons rang up and said; how does one sell a record, you know, so Fortnum and Masons were selling them. Queues up Oxford Street, I really remember bizarre people and I said on the TV, I said buy forty. Buy forty and just give them to people and they’ll buy forty and give them back to you. That went on, people were buying forty and handing back thirty nine to the, for the record to resell. I mean it, it became this bizarre thing, I mean every single factory in Europe that pressed records had to stop pressing everything else and just press Band Aid. 10.36.21 Band Aid Feed the world Let them know it’s Christmas time… 10.36.25 Michael Buerk It became the biggest selling pop record of all time. 10.36.29 Band Aid Feed the world… 10.36.33 Sir Bob Geldof We will actually, with this one song, exceed the total UNICEF budget for nineteen eighty-five for that part of Africa, which will be a phenomenal achievement on the part of the people buying the record. 10.36.45 Sir Bob Geldof So we ended up with eight million quid from my initial estimate of seventy-two thousand. 10.36.49 Sir Bob Geldof It was a phenomenon, not because it was a good record but it was your membership card. This was your saying; I’m not going along with this; there’s not much I can do, I don’t know how to stop someone having to undergo this nightmare but I’m not party to this, I’m not complicit into this mass murder, I’m really not. How do you know? Because I’m buying this. Fuck you. You know, there was a real rage and an anger, it wasn’t wishy, charity, hey give something, it really wasn’t because you can’t harness wishy-washiness. 10.37.24 Michael Buerk Back in Makalle, twenty years on, Claire Bertschinger can remember hearing that song. It made her angry too. 10.37.33 Claire Bertschinger I had my small little radio, short wave radio and the reception was really bad and I heard them singing feed the world, do they know it’s Christmas. And I thought; what are they talking about? And it was for Ethiopia they kept on saying. I said, what is this guy? Who’s singing a song for Ethiopia? And they were saying it’s getting money for Ethiopia. And I thought this is crazy, how criminal, how could someone jump on the, on the, on the bandwagon of, of a famine in Ethiopia to make money for themselves. 10.38.05 Michael Buerk So part of your anger was you sitting there thinking these people are making money out of, out of starving people because that’s what you thought. 10.38.09 Claire Bertschinger Totally. Totally. Totally. They were making money out of the starving people and I had no idea that it was anything else. 10.38.20 Aston ASSAB 18 November 1984 10.38.29 Michael Buerk The merchant ship Elpis arrived at Assab in the shimmering heat of noon, its holds packed with British charity for Ethiopia’s starving. It’s arrived in the middle of a disaster. 10.38.41 Michael Buerk In many ways Ethiopians have been as slow as the rest of the world in recognising the scale of the disaster that’s affecting their country. Assab is not the major problem but it’s where the problem begins. 10.38.56 Michael Buerk Much of the grain is still shovelled into sacks by hand; it’s a back breaking job with a bucket. But by bringing in fresh gangs of labourers the port authorities claim they can keep up with the aid shipments and deny this primitive process is a bottleneck. 10.39.13 Michael Buerk But it’s the shortage of trucks to take the food from the port to the famine areas that creates the bottleneck. This country doesn’t only need food, it needs the means to move it if thousands, maybe millions of lives are to be saved. 10.39.28 Music 10.39.35 Aston CLAIRE BERTSCHINGER ICRC 1982-92 I remember it was within ten days after you came. I was told there was an RAF plane coming and I went out very, very early to the airport and then in the distance I heard this noise and literally I saw, I could see this sort of spot jumping over the mountain and I thought, it’s a plane. And it got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and it was, you know, I felt really quite emotional that, I really felt God we’re saved, I’m saved. 10.40.06 Claire Bertschinger And then it landed and it was smiling people waving. 10.40.11 Music 10.40.14 Claire Bertschinger And they opened the doors and it was full of food. 10.40.17 Music 10.40.29 Michael Buerk The airlift was dramatic; the RAF especially did an extraordinary job. 10.40.33 Music 10.40.40 Michael Buerk But it’s an old agency saying; if you see an airlift somebody’s screwed up. 10.40.44 Music 10.40.46 Michael Buerk Somebody, everybody had. 10.40.49 Music 10.41.07 Aston BAHTI 21 December 1984 10.41.10 Michael Buerk The paths to the relief camp graveyards have been well trodden, a hillside flattened by the grieving. Yet for an old man, carrying his last grandchild for the last time, the effort’s almost too much. 10.41.23 Michael Buerk Thirty-two grave diggers work the day long on this hillside where three thousand children have been buried in six weeks; they still can’t keep up. 10.41.33 Michael Buerk Across a wide sweep of Wollo and Tigray people still stream in their thousands into the relief camps. In the shrieking mid-winter winds of Makalle, there are still hundreds without shelter and yet there is food here now, brought by the RAF, the Germans, the Americans for the empty and the shivering. 10.41.52 Michael Buerk This camp at Bahti has the worst death rate in Ethiopia; twenty-two thousand people are crammed into a city of tents on what six weeks ago was an empty field. The organisation is good, the workers dedicated, the food regular. But in the regimented rows of canvas the children still die; a hundred and twenty in one day last week. 10.42.18 Michael Buerk Myles Harris, a London doctor, is responsible for this city of the dying. 10.42.23 Myles Harris This child has got, he’s blind and probably due to vitamin deficiency. 10.42.29 Michael Buerk Permanently blind? 10.42.30 Myles Harris Yet it is permanently blind yes. And as you can see he’s in a terrible nutritional state. There’s a very large number of children who’ve been blinded by Vitamin A deficiency and this is one of them. This is another sequel of this disaster. 10.42.47 Michael Buerk What’s wrong with him? 10.42.48 Myles Harris Well again pneumonia, marasmas, very dehydrated but mainly pneumonia is the thing which is most likely to kill him. 10.42.59 Michael Buerk Chances of survival? 10.43.00 Myles Harris Fifty-fifty. Fifty-fifty. 10.43.03 Michael Buerk A child who had none, dead fifty yards from the medical tent that could have saved him. His family kept him hidden when he fell ill. 10.43.15 Michael Buerk They were afraid the devil would get him if he ventured into sunlight. 10.43.21 Michael Buerk Myles Harris can’t stand the idea of children he can save dying, hidden away by superstition. Every morning he prowls the tented streets looking for children left to die. 10.43.32 Myles Harris Take them to the feeding centre and then they can send them onto the hospital if necessary. 10.43.37 Myles Harris These children have all been registered and weighed and they’ve all been signed up for feeding, five times a day. The question is getting them there. Come on, Ishi… 10.44.02 Michael Buerk That child looks particularly bad. 10.44.03 Myles Harris Yes he is, he’s very dehydrated, he’s probably had severe diarrhoea all night and is very rapidly they get like that. 10.44.14 Michael Buerk Sometimes he will argue with a mother for hours to be allowed to save her children. 10.44.20 Michael Buerk The mortuary fills up as the day goes on but this morning a sign of hope; fewer today than yesterday. 10.44.26 Myles Harris He would have died from what kills most of the children at night and that is he has lost his ability to shiver because he hasn’t enough energy to shiver. Three weeks ago we had a hundred and twenty bodies in the mortuary and this is a pretty marked improvement. I mean it’s not the whole day’s tally. I haven’t been up here for a few days; I don’t like to come so often, it’s not very good for your morale to visit the mortuary every day. 10.44.48 Michael Buerk And yet even here there is hope now. The resilient people stirring to help themselves, life flickering amongst those so recently so close to death. 10.44.58 Michael Buerk Things seem to be getting better in Ethiopia, at least to the extent that they’ve stopped getting worse. A disaster checked but not solved by a world with its conscience stirred. 10.45.10 Michael Buerk The airlift brought the famine tourists; important people who wanted to see or at least be seen. The UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar, whose great agencies had bungled so badly. 10.45.24 Michael Buerk Cardinal Basil Hume; head of England’s Catholics who was moved to tears, though in a very English way tried hard not to show it. 10.45.32 Michael Buerk He brought sweets for the children. Even the good were getting it wrong. 10.45.39 Michael Buerk Mother Theresa came; saints and sinners in the spotlight with the dying like some Greek chorus in the background. 10.45.46 Sir Bob Geldof We saw the TV reports and I just got a lot of pop musicians and we made the record and it just went crazy. And we got eight million pounds… 10.45.57 Sir Bob Geldof I was constantly surrounded by the press and alert to the fact that the tabloids wanted me cradling a dying infant which I refused point blank to have anything to do with because by now we’d seen various politicians trawled through other people’s misery and worse was this half- arsed Paddy pop singer, I just didn’t want to get involved in that stuff. 10.46.22 Michael Buerk Fleet Street landed in Ethiopia this morning in the most publicised act of charity of the decade. The Maxwell- Mirror Mercy Mission it was called, in anticipation of tomorrow’s headlines. 10.46.34 Michael Buerk Ethiopian officials had been overwhelmed by the world’s reaction to their famine but confused about what exactly the Mirror might be and who this Mr Maxwell was. 10.46.44 Robert Maxwell We are aware, and with the co-operation of your Commission and government, we, and I can only speak for the people of Britain, and I hope of course that a lot of people in Europe are also listening, will come to your aid with everything that we possibly can. 10.47.00 Michael Buerk Mr Maxwell appointed himself spokesman for Britain, slightly to the embarrassment of the British Ambassador who’d come to meet him. 10.47.07 Michael Buerk Do you think there’s any danger that you might be accused of setting up a publicity stunt on the back of a disaster here? 10.47.13 Robert Maxwell Well, if that’s the kind, if that’s the kind of offensive remark you wish to give time to… 10.47.19 Michael Buerk No I asked you if you thought there was any risk that that might be the view. 10.47.22 Robert Maxwell The answer is absolutely no because the problem is too serious. We wanted to respond immediately. 10.47.29 Michael Buerk The Ethiopians’ gratitude is sincere even though this is more of a gesture than a solution for a problem on this scale. To give you some idea, this shipment will actually cope with the emergency needs of the famine victims here for about twelve minutes. 10.47.41 Music 10.47.45 Michael Buerk Geldof flew back from Ethiopia determined to do more; a gesture had become a campaign, a kind of caustic crusade. 10.47.54 Christopher Morris Although exhausted after his African tour, Bob Geldof was determined to win the support today of Euro MPs for increased famine relief aid. 10.48.02 Sir Bob Geldof This disgusting and persistent anomaly of the grain mountains, the wheat mountains, the butter mountains, the wine lakes, now it sounds almost corny to go on about that in front of you people but it is a result of one of the crowning idiocies of the EC and that is the Common Agricultural Policy. 10.48.26 Aston PADDY COULTER OXFAM Head of Communications 1982-87 But when Geldof first burst on the scene, let’s be candid, there was quite a bit of resentment within the aid agency. Who is this Irish musician? What the hell does he know about it and this looks like amateur aid. But this quickly changed into admiration. I mean first he had an astonishing learning curve; he could really get up to speed very quickly. 10.48.51 Sir Bob Geldof But the point nonetheless is that the farmers are heavily subsidised and it’s a cushy way of making a living and therefore they over produce and there is no market for that over production and hence you have the anomaly of Britain paying two thousand eight hundred and eighty- eight pounds per minute to keep food that is lying rotting in Bristol and other centres throughout Britain. 10.49.11 Paddy Coulter There was something that he brought to the table which we candidly couldn’t, he could speak out, he could speak out and he did speak out, I don’t think any of us would have taken on Thatcher the way that he did. 10.49.27 Sir Bob Geldof I mean at the moment you’ve got a problem with the butter mountain, you don’t know how to dispose of it. To sell it to the Russians is the cheapest way… 10.49.28 Aston BBC tv NEWS 24TH FEBRUARY 1985 10.49.33 Margaret Thatcher Yes but I’m sorry but butter doesn’t do very much good in Africa. 10.49.37 Sir Bob Geldof Well butter oil, butter oil actually does. It is one of the major supplementary foods… 10.49.39 Margaret Thatcher Oh butter oil, if you can, if you can get it… 10.49.42 Sir Bob Geldof But it is a by-product of butter. 10.49.44 Margaret Thatcher But look, a lot is going, a lot of food is going. But don’t forget… 10.49.49 Sir Bob Geldof But Prime Minister there are millions dying and that’s the terrible thing. 10.49.52 Margaret Thatcher Yes indeed. 10.49.53 Michael Buerk The pop singer wasn’t just into politics now. 10.49.56 Cheering 10.49.58 Michael Buerk He was in the shipping business, he was an exporter, he was running a multi-million pound enterprise. 10.50.05 Aston SIR BOB GELDOF No one in the Band Aid Committee or Trust really wanted to go any further so when I came back and talked about it and they went oh please, you know. And I said well, you know, we can do these records and put them together, that eventually became a concert and then gradually the idea of the satellite broadcast and linking everyone to everyone happened. 10.50.26 Sir Bob Geldof You see the point is that for the first time the whole world is linked physically through electronics and I want it not to be a passive experience, I want it to be active, in other words I want people to contribute money. 10.50.40 Sir Bob Geldof It’s ridiculous that Germany, the third richest country in the world, is not doing an appeal with us. Russia’s doing an appeal. France, France do nothing ever, they’re doing an appeal. You either have an appeal where the money’s going directly to Band Aid or we don’t have the show? 10.50.58 Man Are they gonna do it? 10.50.58 Sir Bob Geldof Yeah. 10.50.59 Music 10.51.01 Sir Bob Geldof By this stage I was very focused on the fact that the lingua Franca of the world was not English, it was pop music. 10.51.07 Music 10.51.13 Michael Buerk It was the greatest spectacle every staged. 10.51.16 Music 10.51.19 Michael Buerk The biggest shared experience in human history. 10.51.22 Music 10.51.24 Michael Buerk A third of the world’s entire population watched it. 10.51.27 Music – Money For Nothing 10.51.51 Sir Bob Geldof You’ve gotta get on the phone and take the money out of your pocket, don’t go to the pub tonight, please. Stay in and give us the money, there are people dying NOW, so give me the money. 10.52.01 Music 10.52.11 Announcer Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats. 10.52.13 Cheering 10.52.21 Sir Bob Geldof Thanks for coming! 10.52.23 Music – I don’t like Mondays! 10.52.46 Claire Bertschinger I was at home, sitting by myself, listening to this music and I don’t know, I can’t think. And just thinking this is incredible. This is really incredible that all these people have got together; I had never seen a pop concert before. 10.53.07 Music – We Will Rock You 10.53.16 Claire Bertschinger I was absolutely stunned by how people were mobilised, I thought, yes, perfect. All this power going into helping Ethiopia. 10.53.26 Music – We Will Rock You 10.53.59 News reporter The two hundred phone lines at eight appeal switchboards around Britain have been buzzing since the pop marathon began. Here, at one of the three London centres, up to twenty thousand pounds an hour has been rolling in. Donations have ranged up to two thousand pounds. 10.54.13 Sir Bob Geldof Wembley, will you please welcome America to Live Aid day? Hello America, welcome to the world. 10.54.23 Madonna All right people of the world; are you ready to get into the groove? 10.54.31 Michael Buerk The money poured in. A sheik from Kuwait rang up and managed to speak to Geldof himself. Mind you; he was giving a million pounds. 10.54.39 Sir Bob Geldof A million quid. 10.54.40 Assistant A million quid. Well done, fantastic. 10.54.43 News reporter Across the Atlantic twenty-two thousand phone pledges came in during just five minutes. It’s claimed the grand total there is heading for forty million dollars. 10.54.51 Music – Leila 10.54.58 Music – Tina Turner and Mick Jagger 10.55.19 David Bowie God bless you, you’re the heroes of this concert. Lest we forget why we’re here, I’d like to introduce a video made by CBC television, the subject speaks for itself. Thank you, goodnight, please send your money in. 10.55.32 Music – Drive 10.55.37 Michael Buerk It might only have been the greatest concert in history but for one moment when the world stood still. 10.55.43 Music - Drive 10.56.55 Michael Buerk Half a billion people saw that dying child and in that moment knew, about her pain and her father’s despair. 10.57.03 Music 10.57.05 Michael Buerk I found him, twenty years on, up there in the Tigrean highlands. 10.57.14 Aston ATA WALDU AMAN Voice over Before nineteen eighty-four, we hoped for a better harvest and so we sold our livestock to buy seed. But it died in the ground. This happened again over the next two years and then we faced famine. All we had left was our bare hands. That’s when I felt things fall apart. 10.57.37 Music 10.57.47 Ata Waldu Aman Voice over We were starving so I left home carrying Berhan with her older sister to the clinic a long way from here. She was already very weak when we set off. When we arrived at the clinic we joined a long queue outside and waited through the night. In the morning they found us. 10.58.13 Music 10.58.53 Nun This child is too far gone. The child will die very soon. The child has pneumonia. Also, as you can see, the child is very malnourished and nothing will save this child now, she will die. You know, there isn’t anything we can do at this point. 10.59.07 Music 10.59.16 Ata Waldu Aman Voice over Many others had died and now it was her turn. As I waited to bury her, what worried me was where to find a spade to dig a grave. But the foreign nun had spades for digging and people to dig the graves. 10.59.42 Music 10.59.48 Michael Buerk They dug a cold grave for Berhan. Her father went to bury her but she was still warm. One small miracle in an ocean of misery. 10.59.57 Music 11.00.03 Michael Buerk One life saved among so many lost. 11.00.06 Music 11.00.09 Michael Buerk The nuns saw a lot of death and weren’t often wrong. Berhan was an exception. 11.00.13 Music 11.00.18 Ata Waldu Aman Voice over My joy had no limit. The sun shone on me. 11.00.22 Music 11.00.33 Aston BERHAN WALDU Voice over To me it’s just a faint memory, like a dream. I can’t really find the words to describe it. I think I am pleased that I wasn’t old enough to experience the ruthlessness of that time. My older sister told me about it when we were in the feeding shelter. 11.01.01 Music 11.01.10 Michael Buerk It was weeks before Berhan was well enough to leave the clinic and even then she still couldn’t walk. 11.01.15 Music 11.01.19 Michael Buerk She and her sister and her father left the sanctuary of the nuns to join the tide of hungry humanity looking for food, trying to avoid the war. 11.01.27 Music 11.01.39 Michael Buerk High in the mountains there was hope now. At last the food was rolling. 11.01.44 Music 11.01.55 Michael Buerk Live Aid alone bought seventy trucks to haul grain from the desert ports up in to the highlands of Tigray and Wollo. 11.02.01 Music 11.02.13 Michael Buerk It was nine months too late but at last it was there. 11.02.22 Michael Buerk Geldof wasn’t finished yet. He was Saint Bob now; master impresario, fundraiser by appointment to the planet, admired more than any singer has ever been. 11.02.39 News reporter In Hyde Park two hundred and fifty thousand people had gathered, waiting for Bob Geldof, the man who inspired this remarkable event, to give them the sign. 11.02.47 Sir Bob Geldof Change the world! 11.02.53 Michael Buerk A year after Live Aid, he did for sport what he had done for music. 11.02.57 Commentator The world is running; twenty million people are under way. 11.03.05 Michael Buerk It was the biggest sports event ever. They were running for Africa all over the globe, in seventy-seven countries, in two hundred and seventy-seven cities raising money and awareness. 11.03.16 Commentator And Athens has begun their race. We know that New Delhi started some hours ago. The starving sub- continent doing their bit today. Africa, the world recognises, has a very special problem. 11.03.35 Music 11.03.47 Michael Buerk Even a convicted armed robber ran, round and round the Dartmoor exercise yard with two warders. 11.03.53 Music 11.03.58 Michael Buerk A quarter of a million people ran in Hyde Park alone, over a million across the country as a whole. For a couple of hours that afternoon, the whole nation and half the world seemed to be running. It raised over a hundred million dollars to feed the hungry. 11.04.13 Music 11.04.37 Michael Buerk The Ethiopian government didn’t want to feed them; they wanted to get rid of them. It was airlifting people out of the highlands, wholesale, mostly under duress, often at gunpoint. 11.04.46 Music 11.04.50 Michael Buerk Berhan and her father were swept up with half a million others, packed into the unpressurised cargo holds of Soviet Antonovs, dumped in the lowlands. 11.04.59 Michael Buerk They said it would be better for them there but there was another agenda – to deprive the rebels of support. 11.05.06 Michael Buerk The planes left them in strange and sweltering places, riddled with disease. Thousands died. 11.05.12 Music 10.05.18 Michael Buerk Unlike so many others, Berhan and her father survived again. More than that, they found their way back across hundreds of miles of mountains. Three years later the same television crew found them back in Tigray, waiting, in another queue. 11.05.34 Music 11.05.40 Ata Waldu Aman Voice over In the south many were sick and Berhan’s sister died of snake bite. I was afraid Berhan might die too. I had to get her home somehow. So with her on my back I walked the whole way for two months and three weeks, sleeping in fields with little to eat. But we got here. 11.06.04 Music 11.06.13 Aston BERHAN WALDU Voice over It was the second time God had protected me from the claws of death to show me life’s goodness. Now that I have enough to eat I hope to lead a good life helping others. 11.06.30 Music 11.06.34 Michael Buerk It was a long time before Berhan had enough to eat. By now it was nineteen eighty-eight; the cycle of war and drought had come round again. They had very little; soon they had nothing at all except the rags on their backs and an occasional sack of foreign food. 11.06.52 Aston MAKALLE 13 April 1991 11.06.59 Michael Buerk In just three months the Tigrean rebels have burst out of their northern mountains and overrun the largest standing army in Africa. Tattered men and women with captured weapons are now close to winning a huge, largely secret war. In the last few weeks they’ve been fighting the biggest battle seen in Africa for fifty years. 11.07.17 Gunfire 11.07.22 Michael Buerk The Migs have bombed Makalle three times in recent weeks, picking the late afternoon when the market was crowded and they could cause the most panic, the most casualties. 11.07.32 Explosions 11.07.37 Michael Buerk They used rockets, bombs and machine guns to slice through the flimsy houses. In the last raid they killed twelve people and wounded more than thirty. They did not seem to have any military target. 11.07.50 Michael Buerk The story of Makalle is the story of Ethiopia; an endless cycle of poverty, famine and war. Until the wars are over the cycle will never be broken. 11.07.59 Explosions 11.08.02 Michael Buerk By night the rebels press on south encircling government held towns, threatening the capital. 11.08.07 Gunfire 11.08.09 Michael Buerk Town after town has fallen. The rebels are now less than a hundred miles from Addis Ababa. 11.08.15 Gunfire 11.08.19 Michael Buerk The collapse of the Ethiopian army is written all over this hillside. The rebels have forty thousand prisoners now, disowned and reviled by their government, victims of a war they barely understand. 11.08.34 Michael Buerk I was there as Addis fell and Mengistu was forced to flee. 11.08.38 Explosion 11.08.44 Michael Buerk The rebels were clearing up the last pockets of resistance when the night was lit up by a series of colossal explosions. A stray bullet or sabotage had blown up the biggest arms dump in Africa. 11.08.57 Michael Buerk It was still burning at dawn, the end of the rebels’ curfew. 11.09.02 Michael Buerk Mo Amin and I had to go; there was talk of hundreds of casualties in the squatter camps. 11.09.08 Michael Buerk Four of us were caught in the open when it went up. 11.09.11 Explosion 11.09.18 Michael Buerk The sound man, John Mathai, was killed. Mo lost his arm. 11.09.25 Michael Buerk We were all, we were all thrown in different directions and I think Colin Blaine, the radio reporter and I were, were slightly protected by the wall. 11.09.27 Aston June 4, 1991 11.09.35 Explosion/music 11.09.51 Michael Buerk Ethiopia touches everybody who comes here. It’s a stark place in a different, older, world. 11.09.58 Music 11.10.01 Michael Buerk Life is lived by different, harder rules, where nature and man are cruel, survival is a triumph of will and nobody leaves unscathed. 11.10.11 Music 11.10.16 Michael Buerk Claire thinks the people she knew will hate her for what she did here. She’s steeled herself to find out. 11.10.25 Claire Bertschinger Ester? She’s here? Can I go and see? Come on… you show me. 11.10.39 Claire Bertschinger When will she come? 11.10.41 Ester How are you? 11.10.42 Claire Bertschinger All right and you, how are you? 11.10.45 Music 11.10.52 Michael Buerk They don’t hate her at all; they remember her with love. 11.10.55 Music 11.11.00 Claire Bertschinger When I came here and you started talking to me, the first day, it just opened every cupboard and drawer and safe deposit box of all my memories inside me. And these memories just coming back and forth and back and forth. 11.11.16 Michael Buerk Do you think it’s good? 11.11.20 Claire Bertschinger For me? Yeah. It’s, I want, I just want to forget it. Not forget it, I want to put it to rest, I want to close the door on this part of my life. I want to feel comfortable inside me. I don’t want to suffer any more and I want to move on. 11.11.37 Music 11.11.42 Claire Bertschinger I ask you, you’ve got tears in your eyes, so what is this for you? 11.11.47 Michael Buerk I don’t know. 11.11.48 Music 11.11.58 Michael Buerk War and famine have filled Ethiopia with orphans. 11.12.02 Bell ringing 11.12.11 Michael Buerk These days the orphans of Makalle are better off than most of Ethiopia’s children. Thanks to a German charity they have three meals a day and an education. 11.12.25 Michael Buerk Today only the orphans of the famine remain, the refuges have gone home. Eighteen thousand people died in Makalle and left so many orphans it took fifteen minutes for them all to file out into their compound. 11.12.31 Aston MAKALLE 24 October 1985 11.12.40 Michael Buerk Nobody knows what to do with Ethiopia’s orphans. There’s a hundred and fifty thousand in the country, well over a thousand in this village alone. The Ethiopian government can’t afford to keep them and no other agency has yet been willing to take on such a long term commitment. The government has suggested putting them all into huge camps. Meantime they play in their western clothes with their western toys on the square where their parents died. 11.13.07 Michael Buerk You’ve helped to save these people’s lives, but who knows if they’ll be worth living. The face of Ethiopia’s… 11.13.14 Michael Buerk Those orphans are now grown up. When they heard who I was they wanted to see the television reports of what they’d lived through. 11.13.22 Michael Buerk It was a mistake. 11.13.24 Michael Buerk Can you remember back to that time and what you felt? 11.13.32 Aston FAKADE ABRAHA Voice over As I watched it felt as if I was leafing through the pages of history. It hurts because I remember all over again how I lost my family and friends during the famine; how I was orphaned. 11.13.46 Aston ASHENASI HAILU I remember the place; I was there. Ok so, I was watching people dying at that moment, so it comes as a flash ok, as a flash of memory. 11.14.01 Aston GIRMAI ASSEFA Voice over It was difficult for me to watch. I was a small boy when my mother died. She disappeared. I was at the shelter. I saw dead bodies piled up layer upon layer. It was difficult to see it again but I thank you. 11.14.17 Music 11.14.20 Michael Buerk That very day Girmai had other reasons to be thankful, to celebrate with the other orphan survivors of nineteen eighty-four. 11.14.26 Music 11.14.28 Michael Buerk His first child, four hours old. 11.14.30 Music 11.14.34 Girmai Assefa And so we call this name, for remember, for memory. We call it Michael. 11.14.41 Michael Buerk He’s much better looking than me. 11.14.43 Laughing/music 11.14.49 Michael Buerk Another life. I look at Baby Michael and see a living symbol of survival. 11.14.53 Music 11.14.56 Michael Buerk But he’s also another mouth to feed; pushing Ethiopia one step closer to a new disaster. 11.15.02 Music 11.15.09 Michael Buerk They hyenas are back. 11.15.10 Music 11.15.12 Michael Buerk These were just down the street from the orphans of eighty-four and their new born baby. 11.15.17 Music 11.15.21 Michael Buerk Hunger’s back. This autumn I found fourteen million people starving in these highlands, twice as many as in nineteen eighty-four. It felt so hopeless. Though I suppose we should be grateful just enough food got there just in time. 11.15.38 Michael Buerk The ration’s been cut to twelve and a half kilos a month. One tiny meal a day; enough to survive if you stay still most of the time. 11.15.46 Michael Buerk Ethiopia gets the most relief aid and the least development aid of any poor country in the world. 11.15.52 Music 11.15.55 Michael Buerk It’s been a bad year but the truth is even in a normal one six million would die if we didn’t feed them. 11.16.02 Aston PRIME MINISTER MELES ZENAWI The worst thing is to see people dying like flies. The next worst thing is to have to beg to avoid, to avoid that. And so it does tend to depress one, to have to beg every other year for food. 11.16.25 Michael Buerk You and I helped save these people but in doing so we’ve suspended the laws of Malthus. The population’s all but doubled since nineteen eighty- four, expanding far beyond the capacity of the land to feed them. Half the people are now officially malnourished; more than half the children physically stunted by hunger. 11.16.47 Michael Buerk Land is distributed by the state. Many now live on so-called starvation plots of an acre or so, you can see reaching up high into the mountains and the margins of fertility. 11.17.05 Michael Buerk The average family can feed itself for five months of the year – if it rains. 11.17.18 Michael Buerk I can never get used to the idea that Ethiopia actually has plenty of water. 11.17.24 Michael Buerk Lake Tana alone covers three thousand six hundred square kilometres. 11.17.31 Michael Buerk The Ethiopian highlands are the water tower of Africa, feeding a dozen mighty rivers. 11.17.38 Michael Buerk Lake Tana’s the source of the Blue Nile, it irrigates Egypt, which wouldn’t exist without it. 11.17.45 Michael Buerk But Ethiopia makes hardly any use of it at all. 11.17.49 Thunder/rain 11.17.55 Michael Buerk Instead, nine out of ten Ethiopians depend on the rains; their fate has always been written in the clouds. No rain, no crop, no food. 11.18.05 Michael Buerk When it does rain it comes down in torrents and they think they’ve been saved. But rain brings its own kind of ruin. 11.18.13 Michael Buerk The land’s exhausted now and can’t take it. There are no trees anymore to bind it to the mountainsides. You can see the fertility of the country draining away. 11.18.23 Michael Buerk Two billion tonnes of topsoil are sluiced out of the highlands every year. All Ethiopia’s rivers run brown. 11.18.31 Music 11.18.44 Michael Buerk They’ve built so many terraces to stop the erosion they would reach to the moon. It works but it’s not enough and it’s far too late. Food production per head this year was thought to be a third of what it was in nineteen eighty-four. 11.18.56 Music 11.19.04 Michael Buerk Ethiopia’s latest leaders are reconstructed Marxists; ideologically and almost romantically committed to the peasants, into a kind of Maoist great leap forward. I think the government genuinely wants them to have a better life but it also wants them to stay peasants. 11.19.19 Music 11.19.21 Michael Buerk It won’t let them own their own land and is determined they shouldn’t leave it. 11.19.25 Music 11.19.33 Michael Buerk Only one in eight Ethiopians lives in a town; the lowest proportion on earth. 11.19.38 Michael Buerk There are markets and the government pays lip service to them. 11.19.43 Michael Buerk But they’re hopeless; I couldn’t find a trader who had a telephone or a bank account. 11.19.50 Michael Buerk In a good year everybody’s trying to sell their surplus and nobody wants to buy. 11.19.56 Michael Buerk The traders have nowhere to store it for a bad year. 11.20.01 Michael Buerk And no vehicles to take it to areas where there’s a shortage. 11.20.08 Michael Buerk It’s left to rot. Some say so are the farmers who are stuck on land they can’t sell. 11.20.16 Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Allowing the farmers to sell their land in an environment of recurring drought means they would sell their land under duress, descend on the towns in their millions, towns which already suffer with, from very high unemployment rate and the result would be perpetuation of the famine. 11.20.40 Michael Buerk Some have deserted the land anyway, even though they know the state will allocate it to someone else. Ethiopia’s peasants are twice as poor as they were in nineteen eighty-four. 11.20.52 Michael Buerk The city is sometimes the only hope. 11.21.00 Aston ABA TEWELDEBRHAN Voice over I came here because I have five children. The children’s mother died recently and the drought has left us destitute. I couldn’t pay for transport, so it took me more than a month to get here on foot. 11.21.21 Michael Buerk The government is determined to keep people out of the towns and is not always gentle about it. 11.21.27 Michael Buerk I watched the officials as they did their daily round up of destitute peasants who’d come to beg on the streets of Addis. 11.21.38 Michael Buerk Some reckon the only way out for Ethiopia is urbanisation and industrialisation. 11.21.45 Michael Buerk But the government thinks otherwise. These people had come all this way only to be swept up, put on a list, pushed around a bit and sent back. 11.21.56 Michael Buerk Cynics say it’s easier to control peasants whose livelihood can be removed by the stroke of an official’s pen. Governments here have always been oppressive. This one isn’t blameless but I think it’s more complicated than that. 11.22.12 Michael Buerk Do you see Ethiopia coming out of this cycle of dependency and hunger within your lifetime? 11.22.20 Aston PRIME MINISTER MELES ZENAWI Oh absolutely. There is no other option. It’s either going down the drain of a failed state or moving up and we don’t have much time. We will have to see a significant change over a period of five years or the window of opportunity will begin to close. 11.22.42 Michael Buerk This year these children were the exception. The world got there just in time, did just enough. It could easily have been nineteen eighty-four all over again. 11.22.56 Sir Bob Geldof Will she live? Will she live, will this child live or will she die? 11.23.01 Man This child will survive. 11.23.03 Sir Bob Geldof Will survive? 11.23.13 Sir Bob Geldof The problem is that not enough food aid has come, it hasn’t been promised even. 11.23.20 Sir Bob Geldof It bores me stupid ‘cos I’m still at it. But that’s it, that’s what I’m stuck with, you know. In terms of eliminating hunger in the world, that was never the objective, it could never be. 11.23.39 Sir Bob Geldof We called it Band Aid for a proper reason; you cannot put a Band Aid on a gaping wound. From the get-go it had to be political, the structures of the world and how we govern ourselves must be altered. But it can be changed. There’s never a moment where I’ve been disillusioned because I’ve seen the change. 11.24.01 Helicopter 11.24.06 Michael Buerk But all along politics has been the problem not the solution. 11.24.10 Helicopter/explosions 11.24.13 Michael Buerk This government may be better than the last but it can still waste two million dollars a day on a pointless war with its neighbour over a ramshackle little town and a barren strip of land. 11.24.25 Michael Buerk It can still waste money on prestige projects like the new airport terminal at Addis. It cost a hundred and twenty-three million dollars and a lot of the time the cleaners outnumber the passengers. 11.24.37 Michael Buerk The lords of poverty, the aid tsars, come through here bringing the politics of the rich world, their structural adjustment programmes, their donor aid packages, their war on poverty. 11.24.51 Michael Buerk They stay in the finest and most expensive hotel in Africa. 11.24.57 Michael Buerk The new Sheraton’s main selling point is that it’s a short walk from the United Nations’ headquarters in Addis. The head of one of the UN’s biggest agencies famously refused to come to Ethiopia at all until it was built. Staying here can cost up to five thousand dollars a night. 11.25.15 Michael Buerk It’s a comfortable place for the aid lords and fat cat African leaders who gather here to discuss the continent’s slide into destitution. 11.25.24 Michael Buerk You can see the poverty out of the window if you look. 11.25.27 Music 11.25.34 Michael Buerk You can’t see Berhan’s father. 11.25.36 Music 11.25.38 Michael Buerk He’s just a statistic, a landless peasant renting a widow’s field, working as his ancestors have done for a thousand years. 11.25.45 Music 11.25.49 Michael Buerk Berhan will be different, picked out by the television cameras which saved a generation, supported by a Canadian reporter, a friend of mine, ever since. 11.25.58 Music 11.26.15 Michael Buerk She’s one amongst millions with a chance to step out of the cycle of poverty, hunger and waiting death that her father knows so well. 11.26.28 Michael Buerk To me, Berhan’s a beautiful symbol of what we’ve done and what we could do if we made the lives we’ve saved worth living. 11.26.43 Ata Waldu Aman Voice over Our hope is that we get rain even though it’s late. We’re convinced that God will not fail us. We believe that somehow we’ll survive, that by buying seeds we demonstrate our faith that God will help us. Our trust is in him. 11.27.03 Music 11.27.15 Michael Buerk Ethiopians believe that life is a short and painful interlude to be bravely borne. 11.27.20 Candle ceremony 11.27.25 Michael Buerk They’re fatalistic because they have no option. 11.27.28 Candle ceremony 11.27.35 Michael Buerk For the truth is that they’ve been betrayed; betrayed by their rulers who have been tyrants and now seem to care but are trapped by ideology and circumstance. 11.27.44 Candle ceremony 11.27.49 Michael Buerk Betrayed by us, the outside world is ashamed to let them die but has only succeeded in keeping ever greater numbers just alive. 11.27.57 Candle ceremony 11.28.02 Michael Buerk Betrayed by their God. It’s difficult not to see him as a cruel and jealous God. He gave them a beautiful land, he gave them dignity and courage and he has punished them ever since. 11.28.15 Candle ceremony 11.28.19 Music 11.28.30 End Music 11.28.33 Voice over Michael Buerk is taking your questions in a live interactive discussion now. To join the debate digital viewers press red or you can log on to our web site at: www.bbc.co.uk/thisworld 11.28.50 Voice over …where you can also explore a world of extra information, stories and features. 11.28.30 Credits Written & Narrated by MICHAEL BUERK With thanks BRIAN STEWART CBC TONY BURMAN CBC STEVEN DEVERAUX PETER GILL Dubbing Mixer CLIFF JONES Photography CLIFFORD BESTALL MOHAMED AMIN (1943-1996) PHILIPPE BILLIARD CBC PAUL RILEY MIKE SWEENEY CBC Sound SEBASTIAN DUNN COLIN BERWICK VT Editor GARETH WILLIAMS Production Team JULIA DANNENBERG SARAH EVA SARAH HANKS MARTHA O’SULLIVAN AGNES TEEK Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager SUSAN CRIGHTON Film Research NICK DODD JIM ANDERSON UK Research BARBARA ARVANITIDES Ethiopia Research ELLENE MOCRIA DANIEL NAIZGHI DAWIT NIDA Picture & Sound Editor ASHLEY SMITH Assistant Producer BRENDA GOLDBLATT Deputy Editor DAVID BELTON 11.28.55 Produced & Directed by CLIFFORD BESTALL 11.28.59 this world 11.28.59 Editor KAREN O’CONNOR © BBC MMIV 11.29.02 End BBC This World 1 1