Biblical scenes from the Ethiopian famine of 1974 Do we see famine as it is? An eyewitness in northeast Ethiopia 1973/4 By Tony Hall For someone who wandered about, as Oxfam's Communications Officer , among rural calamities in two continents, for a few years, and had a good hard look at one major famine, the question is interestingly framed, and stirs me to a kind of mosaic of answers, from my own observations and experiences. This commemoration means a great deal to me, more as a 20th than a 10th anniversary, as one of the earliest visiting witnesses and international bell-ringers on the 1973 famine in its full scope. The occasion should honour government officials, and aid workers , who struggled and sacrificed to sound the alarm and tackle the crisis, months before any outsiders: they were the 1,500 peasants from Wollo who staggered into Addis to explain how bad things were, back in February 1973 leading to government roadblocks after their expulsion, t
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head