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