As a photographer, I was asked to go to Ethiopia in March 2000 by Food for the Hungry, an established non-profit NGO that has been involved in relief and development projects through out the country for over 15 years. My role was to produce images in an effort to help communicate the condition of the children and people in the areas affected by the drought emergency, unfolding across the country.
I spent time with project managers who knew the problems first hand. The villagers were their friends and they were personally involved in the lives of families and children. I was graciously invited to travel with them as they went about their assessment of the various regions. We traveled from village to village, looking for visual signs of the drought - be it sick or malnourished children or empty food stores.
I spent most of my time listening to the issues affecting their daily lives in an effort to understand. The concern over the drought emergency was far reaching with a vast range of problems needing to be logically worked through by all the NGOs that deal with food security issues on a daily basis.
Areas such as Gondar to the North, Meta Robi, Benishangul, Yabelo and Dillo provided valuable lessons to me on the complicated political, social and climatic problems that are were pressing Ethiopia. Each region had a different story to tell, although consistently, the lack of rain throughout the country had placed a lot of people at risk.
I spent time with teenagers, mothers, fathers and farmers, in the fields and in the villages, as well as countless children working cattle or tending to the familys herd of goats. Endless walking, listening and watching. Tirelessly, children with loads of water or wood strapped to their young backs or bundles of hay and straw balanced on their heads made their way home without complaint... doing their part to aid the survival of their family.
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While their stomachs might not have been full and their personal health questionable, most of the children I photographed still had the ability to be like children everywhere. They managed to laugh with me, and smile. If you look close, you will see through cracked and dry little hands that life is tough for them. They have an important role to play in helping to ensure the survival of their family. Yet given the chance they will tease and jump and chase and laugh - like any child, anywhere.
Regardless of the efforts, I learned that, from the farmers in the North to the cattle ranchers to the South, they all depend on the rains. I learned quickly that no rain means almost no crops from the field. No rain and the cattle die. No rain and the farmers children will eat the leaves from the trees. No rain, and the ranchers' children will slowly become malnourished - perhaps even die.
Food will be scarce for all in the rural regions of the country. Yet, they are a hardy people, willing to work the land as best they can or for grain in one of the work-for-food programs where they will move rocks by hand , one at a time, to make a new road or break rocks down to gravel with a hammer - all to feed their families.
