People seeking assistance at a clinic run by the NGO Medècins Sans Frontieres in Ethiopia,
Thomas Dworzak / Magnum for TIME
All morning in the village of Kersa, the hills have echoed with the wails of women walking in from the fields. They gather on a patch of open grass before a stretcher made from freshly cut bamboo, bound and laid with banana leaves. On it is a small bundle wrapped in a red and blue blanket. An imam calls the crowd together, asks them to take off their shoes and arranges them in two lines, women behind men, facing east. "Allah Akbar," he says twice. Then four men pick up the bier, easily handling its weight with one arm, and walk a short way to a freshly dug hole, into which they lower the bundle and bury it. Three other small, fresh graves nearby indicate Ayano Gemeda, 6, was not the first child to starve in Kersa this year. The distended bellies and chicken-wing limbs on other children looking on suggest he won't be the last. "It's very bizarre," says Jean de Cambry, a Belgian member of Medecins Sans Frontieres and a veteran of crises from Afghanistan to Sudan. "It's so green. But you have all these people dying of hunger." The reasons are paved in the good intentions of rich nations, good deeds that have punished Ethiopia with perpetual want.Full story
All morning in the village of Kersa, the hills have echoed with the wails of women walking in from the fields. They gather on a patch of open grass before a stretcher made from freshly cut bamboo, bound and laid with banana leaves. On it is a small bundle wrapped in a red and blue blanket. An imam calls the crowd together, asks them to take off their shoes and arranges them in two lines, women behind men, facing east. "Allah Akbar," he says twice. Then four men pick up the bier, easily handling its weight with one arm, and walk a short way to a freshly dug hole, into which they lower the bundle and bury it. Three other small, fresh graves nearby indicate Ayano Gemeda, 6, was not the first child to starve in Kersa this year. The distended bellies and chicken-wing limbs on other children looking on suggest he won't be the last. "It's very bizarre," says Jean de Cambry, a Belgian member of Medecins Sans Frontieres and a veteran of crises from Afghanistan to Sudan. "It's so green. But you have all these people dying of hunger." The reasons are paved in the good intentions of rich nations, good deeds that have punished Ethiopia with perpetual want.Full story
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