Famine Strikes Ethiopia Again

Famine Strikes Ethiopia Again

26 September, 2009 | Teodros Kiros, PhD

In May 29th, 2009, I wrote:

“ A mother is seen struggling to feed a

famished baby from the nerve center of her

being. There is no milk to flow to the dried lips

of a dying baby. The mother cries bitterly, and

the baby cries even more. Mother and baby

have no more tears to shed. Their puffed eyes

are pregnant with unshed tears. To her left is a

five year old, eating his lips, squeezing life out

of them. He struggles to open his eyes and see

his baby sister on the brink of death.

The baby cries no more. The mother crawls

with the dead baby with her shaking hands.

The five year old tries to follow but famine had

already incapacitated him. He cries for the last

time, for he knew his baby sister is no more.”

(Abugida, May 29th, 2009)

This image long engraved in my soul has now returned to the East African land of
famine. It is there now, framing millions of famished African bodies. Nothing has
changed, except that the mothers are more and their dying babies are much, much
more.

The UN has reported that 24 million people are saturating the media world with
emaciated bodies, forced on our senses. Those ravished by famine are incapable
of refusing to be seen, reluctant to exist in this inhumane way, and the famine
fatigued world will shut the screen right on their faces, a defiant act of erasing
their existence.

In the meantime the shameless Ethiopian tyrant and other African tyrants will fly
the world boasting economic growth, highways and buildings as markers of
development without purpose, growth without goals, a future without plans. They
deny that famine has returned, and that they are ready to contain it with donated
money, all that they need is more money. This language has long naturalized itself
to our offended ears. We have heard it in Ethiopia for the last 5000 years, and we
will hear it forever.

Famine, however, continues to interrogate pseudo development. Its victims are the
crying babies and the milk less mothers. Its victims announce themselves to the
reluctant world annually. They remind the world that they are here for now, may
be for a week, a month, and if lucky a year. Long after they are gone, some of
their children will take their place, and come back to say to the world, we are here
again, and we will be there, until after the causes of our non-being are fulllly
addressed.

What we need now is a truly democratic regime, led by a new thinker, with a
vision of containing famine permanently. Infact, a new party must soon develop a
policy on famine and present it to the Ethiopian public to gain its support and use
this vision to unseat the existing regime by any means necessary.

The existing gangs, as usual, will steal the next election, again. That is no reason to
discourage out imagination and will to think about containing famine permanently.
Indeed the best thinking is done during the times of defeat. This is the time to
really forge a new party with a policy on development. The victims of famine say
we are here. Look at us, when you do not want to. Hear from us, when you
pretend that you are not.

We are watching your inauthenticity. We are laughing at your ideas of
development on our backs. We might die now. But our children, those who
survive, like the five-year-old boy, who witnessed the death of his sister, will
inherit our struggles and fight for their rights.

I urge our economists to develop an idea of development, development with a
purpose, a goal and a plan for the future. Attacking this regime is a necessary
condition to expose its politics of intimidation. Developing an idea of justice
without famine is to defeat this regime with a better idea, and expose its poverty of
ideas to the thinking world.

We must act now. The Ethiopian intelligencia must busy itself with a party
program, the inner core of which must be the question of famine.