Flipping channels the other day, I caught a glimpse of a macabre reality TV show about a man leaving his comfortable life in London to live and starve for thirty days along with several families in Ethiopia. It turned out to be a documentary on CBC's "The Passionate Eye" called Surviving Hunger. The man, an ex-Sierra Leonean named Sorious Samura, spends the days in a small village in northern Ethiopia near Lalibela, home of the rock-hewn churches designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
One of the most striking scenes concerns Samura's attempt to convince the townsfolk that he is not to be feared during a local church meeting. It is also inspiring but tough to watch the hospitality and guarded friendliness of Samura's hosts even as they struggle to make do with next to nothing.
"His new hosts have been given grain for two months, part of the government aid package. But their allowance of 12.5 kg a month is meant to feed one person, not an entire family. The reality is that the local administrator has to try and spread aid for 1,000 among 9,000 starving people under his control."
This presents a marked contrast to the relative prosperity of Addis Ababa and surrounding areas shown in these these images from Ethiopia.
Posted by alokem at February 17, 2004 01:45 AM