When I first visited Ethiopia at the height of the 1984 famine, I watched as twenty-four people died of starvation in less than fifteen minutes, right in front of my eyes. Barely five years into my career as a congressman, nothing my staff told me beforehand could have prepared me for what I saw on that trip.
Gasping at awful photographs of unspeakable human suffering is one thing; bearing firsthand witness to human suffering is another thing entirely. Glancing at a picture of a starving child in the newspaper, you can always turn away, but when you’re staring into the eyes of a mother who has just lost that child, it’s a completely different story. There’s no looking the other way.
That’s why I often describe those first Ethiopia experiences as my “converting ground” on issues of global hunger. What happened in Ethiopia changed me, and changed how an entire generation looks at hunger.
It’s also why I’m currently back on the Horn of Africa, reporting on the ground from the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya, less than fifty miles from the Somali border. And I am appealing to my affluent brothers and sisters in the United Stated and around the world not to look away. We need your help.
The worst drought in sixty years has struck the continent, putting over 12 million people at risk of serious malnutrition, starvation and even death. According to USAID, more than 500,000 Somalis have already fled the worst areas of their country, seeking food and water across the border in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia.
Today at the Dadaab camp, I met a husband and wife and their six children who have spent the last two months walking hundreds of miles from their home in Somalia. They arrived with nothing but the clothes on their back. They’ve made this tremendous sacrifice for one simple reason: They want to live. Dadaab gives them that hope.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C. some of America’s political leaders are considering budget cuts that would make it all but impossible for us to respond to crises like these in the future. Read on…
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