As famine returns to Ethiopia, experts ask: Is food aid working?
The “Emperor” watched the race from a plastic podium on the city limits. Beneath him hundreds of poor teenage athletes pounded around a rough track, all desperate to emulate his greatness. Some were so poor they ran in bare feet. The “Emperor” watched the race from a plastic podium on the city limits. Beneath him hundreds of poor teenage athletes pounded around a rough track, all desperate to emulate his greatness. Some were so poor they ran in bare feet. But the track was baked-dry, its dirt surface fissured with cracks and carpeted in shrivelled grass. The great man shook his head. The twin plagues of drought and famine had again struck his country. Only a few hours away, peasants were going hungry. Within months millions could be starving. “Of course this is painful,” said Haile Gebrselaisse, the greatest middle-distance runner in the world, also known as the Emperor. “But we are asking one thing: why is this happening again and again?” A scorching drought withered last year’s harve
