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The famous "Face of Famine" shot of Birhan Woldu from 1984. (CBC/ Phillipe Billard)
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INDEPTH: ETHIOPIA
Strange Destiny
CBC News Online | December 2, 2004
Reporter: Brian Stewart
Producer: Carmen Merrifield
From the National, Dec. 2, 2004
Tigray province in the high, remote North is the ancient spiritual home of Ethiopia, mesmerizing in its rugged, isolated, hard beauty.
It is in this deeply traditional society that Birhan Woldu lives. She is known locally as a pious, shy young woman close to her family and father, Ato Woldu.
She has never sought attention. But her strange fate has become legend as the "miracle girl" who defied death in the Great 1984 Famine.
In 2002, she told me: "I don't remember it, and I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I didn't see my people die in that terrible time. It is past. I don't see it the way adults see it, and I'm glad I did not see it."
But in my memory it is never past. Down these roads in Tigray I did see the very worst of that famine for weeks on end, and will never forget.
It seemed a vision of the end of the world*the refugees in search of food, seven million near starvation. There were close to a million that would die, most of them children.
There was a civil war on, as well, so it was hard to get to the famine zone. For a while our crew was alone there to record sadness that seemed bottomless and, I feared, endless, so surrounded were we by death.
We saw children like one boy about to die and followed the tiny corpses to makeshift morgues, first 100 dead a day in one camp. Then more corpses each passing day.
Then around 9:30 one morning, in the last week of October 1984, we arrived at a Catholic feeding centre that was overwhelmed with parents bringing in sick and starving children.
With cameraman Phillippe Billard, we began moving along the wall, talking to mothers. Producer Tony Burman snapped still pictures.
By chance, in one wide shot I only noticed recently can be seen the first picture of three-year-old Birhan Woldu, cradled in her father Ato's arms. This is just minutes before we spotted her.
As they reached the wall I noticed her slumping to the pavement and called a nurse but it seemed too late.
I had no sense this would later become the legendary face of famine.
We left, to at least allow her dignity in death. Her grave was already being dug outside, alongside thousands of other victims. Hours later when we returned for the funeral, I was astonished to find what seemed a near miracle.
The nurse, holding Birhan tells me: "Yes I think she will live now. We gave her some re-hydration shots and we hope she'll come through".
The CBC item was rebroadcast across North America and seen by millions who'll long remember that face.
Her near death, and sudden revival stayed with me through the worst days that followed , perhaps a symbol that hope in Ethiopia was not lost. Help may come. Three weeks later, we returned to see her recovering.
This was my last sight of her in the famine, still weak, frightened, carried by her father out of the relief centre, back into the chaos outside. Nurses thought she'd be now safe and we had to move on.
Over coming months, the world finally responded to Ethiopia. There was a surge of hope as the outside world, including pop stars, rallied to help. In the summer of 1985, the giant Live Aid concert for Africa was carried to a billion people worldwide.
Live Aid raised a third of a billion dollars. And Birhan's image in the CBC video, put together by editor Colin Dean as his personal memorial to victims, helped set off the greatest surge of humanitarian giving in world history, not equaled since.
I would return again and again to Ethiopia to cover relief operations in the High North. Over years, I often thought of Birhan and even grew increasingly haunted with fears of her fate.
In 1988, four years after by my last sight of her, we launched a major search, using photos and village contacts. The odds seemed hopeless.
Then we got word, and at a feeding centre we saw the unmistakable face of Ato Woldu and his daughter, Birhan, now seven.
Life had been hard. They'd been forcibly moved around by the Marxist regime throughout drought and war. I arranged some schooling and local help.
But given the escalating war and Tigray's extreme isolation, it proved nearly impossible to keep in touch. Messages were sent and never arrived. Birhan appeared lost yet again.
With the fall of the Marxist regime in the early 1990s, peace returned. Then word came from Tigray. Birhan was safe.
In 1995, a decade after the famine, I was able to really establish the friendship with the family that has endured ever since. Then our talk was full of hope:
"I barely survived death but came through," she said. "And today when I see so many beautiful things. I'm grateful to be alive. Always I say I could have been just dust by now, but I'm not. I'm alive to see beauty around me, and to see new things. I'm very happy."
Her image was again carried across North America when our documentary saw Birhan as a symbol of reviving, hopeful Ethiopia.
Her own desire was for a normal life, free of worry. She loved school; planned on college. Life improved. Travelers brought me home videos from her village.
We exchanged letters and wrote of her grades and plans. Our families became friends from a distance.
In 2002, I was there to see her start college and found Ato as tough and remarkable as ever.
This year, at 23, she was enjoying Agricultural College and new friendships.
Then again, it all changed when the famine's 20th anniversary unleashed a media cyclone. A new generation of rock stars has remade the Band Aid Song, after watching, many for the first time, the famous CBC video and Birhan's image.
From remote Tigray Birhan was flown to London in October.
She's there as Sir Bob Geldof launches this new effort to help African relief, a living symbol of famine, and also hope.
She'd never been outside Ethiopia before; had never heard of a photo op.
Two friends accompanied Birhan. One was a translator and fellow famine survivor Bisrat Mesfin.
"She has no idea who Bob Geldof was or who these people are or why is she meeting them all this. She didn't have any idea," Mesfin says. "She started to realize that she is having a lot of responsibility, why she has been chosen to meet these big people. I mean this was the real moving attention and an alarm for her. A wake-up call, yeah, that she is, like, a real symbol of hope."
Birhan says, "It does not bother me much but me because I am called the symbol, I feel that I have the responsibility to do more in future, but it does make me think to work hard in order to fulfil the hope of symbol. It didn't really surprised me it is good, but in long term I said to myself my story is getting famous when I saw the journalists come and go [and] I notice that I am getting a lot of attention because of my story and how my story is very strong and is something I can feel proud of it. That is what I felt."
Her link to 1984 brings pain as well. Parents of young famine survivors have tried to shield them from the horror of those times. Now she has to face what the world saw 20 years ago.
"It does make me so sad, and when people talk about it, it makes me because we lost so many people," she says. "So many of my friends and my relatives died of hunger. When people start talking about it I start crying. I don't even let them finish the story I just cry... and cry because I am very, very sad."
"We don't talk about it," Mesfin says. "It's something that is a traumatic emotional thing and in my generation or Birhan's generation, we never talk about it. It's very, very pain and I think we prefer to thinking about the future."
The British tabloids, a world unto themselves, have just discovered, this year, that Birhan is "alive" and even claimed, bizarrely, to have just "found her."
For two weeks Birhan is whisked through a celebrity tour in London. As a "discovery" she was raced to meet Geldof and Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Then as international fame spreads, she comes to Chicago where in a surreal moment she joins me in the Oprah Winfrey show's stretch limo on the way to a taping.
It worried me that somehow we had created this image that interferes with her life, She's quiet, a very, very shy person.
"It is hard. But it is a responsibility that came to me all the sudden. Yet I think I should be able to handle it, at least that is my hope at the moment," she says.
Just a few months ago Birhan had never ridden on an elevator. Now she's flown, briefly, into worlds she could not imagine. She asks for no fees and feels her destiny is now to give. She still plans to be a nurse among poor children in Ethiopia.
But as she heads home I know her legend is expanding there, too, and will always follow her. We talk of the strange events that have linked for 20 years and wonder about her future.
"My life in the future will, I think, be an ordinary life but I really cannot say now for sure what sort of life I'm going to have because only time will reveal that for me," she says.
In parting again, I comfort myself that her message of hope is needed today. I sense she has the serenity and courage needed to face strange new challenges in the life that she once just barely clung on to.
Birhan Woldu and A-CET
A personal note by Brian Stewart, Senior Correspondent, CBC News
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Though by now internationally well known as "The Face That Changed the World" in the 1984 Ethiopian Famine, Birhan Woldu is quietly pursuing her dream of higher education in Ethiopia.
Now aged 23, Birhan is in her second year of Agricultural College and she hopes to later combine this with a degree in nursing to prepare her for work among poor farm families in the largely impoverished northern provinces of Ethiopia.
My educational assistance for Birhan and other members of her family is now being handled through the British-based organization A-CET (African Children's Educational Trust at www.a-cet.org).
Birhan has also become keenly interested in the work of the rapidly growing A-CET, which is now helping over 265 youngsters with scholarships and additional training, along with a further 200 taking courses to become computer operators. Many, like Birhan, are famine survivors, and all come from such disadvantaged backgrounds that education would be impossible without outside support. Several other reporters who have flown in to visit Birhan have also joined this inspiring sponsorship program.
In the past year Birhan has been flown to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said that the CBC image of her face "changed his life." She also attended Sir Bob Geldof's relaunch of Band Aid in London, where he said of her: "You are a beacon of hope and inspiration to millions."
After the taping of her appearance of the Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago she received a standing ovation from the studio audience. Despite all the attention, however, she remains strikingly modest and only hopes her unasked-for celebrity may be useful as a message of hope to others.
She remains very close to her family and to her father, Ato, who has also been seen in CBC and BBC documentaries. The family lives near the provincial capital of Makele, Tigray province, where Ato still farms a small plot of land and continues a passion for making honey. Birhan still hopes to visit Canada in the future, but at the moment her education is her priority and she is pleased to be back with her friends in college.
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