Even as the cornerstone of a Band Aid-funded hospital is laid in Korem, famine's spectre is back, writes Barry Malone.
THERE IS something familiar about this valley of heartbreaking beauty just outside the town of Korem in northern Ethiopia. There are many valleys of such beauty in this country but it was to this one that the world's media flocked in 1985 to film, photograph and interview as thousands of children died clinging to their wailing mothers.
It is very different now. The rows of tents are gone, as are the aid workers. The journalists have moved on to the next tragedy and people go about their daily business. They bring animals out to pasture, set out to fetch water, chat by the side of the road.
But they haven't forgotten. They can't. Every day they walk on the bodies of the friends and family they lost more than 20 years ago. More than 300,000 of the one million men, women and children who died in the Ethiopian famine are buried here.
Standing outside one mass grave site is priest Alemayu Gedu. He holds a large, intricate, bronze cross and remembers how he used it to help dig graves during those awful days.
"Some used hands, some used sticks and I used this cross," says Alemayu, now in his late 80s. "There were 350 of us, digging day and night. This place was the valley of death." "No more deaths from hunger" was the theme in Korem last week as the town gathered to unveil a memorial sculpture remembering the victims of the famine and to watch as the ceremonial cornerstone was laid for a long-awaited hospital, funded by Band Aid.
But Ethiopians are once again starving to death. The impact of a long drought has been compounded by the global rise in food prices and humanitarian agencies are struggling to pay for the food they need to respond to the developing crisis.
"If we don't get more money quickly we could be facing another famine," says Seifu Woldemanuel, director of the International Mercy Corps in Ethiopia. "We discussed whether that word was too strong - too emotive - but that is the reality here." United Nations children's agency Unicef says that 126,000 children are now severely malnourished. But, due to the high price of staples on the global market, charities and the Ethiopian government can only afford to buy therapeutic food for 33,000.
Severely malnourished children have a 25 to 50 per cent chance of dying if untreated. Aid workers say pledges from donor governments aren't coming fast enough, with the world's camera lenses concentrating on disaster-hit China and Burma.
Just 70km from Korem in Mehoni, Tadessa Imam says seven of his cattle have died as water holes are drying up. He tends carefully to the two he has left. "If our animals die we cannot live," he says. "Their deaths warn ours may also come."
Local men say they would normally sell some cows or camels to buy food when the crops fail but now there is no point as prices have put much of it out of reach.
The situation is rapidly deteriorating in the country's south and many observers predict it can only get worse as an expected July harvest will now fail due to the lack of rain.
At Rophi Catholic Church near the southern town of Siraro, the Sisters of Mercy battled bravely for the first few weeks, trying their best to help the starving children who were being brought daily by their parents. They sounded the alarm and were soon joined by medical charity Médecins sans Frontières Greece. Numbers are growing. At first they were admitting fewer than 20 children a day. Last week 100 children arrived in just one day.
An old man sits outside the church gate and pulls up his shirt to show passing aid workers his gaunt belly. But the sisters can only take the worst affected.
In the grounds of the church, mothers sit in tents holding their sick children close. They lie on dirty sheets on the ground and swelter in the heat as doctors examine their babies. The sound of children crying rises above the camp and maintains a low, agonising hum. "It's not like the normal sound of children crying," says one nun. "It's desperate."
Ayantu Tamon has watched one of her six children die from hunger every year for the last four and is cradling her severely malnourished, close-to-death three-year-old son Hirbu. He has a drip taped to his nose, and is horribly emaciated. "I just hope God lets him live," she says. "I have only two children left."
A nurse approaches to feed Hirbu using a hypodermic needle. He cries desperately as she fiddles with the drip hanging from his face. A single dirty grey sack, striped with the colours of the Ethiopian flag, sits behind him containing his family's belongings.
Unicef says six million Ethiopian children under the age of five may be at risk of malnutrition. The WFP estimates 3.4 million of Ethiopia's more than 80 million people will need food relief from July to September. This is in addition to the eight million Ethiopians who regularly receive such food or cash assistance in drought-prone areas.
In Korem an old man stands silently as the hospital cornerstone is laid. He is one of many watching who has a tragic story to tell about what happened in 1985. His eyes well with tears as he talks of the two children and four grandchildren he lost. "The devil sent an evil here," he says. "I remember the foreigners who came to help. And I remember the Irish who came and cried. Now we might need their help again."