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INSIGHT

Interview With Sorious Samura

Aired December 17, 2003 - 17:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SORIOUS SAMURA, JOURNALIST; It's incredible, the way they put up with this every day.

I've only been in the village four days, but I'm exhausted from lack of food and already losing weight.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST (voice-over): Trading places. Prize-winning journalist Sorious Samura spends a month in an Ethiopian Village where hunger is a way of life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Hello and welcome.

Around the world right now there are believed to be nearly 900 million people going hungry. It's a number you can read or hear and then quickly forget, but what if you had to live with some of those people and go hungry too.

Sorious Samura, who has made prize-winning films about war and dislocation, this time went to a remote village in Ethiopia, where there has been no dramatic upheaval, just day in, day out, not enough food.

On our program today, Sorious Samura, surviving hunger.

We begin with an excerpt from the film, in Kirkos, Ethiopia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMURA (voice-over): This is Kirkos in northern Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in East Africa. A typical village of about 20 families, Kirkos is miles from any aid organizations, school or doctor.

There's no running water or electricity and its people are starving.

1 million people died in the 1984 famine, but today 14 million Ethiopians are still desperately short of food. To understand how they survive, I'm going to live in the village for the next month, without food, water or money of my own.

(on camera): Thank you very much for hosting me in your village (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(voice-over): The (UNINTELLIGIBLE)is Kirkos' village elder and the first to offer me shelter.

I'm told the other villages are scared of strangers, even though I'll be here all alone as the film crew won't be staying in the village with me.

(on camera): This is wheat. This is what I've been given for supper. In fact, this is the first food I've had all day. I'm a bit excited at the moment, so I'm kind of OK. I haven't drunk any water since I came here, but I'm kind of OK at the moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: That was day one. Sorious Samura spent his month in the village and then returned to London, and that's where he joins us from now to talk about his experience.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Why did you make this film? Why did you go there?

SAMURA: It's almost 20 years since LiveAid, since BandAid, and there have been lots of reports about hunger, about famine going on in the world, and people don't seem to pay attention because we are not having those big headline features about Amalfi, about Africa. So we thought maybe it's time we go and try and tell a different story about Africa. You know, this time where we don't present the people as victims.

And in this case, I was really impressed when I went into this village, because these people, you know, their stamina, their resilience, their determination to go on, to just keep surviving, even though there is no proper drinking water in the village. Sometimes they go three or four days and nights without anything to eat, you know. Adults will cry. Children will cry. They're coughing (ph) all over the place.

You know, I realized that these people were living on the edge. It's not yet a famine. Don't get me wrong, but one thing that I learned there was that these people are really on the edge. The only difference for them between starvation and famine is perhaps a week, a month or even a year. It's not going to happen tomorrow. I'm not saying that.

MANN: It colors the way they view the world and the way they view outsiders like yourself.

Let's see once again another short excerpt of the film, on the first day you went to church.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMURA (voice-over): (UNINTELLIGIBLE) told me the best way to be accepted here is to prove I'm a Christian by kissing the Bible, but when I tried the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) runs away.

Then chaos breaks out.

I am amazed to find myself standing next to someone who can speak English in the village.

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

(on camera): So I am like a ghost, I am bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: They're responding to you because you're so clearly well-fed. How did they feel about people like you? Were they angry? Are they rebellious? Did they blame anyone, outsiders, for their fate?

SAMURA: They know -- that's what is interesting -- they know that the rest of the world is living well off. You know, they know that most of the people, especially the people in the West, are OK, and things are really, really bad for them, but their not waiting to just point fingers or be like most Africans who just play the blame game. They are doing something for themselves.

One thing stands out as far as they're concerned. They know -- and I do agree with them -- that the starvation that they're facing, the hunger situation, the poverty situation in the developing world, is really waiting, and that something has to be done.

And, you know, they told me outright, with people saying, "We are trying to understand why one part of the world is so rich and another part of the world is starving."

They told me outright, and I do agree with them. This is the 21st century. We can't -- this is not a time where we have to keep saying we're trying to understand. We're past that stage. By now, we should have answers to their problems.

MANN: Well, intriguingly, when you actually tried to live the way they did, it seemed to be harder on you.

Let's take, once again, a look at the film.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMURA (voice-over): It's August, the month when villagers weed their fields from dawn to dusk.

This is turf (ph), a kind of grass used to make angira (ph). It's weeks before the turf (ph) can be harvested.

The villagers mistake my size as a sign of strength, but believe me, I'm already feeling week.

(on camera): I've just been working a few hours with these people and I'm kind of really, really tired now (UNINTELLIGIBLE). There's no doubt that my energy level is going down, maybe because of the lack of a proper, balanced diet. But what is really amazing is the fact that these people are still going on. They seem really, really, up for it. I mean, they have the stamina to go on.

The old man behind me, I don't know where they get this energy from.

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

(voice-over): With nothing to eat since breakfast, I've only managed four hours.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: The impact on you is dramatic. At times it seems comic, but then the comedy goes away and it becomes stunning, what happens to you, trying to live on their diet.

Let me ask you not about that, though, but about the other remarkable thing in that scene, which is the color that we see. We're used to seeing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in almost sepia toned shades of beige and brown. That landscape looked lush, it looked fertile. Why were they unable to feed themselves from it?

SAMURA: I mean, that's the same question I asked the moment I set foot there, but believe me, what you see is really, really deceiving, that green, because this is in fact what these people need at the moment. They need agricultural revolution. They need education, which is almost not available there. They have no medical facilities.

These people don't have the education to understand that the soil has been used and overused and it's lost all its nutrients and its values to grow proper crops. They don't know that and they just keep going and going, believing that the soil will yield them the kind of crop they need.

It's completely deceiving. The soil is gone. The green you see is just -- it's just not yielding anything. But they don't know that. That is part of -- that is what we need to do, to try and give these people not just education, but to be able to do proper business with them, proper trade with them, to empower them so they will be self-sustainable, so that they don't continue just waiting there for somebody to come and rescue them.

MANN: On that note, I'm going to jump in, because in fact aid is not the answer. In their case, it was in fact another disappointment.

We're going to ask you to stay with us. We have to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about aid and why it doesn't seem to be helping.

Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMURA: I truly dread sunset in this place. I hate it when it's nightfall, because that's when most of the children start crying and the adults coughing, simply because they've had little or nothing to eat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMURA: The priest said most of you are eating these, yes, the roots of these leaves, yes. Can you honestly put your hands up if any of you at the moment are surviving on these?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Welcome back.

Aid is not the answer. Every year, Ethiopia has received millions of tons of food, but the food is being eaten and somehow it is not being spread far enough around.

Once again, let's go to that film, "Surviving Hunger."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMURA: Government has given you guide plans as to how much quota you should give. I mean, 12.5 per person. Why don't you just stick to that.

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

SAMURA (voice-over): The Government Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission claims that between August and December 2003, Ethiopia's food requirement was met. But my experience so far shows the food aid is not getting to where it's needed most.

Even in the markets, there's hardly any food.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Sorious Samura joins us once again.

This is a very serious accusation. Essentially, it would seem from the man you just spoke to that the government is misrepresenting the situation, misrepresenting where the aid is going.

Have you spoken to anyone in the government about this?

SAMURA: What we tried to do with this film was to move away from, you know, the areas that are heavily covered by the government, by the aide workers, by NGOs, and try to present the real pictures that you never quite see.

You know, one of those who are starving, who are living on the edge, but also of people who are doing something.

We tried to talk to government, and we know some of the answers that we are told, but I mean, the government, as well as the very average people and the aide workers who work for them, said one thing clearly, that this is not about aid. It is not about support. It is about empowering. It's the people, the average people.

As far as the villagers are concerned, they believe that the way aid is given has to be really looked into thoroughly. Perhaps the middle man, the government, and the aide workers needs to be looked into thoroughly and perhaps even taken away.

All they are saying what they want is, first of all, in the West they need to look at how they do business. You know, trade has to be taken into consideration. I mean, this country used to export coffee, but now, I mean, its coffee sales have all gone down. Why? We need to look at whether the Western powers are undermining African governments as well so that they can't look after their own people.

MANN: I'm going to jump in and try to steer you away. I don't want to end this conversation because it's not important, but rather to get back to something else that you discovered, I think, that a lot of people forget about malnutrition, which is that in areas where people are hungry, it is not starvation that kills them. It's disease.

Ethiopia has a malaria epidemic right now. It has an AIDS epidemic of terrible proportions. But even the people you encountered, who seemed to be free of those diseases, had other diseases with hunger at their origin.

Let's have a look now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMURA (voice-over): Everyone here seems to be suffering the effects of a bad diet. This teenager has a bacterial infection.

(on camera): How long have you had it?

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Now, Sorious Samura, the people that we saw did not have distended bellies. They didn't look like the kinds of people who are often seen in refugee camps, in areas where starvation has hit hard. You didn't go to a place like that. Why not?

SAMURA: Simply because that is what the West has been given as far as the coverage of Africa is concerned. They will only breeze in when things are really, really bad, when you have those pictures of hundreds of Africans dying, of thousands of Africans fleeing wars or dying because of lack of proper food and all these very big disaster stories. That's when you see the Western media coming in.

What we tried to portray in this film is for the West to understand that yes, it is difficult, it is tough for these people, but they are not waiting for handouts. They are doing something simply because they want to do something for themselves. They need help, they need support, just like the West did, Western Europe, in 1941, when they turned around and put the Marshall Plan in place, to save Western Europe.

But that was simply because they want to do business or America believed that they're going to do business with the West by saving, by rescuing the West, you know, Western Europe. And what we are now saying, even the American people who saved Western Europe in 1941 by borrowing $4 billion a year, you know, since '45 to '51. If they can do the same for Africa, you know, these people perhaps, you know, they won't be waiting again in the next 10, 15 years for the West to rescue them.

MANN: I take your point. I want to go very quickly in the time that we have remaining to one of the intimate aspects of all of this, what it's like at mealtime.

Let's watch the film once again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMURA: I'm finding it very difficult to eat this. They're telling me now that we're eating just this grass, you know, this cabbage. How do you feel?

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

SAMURA: But what about the children? I mean, how does this effect them?

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

SAMURA: It looks so disgusting. I mean, I'm (UNINTELLIGIBLE) eating, but what about you? How does it taste?

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Sorious Samura, it would seem from this film that you left that community feeling sorry for it, of course, but also admiring the people in it.

SAMURA: Well, I left them knowing that at least I am coming to a civilized world. A civilized world, you know, because I sit down, knowing that I left those people, who are so strong, who are doing everything to keep not just themselves and future generations alive, just barely alive, but you know, then coming to this part of the world where people say we're civilized.

The question is: how can we, with Christmas, with the festive season around the corner, how can we sit here and call ourselves civilized people when our neighbors just around the corner can't afford a meal to celebrate Christmas after a whole year of hard work.

You know, how can we call ourselves civilized when we're spending billions to prosecute wars, when we are spending billions to go to outer space to look for new neighbors, how can we call ourselves civilized?

MANN: On that note, Sorious Samura, the film "Surviving Hunger," thanks so much for talking with us.

SAMURA: Thank you for having me.

MANN: There are other questions to be asked. Why? Why is Ethiopia hungry? In part, because it's an agricultural society beset by cyclical drought, because its main crop is coffee and prices for it are tumbling. But there are economists who will tell you that famine is not a natural disaster, it's manmade, manufactured by mismanagement, war or neglect.

Joining us now to talk about Ethiopia is Alex De Waal, a scholar of hunger and aid in Africa.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Why is Ethiopia still hungry?

ALEX DE WAAL, AFRICAN SCHOLAR: Ethiopia is desperately poor, and I think Samura has done a remarkable job of actually explaining that it is not the incapacity or the weakness or the lack of skill of the ordinary people of Ethiopia that is the reason for this.

They have tremendous resilience. They have the capacity to feed themselves if only they are given the tools to do so, if only they are able to sell their crops to get an income.

But somehow Ethiopia has, as it were dropped there the international safety net that exists, and is in a truly desperate situation. It can feed itself if it has at least the minimum investment in agricultural that would allow it to develop, but it has not yet been given the opportunity to do that.

MANN: Is that, as Sorious Samura seemed to suggest, the fault of outsiders? Because some countries, it would seem, have been quite generous. Or is the problem, as some people have suggested, that the government of Ethiopia has mishandled agriculture and land?

DE WAAL: I think that the problem is not over-generosity or lack of generosity in the humanitarian aid business, because to be quite frank the humanitarian aid is, while important, is actually a relatively marginal contribution to people's survival.

What's much more important is what they provide themselves, their own work, the generosity of their own neighbors. And the Ethiopian government has not done everything right by any means. It has profound problems with its land policy. It spent billions of dollars recently on a war with (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It has not developed the private sector to the extent that it could.

But nonetheless, it's Rural Food Security Policy has been remarkably good over the last 12 years, and I think we need to be slightly forgiving. We need to be able to say that any government ought to be able to make some mistakes and still develop its economy, still serve its people.

And somehow the Ethiopian government has just completely been unable to develop the economy over the last 12 years despite getting the fundamentals broadly right. And I think the responsibility for that must lie partly in the trap into which it has fallen of simply not having enough resources in order to kick start its own economy. But also the fact that, as Samura mentioned, it doesn't get a good price for its coffee crop. It hasn't recently been able to export its livestock to the Middle East because there's been an import ban by Saudi Arabia.

It faces all these multiple adversities that stand in the way of it getting a leg up.

MANN: Long term, what's the solution? Or is it going to keep happening the way it has over the last 20 years, cyclically?

DE WAAL: I think at the moment the situation is fairly grim. And it's compounded by the fact that the HIV/AIDS epidemic undermines the very capacity of rural communities to reproduce themselves, to survive.

If those very hardy and resilient individuals in Samura's film had been suffering from AIDS, had the adults been dying early, then even that limited ability to survive that they have would have been undermined and they would have been plunged into crisis. And indeed this is what is happening in parts of southern Africa even as we speak.

So I think greater assistance is needed, but also a lot of attention is needed to make sure that the international agricultural markets are fair, that the farmers in these countries can get a fair price for their food.

MANN: Forgive me for interrupting. Something to think about, perhaps, the next time we all go get a cup of coffee. But on that note, I'm afraid we have to bring this conversation to an end.

Alex De Waal, thanks so much.

Before we go, a quick word on how you can see the film, "Surviving Hunger." The short answer is, if you're in Asia or Latin America, tune in this weekend. It will be shown several times this coming Saturday and Sunday, different times depending on where in the world you live.

For viewers in Europe, we will bring you the film in February and let you know more about it then.

I'm Jonathan Mann.

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