Читать книгу Feed the World: Birhan Woldu and Live Aid - Oliver Harvey - Страница 6

BIRHAN IS A WONDER. She is a beautiful, clever young woman from the Northern Highlands of Ethiopia. She had originally featured as a dying infant in extreme agony in the now-famous Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) footage, which David Bowie introduced, that stopped the world cold at the Live Aid concerts of 1985. Twenty years later the world watched again as Birhan appeared as a stunning, dignified, resolute, intelligent, productive, dynamic human being alongside Madonna at the Live 8 concerts of 2005. Now she was the living proof that each life is sacred and that each individual lost is a loss to all.

Birhan’s story and that of her family beggars belief. Not just that she was able to go from a subsistence life pretty much unchanged from pre-medieval times to become a glowing paradigm of an independent, college-educated, glamorous 21stcentury woman in just 20 years. But also that she could go from an agonized, shrieking, shrunk, dying, little scrap of humanity cradled sorrowfully in her father’s gentle arms to a glowing, ever smiling, serene woman of our time almost seems impossible.

Who was the greater star that day? Madonna or Birhan? For the world it was clear. Here was OUR miracle. Here was the living proof that it is not futile to help. That aid most certainly works. With one smile Birhan defeated the cynics and made us understand that all of that effort had been worth it. Indeed, now, when people say to me: ‘Why do you do it?’, it is easy to just point at this girl and say, ‘Because of that!’

And I tell you this: if, after all the years of work and effort and sleeplessness and travel and meetings and triumphs and mistakes; if, after all of the money and politics and shouting and arguing – if, after all of that, it had all only resulted in the single life of this woman, then just for that one life, just for that single human being, it would have been worth it.

Birhan survived because of Brian Stewart, a wonderful reporter for the CBC, who made the original film we showed that day at Live Aid in 1985. He made sure she was cared for and supported throughout her life. Oliver Harvey then brought her to the attention of the world again. All you can say is ‘Thank God’ – for her and for both of those men.

This is Birhan’s extraordinary story told with profound respect and clear emotion by a man who has obviously imbibed her culture and come to love and respect it. Oliver fills his narrative with erudition and explanation. He has come to love Ethiopia – the most beautiful of lands – as does anyone who goes there.

When I first met Oliver I thought he was the most unlikely of candidates to ever ‘get’ what was going on. It crossed my mind that his parents had to have had a vivid sense of humour when they named him, more or less, after one of the greatest funny men of all time. Was this ‘another fine mess’ he was going to get me into?

Oliver was the very model of the model of the British journalist. Straight out of Evelyn Waugh. Crumpled, sweaty, dressed in an off-white linen suit and inappropriately heavy brogues. Weedy rather than skinny, blinking constantly behind thick glasses, thinning hair sweat-plastered to a damp skull and hesitantly asking frankly silly ‘human-angle’ tabloid questions. I saw him again a week later. Same clothes. Same sweat. Same discomfort. Different questions – this time penetrating, clever, full of understanding, curious. He was a journalist. He was hooked. Africa had got him.

It was Michael Buerk, though, who made the agony of the Great African Famines a televisual reality for us in the 1980s. Paul Vallely, now Associate Editor of the UK’s Independent newspaper, gave us the insights and realities of the hunger through his broadsheet journalism. Oliver just helped make the individual tragedies a clearly understood reality for millions of Britons through his great tabloid reporting.

Like thousands of others who engaged with this ‘story’ Oliver got hooked. He realized that he could use his talents and job to achieve something greater than the momentary satisfaction of a ‘good story’. He could actually help to change things. He did so by making the vast readership of The Sun newspaper understand and identify with the immeasurably brave souls and their torture in the parched lands of Ethiopia. As a result, no politician could safely ignore this concern.

To its undying credit and pride, Britain, despite its often difficult economic circumstances, has pledged itself – through several governments of all political hues – to maintain its promises to the poor. In this it is wholly supported by the majority of the public and the media. It is now among the world leaders in the area of development and assistance to developing countries – with all the attendant and immense benefits of ‘soft power’ that come with the strength of doing what you say and of holding to your political convictions.

Over the years I’ve seen Oliver bed down wherever there was space. Mud floors, wooden benches, low-powered mosquito-humming hot rooms, wherever. He never stands aloof. He literally seems quite at home amongst the most fantastical of peoples and actively participates in whatever is going on with them like he’s having the absolute best time of his life. He is never patronizing. Rather he’s laughing, chatting, accepting and being accepted and loving it.

He’s a hard nut and I have a deep respect for him as a man and as a reporter. One never hears the expression ‘Fleet Street’s finest’ any more. It has become an oxymoron. But in the unlikely circumstance that the dignity and pride of the British press is ever restored, it will be quite right to say of one O. Harvey that he is, indeed, one of Fleet Street’s finest.

In this book Oliver tells the tale of his greatest story – the life of Birhan Woldu. The story of the life of a dying child, whose image so appalled the world that it could not stand by and let it pass without action. And the world has been repaid times over for its compassion. In Birhan, this glorious human being, the world has the perfect exemplar of what it is to be human and alive.