In April 1991 I travelled to Eritrea in East Africa with writer Paul Vallely as part of a book on land rights called ‘Promised Lands’ for the UK NGO Christian Aid. We spent two weeks with Gebremariam Goytem and his wife Lentenk’iel who live in Meshal village in the Eritrean highlands with their six children. They are hoping that the rains will not fail again this year. “It is two years since we had even a small harvest,” he says. “We spread it out as long as we could but it went long ago. Last year we ploughed and planted but we got nothing so we had to sell all our sheep – 20 of them – and our ox to buy grain. The ox we have has been borrowed from my uncle. All we have now is one hen with six chicks. “We are very poor now and we depend completely on food-aid”.
Read Paul’s excellent article about Gebremariam’s family that The Telegraph Magazine published with my pictures soon after our return.