LIKE an Ethiopian princess, Birhan Woldu strode to the
centre of the vast Live 8 stage before the hushed crowd of 205,000 music fans.
Birhan Woldu @ Home
It was July 2, 2005. In ten-metre-high freeze-frame on a
huge screen above the tearful hordes was a picture of a child's ghostly face
from two decades before.
The little girl's sunken brown eyes, lifeless behind
half-closed lids, were eerily recognisable. The harrowing picture was of
Birhan, moments after a nurse had given her just 15 minutes to live during
Ethiopia's great famine of 1984.
Her lips parted as she apparently took her last breath in
the famous image screened at the original Live Aid concert 20 years earlier.
Now, smiling Birhan walked over to Band Aid guru Bob Geldof
and kissed him on the lips. She was very much alive.
Madonna then bounded on stage, visibly overcome with
emotion, and with her alabaster-white hand clasped Birhan's sinuous brown arm
and raised it skywards.
With that gesture the two women acknowledged the triumph of
the human spirit, the uniting of the First World and the Third.
Geldof then told the crowd: "Don't let them tell you
this doesn't work."
Today, six years later, Birhan has told me her incredible
and moving story of survival for a new book, Feed The World: Birhan Woldu And
Live Aid.
As a result of the 2005 concert, world leaders agreed to
boost aid for developing countries by £31billion. Beforehand they had written
off £23billion of debt owed by the world's 18 poorest countries.
Just 48 hours before Live 8, Birhan had been in her family's
stone-walled, corrugated iron-roofed cottage in the remote Ethiopian Highlands.
Now she was in Live 8's VIP zone backstage, where free lobster and wine were
being served.
Sir Paul McCartney strolled past. Brad Pitt quietly
introduced himself, as did a chatty David and Victoria Beckham. The then
world's richest man, Bill Gates, said hello.
Birhan had no idea who any of them were. But suddenly her
eyes widened and she began giggling with excitement.
She had finally recognised a face among the celebs — it was
Sun columnist and Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson.
The programme can be seen in Ethiopia and is hugely popular
and she squealed: "I can't believe I've just met Clarkson!"
The Sun had flown Birhan 3,700 miles from Ethiopia for Live
8. It had been a rollercoaster ten months since she and I had first met.
What had started as an interview with Birhan at her Tigray
home on the 20th anniversary of Ethiopia's famine had mushroomed into something
incredible.
There had been an emotional meeting with Tony Blair and Bob
Geldof in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. This had led to the re-recording
of the Band Aid single Do They Know It's Christmas?.
When I had put the idea to Geldof, he batted straight back:
"Only if you f***ing organise it."
So The Sun's showbiz team immediately secured some of pop's
biggest names for the record. The impetus from the song was a factor in pushing
an initially unenthusiastic Geldof to get behind a concert on the anniversary
of Live Aid.
Near Death, Birhan Woldu in 1985
Since then Birhan and I had become good friends and she
asked if I would write her life story.
All author's profits from the book will be split equally
between Birhan and the charity that supported her, the African Children's
Educational Trust, or ACET.
The small, Leicester-based charity provides education for
vulnerable Ethiopian children such as Birhan.
Today she and her student husband Birhanu live in a two-room
stone house in the centre of Mekele in Tigray Province.
Now 30, she works with the UN's World Food Programme as a
Food Monitor Assistant. As part of her job she travels to remote villages to
check if children are malnourished or suffering from disease.
Birhan Woldu with David and Victoria Beckham
Her work echoes her own childhood experience. In 1984
Ethiopia was hit by a drought which Birhan's father Woldu described as
"the land and the sky colliding". Then famine came.
Yet it wasn't just nature conspiring against the people —
Marxist dictator Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam unleashed his troops in the
Highlands to suppress rebellions against his brutal rule.
Crops and pastures were torched, livestock stolen or killed
and farmers displaced.
Mountain people such as Birhan's family were forced to sell
their herds, tools, household goods and jewellery for food. Then, in a last
flight to try to survive, they made for the great trunk road to Addis Ababa
from where any relief might come.
Birhan's mother, Alemetsehay, and five-year-old sister,
Azmera, died in the disaster, which became known as the Great Hunger.
Reporter Brian Stewart and his crew from the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation had originally filmed Birhan when she was close to
death at a clinic near Mekele.
One of the centre's nuns had insisted: "She will die
here, maybe within 15 minutes." But weeks later Stewart returned to find
Birhan had survived.
CBC crew member Colin Dean put together his own music video
as a memorial to victims of the famine set to the haunting ballad Drive by
American band The Cars.
Birhan Woldu With Brad Pitt
It was this footage — including a dying Birhan — which would
haunt the world when it was screened at Live Aid the following year.
Mengistu's method of dealing with the famine was to herd
starving farmers on to planes at gunpoint and transport them to resettlement
camps in the lowlands where rainfall was more plentiful.
Birhan and her family were forcibly removed to a
disease-ridden camp in the south of Ethiopia near the Sudanese border.
Her father Woldu then decided he would walk back to their
home village around 800 miles away in Tigray rather than die in the lowlands.
So he hoisted Birhan and sister Silas on his shoulders and carried them the
whole way.
It took two months and three weeks and Woldu recalls the day
they arrived back in their village.
By following the saints days in the Ethiopian calendar he
knew it was July 12, 1985, in the Western calendar.
A day later, July 13, unbeknown to the family, Live Aid was
broadcast — the day the music changed the world.
Now, smiling Birhan walked over to Band Aid guru Bob Geldof
and kissed him on the lips. She was very much alive.
With that gesture the two women acknowledged the triumph of
the human spirit, the uniting of the First World and the Third.
Geldof then told the crowd: "Don't let them tell you
this doesn't work."
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