Ethiopia: Pain amid Plenty :: Ethiopian Review: "Paleontologists hunting fossils of early man in the Rift Valley of southern Ethiopia call the area the cradle of mankind. This year it's bursting with life, especially in the fields where local farmers grow barley, potatoes and teff, a cereal used to make the flat, spongy bread injera. As a warm July rain falls on a patchwork of smallholdings half a day's walk from the nearest road, the women harvest yams, the men plow behind sturdy oxen and fat chickens, goats and cows roam outside mud huts. And yet for all the apparent abundance, this area is so short of food that many are dying from starvation.
All morning, the hills above the village of Kersa have echoed with the wails of women walking in from the fields. They gather on a patch of open grass before a stretcher made from freshly cut bamboo, bound and laid with banana leaves. On it is a small bundle wrapped in a red-and-blue blanket. An imam calls the crowd together, asks them to take off their shoes and arranges them in two lines, women behind men, facing east. 'Allahu akbar,' he says twice. Then four men pick up the bier, easily handling its weight with one arm, and walk a short way to a freshly dug hole, into which they lower the bundle and bury it. Three other small, fresh graves nearby indicate Ayano Gemeda, 6, was not the first child to starve in"
All morning, the hills above the village of Kersa have echoed with the wails of women walking in from the fields. They gather on a patch of open grass before a stretcher made from freshly cut bamboo, bound and laid with banana leaves. On it is a small bundle wrapped in a red-and-blue blanket. An imam calls the crowd together, asks them to take off their shoes and arranges them in two lines, women behind men, facing east. 'Allahu akbar,' he says twice. Then four men pick up the bier, easily handling its weight with one arm, and walk a short way to a freshly dug hole, into which they lower the bundle and bury it. Three other small, fresh graves nearby indicate Ayano Gemeda, 6, was not the first child to starve in"
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