Feed the World: Birhan Woldu and Live Aid. Oliver Harvey
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OLIVER HARVEY is Chief Feature Writer
at the British newspaper The Sun. He was the joint winner of the Hugh Cudlipp Award in 2005 and was named Reporter of the Year in 2006 at the British Press Awards.
BOB GELDOF is a leading activist.
He was a member of the celebrated band The Boomtown
Rats. In 1984 he was the driving force behind Band Aid,
created to help raise awareness and funds
for famine relief in Africa.
Feed the World
Birhan Woldu and Live Aid
Oliver Harvey
Foreword by
Bob Geldof
Published in 2011 by New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd
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Text copyright © 2011 Oliver Harvey
Foreword copyright © 2011 Bob Geldof
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ Bob Geldof/Midge Ure; lyrics reproduced by kind permission.
Copyright © 2011 New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd
Oliver Harvey has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. The Publishers apologize for any unintentional errors or omissions and would be pleased to insert the proper credit in any subsequent edition or reprint.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84773 845 5 (print)
ISBN 978 1 78009 139 6 (ePub)
ISBN 978 1 78009 140 2 (Pdf)
Publisher: Aruna Vasudevan
Senior Editor: Jolyon Goddard
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Reproduction by Pica Digital Pte. Ltd., Singapore
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press
CONTENTS
The Closest Thing to Hell on Earth
And the Lesson Today Is How To Die…
Out of the Darkness, Into the Light
FOREWORD
by
BOB GELDOF
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