Feed the World: Birhan Woldu and Live Aid. Oliver Harvey
flags to flutter in the muggy heat of a London summer’s day – St George Crosses, Welsh dragons, a Red Hand of Ulster, several in the colours of the rainbow. Banners read: ‘Wow Bob, it’s huge’, ‘Hello World’ and ‘Live 8 before it’s too late’. The words of the celebrated Indian human rights activist Mahatma Gandhi flashed up on giant video screens. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ Outside the park, London’s streets were largely empty. Most people were at home watching the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ on TV. It was the topic of conversation in every pub and every taxi driver had his or her view.
Birhan surveyed the crowd with all the noble and proud bearing of her people who came from the mountains of Tigray Province. Her hair was styled in the traditional way. Plaited into neat cornrows on her crown, it flared out, luxuriantly bouncing on her shoulders. She wore a simple white tunic embroidered with small, light blue Christian crosses. Wrapped around the 24-year-old’s shoulders was a bright white shamma linen shawl stitched here and there with red, blue and green diamonds. Her brown eyes sparkled with life; her clear skin was the rich colour of Ethiopian coffee. Like many from her region, she had a little scar etched on her forehead in the shape of a crucifix. She stood now, like an Ethiopian princess, on a 2 metre- (6.56 feet) wide platform by the side of the huge stage. Bundles of cables ran everywhere like creeping vines. Stacks of guitars stood on castors and a huge silver drum kit was being assembled by frantic roadies.
Just 48 hours earlier, Birhan had been in her family’s stonewalled, corrugated iron-roofed cottage in the remote Ethiopian Highlands. Their cow was tethered to an olive tree outside and bantam chickens pecked the tinder-dry dark brown soil. When Birhan was younger she had slept on stiff ox skins in a dung-walled hut with a thatched roof in a lonely mountain valley. Alone with her goats on the high alpine meadows for the daylight hours, the crust of bread she brought from home often would not be enough to stave off hunger. She would lie down beneath the nanny goats’ back legs and suckle warm milk straight from their teats.
London was a different world. The roaring traffic never seemed to stop and the red buses of the British capital were huge. Amazing food, more than Birhan could ever have imagined, piled high in front of her. After trying hamburgers for the first time, she had now eaten two in as many days. Then there were the people, rushing, always rushing. Why didn’t they say ‘hello’ when they passed each other in the street? It would be rude to walk past people in Tigray without greeting them first. She was glad to have her friend from home, Bisrat Mesfin, with her at this huge concert. She knew that her English wasn’t always good and Bisrat was much more confident when dealing with the farenjis (foreigners). His girlfriend, Rahel Haile Selassie, had also come along to keep them company.
All afternoon the wide-eyed Ethiopians had watched the parade of rock stars trooping past in their lovely clothes. Bisrat had pointed out an older farenji called ‘Paul’ whom he said had once been in a band called The Beatles. Birhan had never heard of him nor of his group. Earlier Paul (Sir Paul McCartney) had played The Beatles’ iconic song ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band’ along with rock band U2. ‘It was twenty years ago today…’, they sang, setting the right note for the day. As Paul squeezed past the throng of supermodels and film stars, U2 released a cloud of 200 white doves which soared high over the crowd as the band roared into its hit ‘Beautiful Day’.
Singer Bono then paused, saying: ‘This is our time. This is our chance to stand up for what’s right. We’re not looking for charity, we’re looking for justice. We can’t fix every problem, but the ones we can fix, we must.’
The crowd seemed so happy; everyone was dancing. Birhan was led to a green Portakabin where a pretty woman with dyed red hair put blusher and eyeshadow on her face. It was the first time she had ever worn make-up and she liked the way it looked so much that she thought she must remember to take some back to Ethiopia with her.
She didn’t know much pop music, preferring the traditional Arabian-tinged music of her homeland. Madonna was the only name on the bill that Birhan recognized before arriving in Britain. Birhan was awestruck.
Now, in a pale linen Nehru suit, his straggly hair tucked under a baggy black cap, musician Bob Geldof came up and hugged Birhan tight, before saying: ‘Ok, darling, this is it. You’ll be fine.’ Standing in the stage wings, Geldof, his dark brown eyes aflame with emotion, seemed tense. Birhan smiled. She appeared as serene and calm as ever. Geldof swallowed hard.
To a deafening roar from the 205,000 crowd, Geldof strode to the centre of the vast Live 8 stage. The Father of both Band Aid and of Live Aid 20 years earlier had, it seemed, done the unthinkable again. It was July 2, 2005, and he had managed to focus the world’s attention once again on the plight of Africa by amassing almost every leading musician who had picked up a guitar in the last 40 years. There stood Sir Paul, a re-formed Pink Floyd, The Who, U2, Sir Elton John, Madonna, Coldplay, Mariah Carey, Sting and George Michael. In 1985 the concerts had been held in London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s John F. Kennedy Stadium. Today there were other Live 8s taking place in Toronto, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Moscow, and once again, in Philadelphia. Then, with an estimated three billion eyes on him from every corner of the globe – and the G8 leaders of the world’s richest and most powerful nations about to meet on British soil – Geldof stopped the music. He had something to say.
‘Some of you were here 20 years ago. Some of you were not even born. I want to show you why we started this long, long walk to justice. It began … because many of us around the world watching here now saw something happening that was so grotesque in this world of plenty. We felt physically sick that anyone should die of want and decided we were going to change that. I want to show you, just in case you forgot, why we did this. Just watch this film.’
With a wave of his hand Geldof motioned to the massive video screen behind him. US band The Cars’ haunting track ‘Drive’, with its melancholy keyboard refrain, echoed through the massive PA system. ‘Who’s gonna tell you when it’s too late, who’s gonna tell you things aren’t so great…’ A stark film of Ethiopia’s almost-biblical famine, when an estimated one million Tigrayan farmers perished of starvation, began to play. It was the same footage shot by a CBC news crew that had been shown at the original Live Aid concert two decades before.
An emaciated little boy, his legs mere bone and twitching sinew, kept trying to get to his feet in the early morning Tigray mist. Again and again. Then he slumped down, defeated. There was no strength left in his hunger-wracked body. Another skeletal boy stared blankly at the camera before burying his face in his bony hands. More and more children followed in a ghastly parade of the dead and dying. Then for a few moments the camera lingered on the tortured face of a little girl. Her desperate father had carried her to a clinic as she fought for life, but a nurse had told him it was hopeless. She gave the child just 15 minutes to live. The little girl’s sunken brown eyes were lifeless behind half-closed lids. Her sallow parchment skin pulled taut against protruding cheekbones. Her swollen lips parted as she apparently took her last breath. Then the film stopped – the child’s ghostly face in 10 metre- (32.8 feet) high freeze-frame above the now silent thousands.
At Live Aid on July 13, 1985, the same video had stopped the world. Twenty years later it had the same effect. TV cameras panning along the ranks of pop fans in their white ‘Make Poverty History’ wristbands picked up the unrestrained grief. Tears flowed and arms were flung around strangers. Now Geldof, his voice croaky with emotion, motioned up at the Ethiopian child’s agonized face and spoke again.
‘See this little girl – she had minutes to live 20 years ago. And because we did a concert in this city and Philadelphia, last week she did her agricultural exams at the school she goes to in the northern Ethiopian Highlands. She’s here tonight this little girl. Birhan. Don’t let them tell us that this doesn’t work.’
Suddenly there she was on the Live 8 stage. She was alive.
Birhan, with Bisrat in her wake, walked over to Geldof and kissed him on the lips. Dignified and radiating an inner calm, the young woman’s jubilant smile flashed around the globe by TV satellite in an instant. The thousands watching in Hyde Park were stunned