I've just got back from my first trip for Oxfam, to the remote and inaccessible reaches of the Somali and Afar regions of Ethiopia, which is near to the country's borders with Somalia and Djibouti.
The area has been devastated by drought for the last two years, and many of the people there are now at the point of despair as their livestock - their only source of income - starve and die and they themselves are suffering malnutrition.
Since I got back last Thursday I've been grumbling about the unpleasant rumbling in my guts that resulted from the dubious final meal I had in Addis Ababa before I left.
I'd been pretty proud of my digestive system until then, as it had survived the onslaught of mysterious meals in cafes in tiny desert settlements and kind (if worrying) offerings from nomads in villages 3 hours drive from the nearest tarmac road.
The generosity of the people we met was, in reality, staggering. In one village I met a woman who was reckoned to be two days from death by starvation. As I was filming and interviewing her (after she was given some life-saving nutrition) I was brought a cup of tea by the people she lived with. Tea in Ethiopia is drunk very sweet, and this cup contained the very last of the community's sugar - and while they were starving, they gave it to me.
I wanted to refuse it for many reasons. If I'm honest, the first reason is that I'm a coward and I was convinced that this cup of rather sludgy liquid would make me ill, but more than that I was horrified that this energy giving substance was being wasted on a paunchy westerner while these people, who were suffering hunger and thirst every day went without. But I drank it gratefully, and wondered whether I would ever be so generous.
It's funny how easy it is to forget that people in crises are actually people. One of the most poignant (if slightly embarrassing) moments on the trip took place when Nick Danziger, the award-winning photographer who had come with me to document the developing crisis, spotted a young girl herding her sheep and goats on the side of a hill in the middle of the desert, and a young man standing nearby.
Nick asked our driver to stop and tried to call the two people over, but while the young man looked at us quizzically and wandered over, the girl took off like a rocket up the hill.
When we asked the man why she had run away he explained that he had walked several hours through the desert to chat her up. He thought that she would make a good second wife, and was, basically, on the pull.
She, naturally, was not very pleased that this intimate moment was interrupted by a bunch of foreigners with cameras.
We had other concerns as well, though - wouldn't his first wife be somewhat put-out by his amorous wanderings?
"No," he explained matter-of-factly. "She wants me to get a second wife. These urban women get very cross about sharing their husband and their money, but in rural areas they see it differently. There is a lot of work to do, and my wife wants to spread the load."
Fair enough, I suppose. I'm not sure what Oxfam's position is on polygamy, but on testing the water with my wife, I discovered what hers was...
Read more from Rob McNeal.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
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