We are Really, Really Sorry!

This is a picture of a starving little girl crawling towards the UN Food Camp, located kilometer away: she had collapsed in the bush, and a vulture nearby seemed to be waiting for her to die. This photograph won Kevin Carter the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. The story of this picture does not end here. It has a more touching and tragic story to tell.

In 1993, Kevin Carter went to Sudan to capture images of that nation's dismal and unending civil war. Immediately after they landed in the village of Ayod, Carter began snapping photos of famine victims. Seeking relief from the sight of masses of people starving to death, he wandered into the open bush. He heard a soft, high-pitched whimpering and saw a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding centre. As he crouched to photograph her, a vulture landed in view.

After he took his photographs, he chased the bird away and watched as the little girl resumed her struggle. Afterwards he sat under a tree for a long time, smoking cigarettes, talked to God, cried, and thought about his own daughter, Megan. He later confided to friends that he wished he had intervened and helped the child. Journalists at the time were supposedly warned never to touch famine victims for fear of disease.

The photograph first appeared in the New York Times on 26 March 1993. Hundreds of people wrote and called the Times asking what had happened to the child. The reaction to the picture was so strong that The New York Times published an unusual editor's note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown. Papers around the world reproduced the photo, and Kevin had become internationally known for his Pulitzer prizewinning photo.

Meanwhile, others questioned his ethics. The St Petersburg Times remarked, "The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene." Even some of Carter's friends wondered aloud why he had not helped the girl.

Two months after receiving his Pulitzer, Carter was found dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in Johannesburg, a suicide at 33. Portion of his suicide note reads: “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving and wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners..." “I'm really, really sorry," he explained, "The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."

Think about this! About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the UN. The WHO estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed, one-third is starving! However, the world can produce enough food to feed its expanding population.

While millions of people are living in extreme poverty and hunger we can spend millions of dollars and pounds on weapons of mass destruction which are actually meant for the destruction of human life. Because of man’s greed, lust for power and money, and cruelty many children, like this sweet little innocent being, are starving to death! While we are enjoying a luxurious and comfortable life, people are struggling so hard for their survival. We let millions of poor beings suffer awfully daily and look the other way. Forgive us Lord. We are really, really sorry!