By Don Varyu

Apr 2023

(Editor’s note: this site normally deals with analysis and opinion. The following piece is different. It’s a thin slice of autobiography, a story that occupied just two weeks of my life…but had a permanent impact.)

e rode two hours in an old Land Rover over pock-marked paths that passed for “roads” in Central Africa. The potholes looked like miniature bomb craters. Our backs ached all the way through to our kidneys.

And we thought we had it bad.

Eventually a hill appeared on the right, rising out of the desert. We began to drive around it on the left and quickly realized this road was part of a plateau, only halfway down the full hillside. Far below us spread a vast expanse of bumps on the landscape. They looked like the sprawling prairie dog homesteads on the American plains.

But as we got closer, we realized these were much larger enclosures—not homes to rodents, but humans.

At the edge of this makeshift encampment, we got out and immediately saw an infant, just three days old, fighting for her life. She lay on a newspaper-lined table in what served as an outdoor emergency room. A plastic tube was being thrust through her nose and down to her lungs…attempting to remove suffocating mucous. Her mother had lost three previous babies. This was the first time she dared to leave her hut and seek medical help. A nurse tapped the top of the baby’s fragile head, trying to raise a tiny blood vessel into which she could insert an IV that might save the newborn’s life…

ere’s how I got there. In the week following Christmas in 1980, my friend Chuck walked into my office in Chicago. He was co-anchor of our station’s main newscasts, and I was second-in-charge of the news operation. “You’re not going to believe this”, he said. He began telling me about a conversation he had with his cousin during his holiday visit back home to Los Angeles. The cousin, Gary, was an executive with an international relief organization called World Vision. Gary had told him incredible stories about thousands and thousands of refugees in Africa fleeing oppression, drought and war. Even if they managed to escape their native lands, many would die on the exodus. There was not enough help to save them.

But on the world stage, no one was paying attention.

We asked each other, could this possibly be true? We decided to subscribe to an obscure foreign policy journal focusing on Africa. And when the first back issues arrived, there on a cover was immediate validation. Yes, there was an undeniable human tragedy unfolding…without barely a notice in the West.

We went to our boss and said, “we’ve got to do this story!” He agreed— with one condition. I would go along not only as producer—but also to shoot the video. For him, that meant the necessary cost-savings to make the trip feasible. A union cameraman—an accomplished professional--would certainly do a much better job, but also cost a small fortune in mandatory travel stipends and overtime. Although the plan to use me was ‘legal’ under the videographers’ union contract, it did not win me any friends. But at the time, all we knew was that we needed to get that story.

The Background

Our arrival in Africa was eye-opening, to say the least. To understand requires a little background. In 1976, Palestinian hijackers forced an Air France flight to land in Uganda. The infamous Ugandan ruler Idi Amin welcomed the hijackers and almost all the prisoners. He released most of the passengers quickly--except the Israeli and Jewish ones. He demanded the release of 53 Palestinians being held in Israel as part of an exchange.

The Israelis had a different idea. They conducted the infamous “raid on Entebbe” (the main Ugandan airport where the hostages were imprisoned). With the help of intelligence from Kenya, the Israelis succeeded, but in the process killed three of the hostages, three hijackers and 45 Ugandan soldiers.

Amin decided his revenge. He ordered the executions of 245 Kenyans living in Uganda (because of Kenya’s cooperation in planning the raid). Five years later, when we landed, we discovered that tensions remained on the edge of lethal.

We landed, fully jet-lagged, at the Nairobi airport. For the first and only time in my life, I wound up the very first in line to deplane. But when the door opened all jet lag vanished. I looked up to see two large Kenyan soldiers with automatic rifles at the ready, eyeing me with piercing glares. Behind them were a dozen more. This welcome committee was there to assure no revenge attack was imminent. We later learned that this was commonplace for arriving commercial flights.

Along with every other passenger, we performed the quietest exit in aviation history. And the silence continued as we waited down at baggage claim. It was a large open space with an overhead mezzanine balcony surrounding us. At intervals of just a few feet, dozens of other soldiers and their rifles inspected every move. There wasn’t a peep from anyone. We carefully picked up suitcases and got out. We hadn’t seen a refugee yet, but it was clear we weren’t in Chicago anymore.

Into the Wild

Things seemed to be much calmer when we checked into the Intercontinental Hotel in the middle of Nairobi. Looking out from our balconies, we saw a nicely manicured green space, with the national Parliament and other government buildings across and alongside. But the calm didn’t last long. That night was punctuated with gunfire from somewhere close by. The front desk assured us this was normal—nothing to worry about. We worried anyway.

The next morning we flew out in a helicopter over the outskirts of Nairobi…and you could swear we were passing over some idyllic English countryside. Small cottages, green gardens, and white picket fences all around. We were low enough to see people planting in those gardens. Then, without warning…WHOOOOSH! It felt like our stomachs had dropped out of the copter. We hadn’t changed elevation, but the Earth had. The ground had fallen off a cliff hundreds of feet high. This was the edge of the Rift Valley, the place where humanity began. As we flew, we spotted something entirely illogical—a small lake in the distance that was colored pink. We asked the pilot why, and he said, “hold on, I’ll show you.” We descended and found that there was no pink water—instead, a lake totally filled with pink flamingoes! Phenomenal.

By now, we were ready to cover our story. But the story wasn’t yet ready for us. We landed at the first camp in 112-degree heat. We were ushered into a large, well-stocked and civil main tent where the woman who ran the place was waiting for us. She offered us tea and a nice conversation.

That night we slept in a small two-room hut away from the main tent. Chuck and I immediately grabbed the side with two beds—the one further away from the door. We were advised to turn our boots upside down overnight to keep scorpions from nestling inside. That was enough to spook Gary. He insisted on closing the door to “keep the lions out” …and we pointed out they would get him first, not us, so we’d get up and open it to give us some air flow. This charade went on for some time. Hey, Africa could be fun!

Still, where were the starving refugees? Well, it turned out this camp had done a masterful job tending to them. We began to wonder if this “human tragedy” thing was really a story at all.

The next day, at a second camp, we found the same reality; people being well cared for. Chuck and I realized Gary was trying to put the best foot forward in service to World Vision. But we informed him PR was NOT why we were there. If he didn’t get us to a true crisis site, we were heading home.

So, on the third day, he showed us what we were looking for.

It Gets Real

We got to the airport early the next morning, and it was obvious the pilot had spent most of the night with a bottle. He wore the brim of his captain’s hat down low, with dark aviator sunglasses. He gruffly mumbled, ‘mornin’” with the sour whiff of too much gin. In every way, this was a makeshift trip. The pilot’s main source of navigation was a string of primitive roads in the wasteland below us. And there had been no way to communicate to the camp that we were coming. We flew for more than an hour, and as we got ready to land, we saw a Land Rover spewing dust as it rushed up to meet us. The pilot dipped and banked to begin the landing. But in the process, he brushed the plane’s fixed landing gear against the top leaves and limbs of a rare clump of trees. Was this a result of his hangover? Or was he just messing with me, sitting alongside in the passenger’s seat? Either way, I braced for a crash.

The minute we landed, the journalism began. Rushing from their vehicle was a doctor from Canada and a nurse from Germany. “Thank God you’re here!”, they shouted. But we weren’t even expected—how could they be happy to see us? We hustled into their Land Rover and sped to a square, cinder block building with a cement floor and thatched roof. There was no furniture inside…no clue as to its purpose. Then, walking into one of four small chambers, we saw her. She was a young native woman lying on the bare floor, lifeless except for an occasional moan. There was blood. She had a miscarriage four days before and hemorrhaged much of the time since. Her lips were turning white.

Was there any way we would possibly consider using our plane to carry her to the nearest hospital, almost an hour away? The three of us answered in unison: “Of course!” We helped load her onto a goatskin and we carried her out and into the back of the vehicle.

The woman’s sister then arrived and joined us. We found out that for the first three days only medicine from the village witch doctor had been administered. On this fourth morning she was finally taken to the nurse, and an IV was inserted. But by this point, the IV would not nearly be enough. Time was of the essence.

Then...a delay. The sister was required for a transfusion—but she refused to get on the plane. She had never been close to one, much less taken off. She was afraid the plane would take them both off to heaven, never to return. Communicating with her might have been impossible except for a six-year-old girl named Heather, the daughter of one of the medical workers.

She had learned the basics of the Turkana language playing with the local tribal kids. In halting exchanges, she begged with the sister. Finally, the patient’s father arrived…listened…and agreed to board the plane. So, the sister got on, too. There was no room for any of us, so we watched the plane take off, having no idea when it would return. We hoped for a success.

No such luck. Upon return, the nurse said that the young mother remained steady for most of the flight, but then things changed: “She was alright for quite a time, and I thought she would make it. Then, as we went down, she got weaker and weaker and weaker. And then, when we really hit the ground, I thought she was taking her last breath—just at that minute.”

The young woman’s body was loaded off the plane and placed on the ground. An air of sorrow engulfed us. No one knew exactly what to do. Kneeling alongside, the woman’s father crouched, devastated, head in his hands, and hands tightly pressed to his knees. What had just happened? What more could he, as a father, have done to save his girl? As I pointed my camera at him, tears dripped into the camera eyepiece. It was the most gut-wrenching moment I had ever lived.

The Refugee ‘City’

We departed for another refugee camp—but first, a stopover in Djibouti, Djibouti. If that sounds redundant, just think of New York, New York. In one sense, these two places couldn’t be more different. But in another way, they share a common historical marker. Just as Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the funnel for nearly 12 million immigrants coming to America, Djibouti is believed to have been the main port through which the first humans left the African continent. Their descendants would eventually spread to inhabit the rest of the world.

During the colonial period, the French oversaw the region, and it seemed that an echo of Europe still inhabited the dusty city. In fact, on our only night there, we befriended several expatriates who invited us to a dinner barbeque on the city’s outskirts. We happily agreed. But when we arrived we found that the only meat cooking over an open fire was goat. I didn’t eat much that night.

The next morning, we hopped into the four wheeler and began the back breaking ride across the border and into Somalia that I described at the outset. We were bound for the “bump city” of Las Dhure.

Bouncing through that stony desert it was hard to imagine the ancient history of this place. It wasn’t always like this. A human jawbone and ruins of a primitive civilization had been found nearby, dating back 100,000 years. In context, if ancient Rome thrived 2,000 years ago, that jawbone belonged to someone 50 times earlier. There are also more recent historical findings that indicate this now desolate place was one filled with lakes and forests, and inhabited by big cats, rhinos, buffalo, and elephants. By the time we arrived, that same ground was virtually uninhabitable.

But human refugees were surviving here—most of them barely. In that camp, the term “daily struggle” was all too literal.

Food was not available every day, and when it was, it was always the same—a pulpy, plant-based mush. It quickly turned crusty in the heat. No one escaped misery. Refugees would dig six feet under dried riverbeds just to find a pool of dirty water. And after an infrequent rain, water would trickle through human and animal waste on the riverbed…and into those same holes. Aside from hunger and thirst, bacteria attacked the refugees.

After documenting this for several hours, we were invited out of the heat to have something to drink. The doctor’s tent was sparse, but we were offered our choice of fluids. Chuck and I remembered the woman from our first camp telling us that hot liquids actually helped cool you during high heat. So, we took hot tea. Gary opted for some bottled orange soda on ice. As we sipped, they explained how these tormented people from war-torn Eritrea and Ethiopia fled, hoping to find a lifeline anywhere. Thousands did not get this far. The ones who did found this place, inhabited by fear, dread and desperation. Its soundtrack was the endless chorus young children crying.

Many died. But we were later heartened to hear that the little baby who was given an IV on that newspaper-covered table did survive. I imagined that she and her mother somehow prospered.

Lasting Images

I was overwhelmed. We documented so much in those forsaken camps…things that have never left me. But most indelible were those two women: one who came for medical help too late, and died on the only airplane ride of her life; the other, in the wasteland of Djibouti, arriving just soon enough to see her new baby survive. Life and death. Such a fine line. So random.

We take so much for granted. We argue and fight over things that are of no real human consequence. We are consumed with determining how well we will live…while millions elsewhere battle to live at all.

But this is not the end of this story of the struggle to survive. There is one more chapter.

A Harrowing Aftermath

After a couple weeks in Africa, on our way home, we had a 24-hour layover in Paris. We decided to spend our one night going to a show at the famous club, Moulin Rouge. To be honest, we were ready for full scale re-immersion.

After waiting outside for a while, the club let everyone into a warm and stuffy lobby before the doors opened to the theater itself. While Chuck and I were talking, we looked over and saw Gary, back braced against a wall, color drained from his face, slowly slumping down to the floor. “Hey, what’s wrong?!” He only groaned. We notified management and told them where we had been, and they called for medical help. We abruptly found ourselves hurtling in an ambulance through the narrow streets of the city, Gary laying on a stretcher between us. We were taken to a basic public hospital, not at all sophisticated, but one well-versed in treating illnesses from Africa. We had not left all the suffering behind.

Gary was diagnosed with bacterial shigella, a disease characterized by what is politely described as “inflammatory diarrhea.” This disease was—and still is—virtually immune from drug treatments. (Even as I write this, the CDC is warning of a new outbreak.) But why Gary? How did he get it, while Chuck and I escaped? Well, Gary was the only one who ordered ice cubes in his drink at Las Dhure. And the doctor suggested maybe the local water was not fully boiled before it was turned to ice.

We did not take our scheduled flight home the next day. Gary spent several days in that public hospital surrounded by its perpetual smell of disinfectant and institutional green walls. Every time we visited, he begged us in a low voice, “get me out of here!” Chuck had called Gary’s parents, and we waited until they came over. They moved him to the American Hospital in Paris, where they nursed him until he was well enough to fly home.

When Gary followed up with his local doctor in L.A., the doctor told him, “It’s funny. This is an extremely rare disease to see in America, but you’re the third patient I’ve had with this in the last 18 months.”

“Wow”, Gary said. “How are those other guys doing?”

The doctor paused and said… “they both died.” Gary barely got out alive.

Chicago Reaction

When we got back to Chicago and aired our series, viewers were stunned. These seemed like stories out of some evil fairy tale. Thousands called the station to ask what they could do to help.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson invited us to be his guests of honor at one of the Saturday morning rallies of his Operation PUSH, an organization dedicated to growing jobs and economic stability in black neighborhoods. His praise for our work was heartfelt, but Chuck and I felt odd being celebrated for something connected to so much suffering and death.

Word of the series also got back to NBC News headquarters in New York. Someone there had seen the stories and immediately called Chuck. The Today Show producers were moved and motivated. They asked us to prepare a draft story. That morning program is so tightly timed that there is seldom a story that runs even two minutes. But the producers said this was different; could we produce something, say six minutes long? Plus, they were asking to have us live on set to talk about what we experienced. We went to work.

The first feedback was immediate: “Incredible stuff! We’ll find you the airdate, then you guys start checking on flights.”

That didn’t happen. Because there was a second call, this one fully disheartening. The draft story we created was sent up the executive chain at NBC…and the whole project had been scrapped. One of the execs declared, “Forget about it. No one in America is ready to watch this kind of stuff at breakfast.”

So that was that. He was sparing his audience. But refugees continued to die.

In 1984—three years later—the BBC did almost exactly the same story and aired it globally. It was excellent—and a sensation. The trickle of food and supplies became a river of salvation. Corruption was sharply reduced inside the African supply chain. Untold thousands were saved.

But in the interim…those three years between our report and the BBC’s…I wondered how many human souls perished because their plight remained largely unknown. It didn’t have to be that way. But one NBC executive decided it did.

My Awakening

I admit that I grew up in a bubble; but not an entitled one. My neighborhood in the city was filled with policemen and firemen and teachers and office workers and plumbers and garbage men and bus drivers. But it was a bubble for a singular reason: everyone there was white. School desegregation had not yet been mandated, so we went to school in isolation. No blacks, no Latinos, maybe a kid who was part Asian. We looked at Greek and Italian classmates as exotic.

We were not raised to be racists; there was no need. There were no other races to mock or dislike or battle. A couple buddies and I befriended the black groundskeeper at the park, I think mostly out of curiosity. Turned out he liked baseball just as much as we did. Huh! He probably thought, “man, these kids have no idea how the world works.” And of course, he was right.

When I got back from Africa, a lot of people asked me questions which really boiled down to a statement: “Wow, after seeing all that, you must really know black people a lot better.”

No. Not at all. That wasn’t it. Other than skin color, I couldn’t see how a black person in Chicago had much in common with the refugees we saw in those doomed desert camps.

But in Africa, I did learn two other things. First, I learned perspective. And second, I also discovered empathy.

The perspective came in realizing how readily we ignore the incredible good fortune to be born in America. Some think that’s corny, but I think it’s inarguable. This is the wealthiest country in recorded history. And we have the power of the ballot to make it even better. But how do we spend this good fortune? We judge and castigate and attack each other on the basis of gender and race and class and geography and education and wealth and political party. This is all so depressingly destructive--and so profoundly STUPID! Not only is there enough for everyone here, there is enough wealth and know-how and ambition to take the lead in solving problems GLOBALLY. But we fail. It may be true that it does, indeed, “take a village” --but not if the village is filled with idiots.

Which, I realize, doesn’t sound very empathetic. And empathy is not something I really possessed when I flew to Africa. I was locked in my own world. But on that continent, I found empathy, and hope I’ve never lost it. Look, I’m not naïve enough to believe that every human is “precious”, or that everyone can be “saved”—spiritually or literally. But there are MILLLIONS who are suffering, and many of them can be helped. American doesn’t need to worry about “maintaining world leadership”—we’ve just got to go out there and LEAD, damn it!

I will never forget the image of that tribal father in the middle of the desert, grimacing, face in his hands, pierced by the thought that maybe there was something else he could or should have done to save his daughter. But he couldn’t. And no matter how much longer he lived, I know that thought never left him.

He had no tools. He didn’t have enough help. He didn’t have enough time.

But we have the tools. And we have the time. Why the hell can’t we figure how to do better with all that we’ve got?

(Note: The low-resolution images above are freeze frames from the original news series we produced in 1981. If you want to see more for yourself, it now resides on YouTube. It visualizes much of what I described above…and conveys much more depth. You can find the link here.)

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Issue 22

Once Upon a Time in Africa: My Awakening