Sir, - I have just returned from holidays in Africa. I undertook a trip that took in the "Horn of Africa". The idea came from the many conversations about the work of Concern that have influenced my home since I can remember.
But seeing is believing and the poverty and the lives that these people live is beyond comprehension. I saw poverty and huge problems in all the countries I visited, but in Ethiopia I saw extremes of both urban and rural poverty that are so stark it is frightening to think they can exist in this, the era of the Celtic Tiger. But there are no tigers in Africa and certainly none of the Celtic variety.
The hardship that these people endure is so overwhelming that you could come away feeling nothing. The faces, though, won't let you. The bright eyes of hope that really do dance from the faces of these Ethiopian children won't let you. They live on the sides of mountains and have one meal a day, sometimes less.
I met, on my travels, men who could have been the "Three Wise Men" of the bible. They had walked for three days to the local town from the highlands to warn of famine. I saw the empty feeding centres of 1984 beginning to fill up again.
I hope that the EU, the Irish Government and ourselves, a privileged nation, will take action. Please try to push these people who are literally living on the edge back from it. - Yours, etc.,
Sarah Finucane, Sandymount, Dublin 4.