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About the Author

Born in 1940 in Hackney East London, while my parents worked

in the tailoring business, I was brought up by my immigrant

grandmother, a Russian and Yiddish speaking women with

incredible cooking skills.

My schooldays were ones of un-accomplishment and at 15 I left

to become a messenger for a famous Fleet Street picture Agency

whose photographs taken by highly skilled cameramen appeared

in Newspapers and magazines all over the World.

My dear father bought me a camera, the type used by the

agencies photographers, I was just 16 but became very skilled in

using the camera and with the next year I was taking pictures of

famous people, such as Royalty, the Queen Mother, actors such

as Sophia Loren, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Prime Minister

Harold Wilson and many other politicians.

At the age of twenty I went to live in Berlin, the city was divided

by a wire fence soon to become a wall between the western allies

and the Russians, with escapes from the east to the west and all

sorts of espionage going on. I was asked to join a small group of

Military people and crossed over into East Berlin through Check

Point Charlie virtually every day photographing certain

installations, people getting into and out from cars showing the

registration numbers, and many other complicated requests, in

those days my skills got me through some scrapes, however one

day I was held by the Volks Politzi while trying to cross back to

the West, but I had managed to move the film on through an

intermediary before being held and searched.

At twenty-three after returning to England I joined a newspaper

called the Daily Sketch owned by Associated Newspapers, then

moved to the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday and spent the next

30 years as a photographer, and then the Picture Editor, finally

retiring as an Associate Editor within the group.

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5

Dedication

It is said that behind every man there is a good women, in my

case my wife Sandra is more than good she is brilliant, and the

backbone of our family, we have been married for Fifty years,

we have two wonderful children James and Michelle and three

wonderful Grandchildren Danielle, Nick, and Jaidon, looking

back I suppose my family was the driving force for some of

things that I undertook as a photographer. Many times getting

up in the middle of the night to jet off to some inhospitable

place thousands of miles away, never knowing how long I

would be away for and when I would return, but Sandra

always accepted that it was part of my Job but often I never

told her where I was going, places like Vietnam, Pakistan, the

Balkans War and Rwanda during the civil war and of course

the Sudan.

So I dedicate this book to a wife I love dearly and a family

who I equally love. And in the memory of my dear departed

mother and father

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Copyright © Harvey Mann (2015)

The right of Harvey Mann to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or

otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this

publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims

for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British

Library.

ISBN 978 1 78455 556 6 (paperback)

ISBN 978 1 78455 558 0 (hardback)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2015)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LB

Printed and bound in Great Britain

9

Acknowledgments

The United Nations World Food Programme probably had the

most unenviable task of as the title suggests feeding millions of

people all over the world, people who suffer wars and famine and

upheavals such as earthquakes, volcanoes and the many civil

disruptions that ordinary people have to suffer.

If the WFP and the thousands of people that work for this

organisation did not exist the world’s death toll would reach

uncountable shocking proportions.

I would like to thank the World Food Programme for allowing

me to be with the convoy of lorries taking 600 hundred tons of

grain from Kampala in Uganda to Ayod in the Sudan, a journey

that educated me and opened my eyes to the suffering of

Ordinary people, and the sadistic governance and policing by

men with guns in their hands

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This book is about a journey, my journey through the Sudan during a civil war that had started 22 years ago, everything written in this book I have seen with my own eyes, and

hopefully the pictures will support my story, on many occasions I could not take pictures as I had been warned off by the UN,

and when I did I kept the camera hidden so as not to endanger my own personal security or the drivers on the convoy, or endanger the UN. Also, being white and a non-Muslim, if I had

been caught taking pictures, bearing in mind this is a war zone, I could have been accused of spying and under Muslim laws been executed.

Before I left Nairobi I spent some time researching the Sudan, what and why had caused the largest country in Africa to tear itself apart I will try to explain in an edited version, in a

few brief paragraphs that follow.

General Charles George Gordon was quite a large (but not

in stature) British historical figure. Although no more than 5feet 5inches tall, he had risen to the top of his military career in many parts of the world. Born in Greenwich in 1835, he never

married, a deeply a religious man, his final command was the garrison city of Khartoum that was attacked by the Mahdi and his Islamic army. Finally, in 1885, after two years, Gordon’s

defence of the garrison fell to the Mahdi just two days before reinforcements arrived. Gordon was killed and beheaded

against the wishes of the Mahdi.

Now, as before, the Sudan is in turmoil, the division between mainly Islamic North and the converted Christian

South came to a head when in 1923 a white flag league formed by the Sudanese Nationalist of the North, however this was not

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recognised by the British, who instituted a policy of reducing contact between Northern and Southern Sudan, with the aim of making Southern Sudan a member of the Federation of East

African States.

1983 saw the outbreak of a Civil War between the

Khartoum Islamic Government of the North, and the SPLA (the Sudan People’s Liberation Army) of the South led by an American-educated Sudanese General called John Garang. As

the battles rages between the two sides, a second army of the SLPA that has partitioned from Garang this army is led by Riek Marchal, two years later in 1992 the SPLA splits into three

mainly caused by tribal differences.

Then in 1997, the three armies of the SPLA became four,

in many cases the tribes fighting each other as well as still fighting the Khartoum Islamic troops, eventually a treaty is signed but fighting continues as famine breaks out in Southern

Sudan in 1998, since then after years of talks and peace negotiations it had been decided that the Southern Sudanese should vote for independence, this vote was held in 2011 with

the UN keeping an eye of the polling stations, the South voted to form an independence state, A new President was elected,

and his deputy was Riek Marchal, but within two years both the President and Riek Marchal fell out, Marchal formed another party and took his followers back into a Civil War.

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The Warning

The office is sparse, reeks of body odour and is hot as hell. The man in charge of the World Food Programme and Lifeline who the distribute food in East Africa, sits behind a desk on a

lopsided swivel chair, a castor is missing; behind him is a wall map that looks as old as the world itself, held together by yellowing Sellotape sticking most of the continents together;

land masses and Oceans are splattered with dead flies; pins with different coloured heads protrude at all angles, some have fallen onto a threadbare carpet, the pattern now no longer

recognisable.

Two 60s style telephones are at his left elbow along with a

jug of water that has a sheet of paper over the top – probably to stop flies going for a daily dip – alongside a glass covered in murky fingerprints. If the water is more than an hour old it

would be warm enough for tea.

Overhead a large fan hums and grinds as it wobbles at an angle, sitting beneath and looking extremely uncomfortable is

Nils Enqvist, the man in charge of the WFP; at 56 he is a veteran of the UN missions to Biafra, the Middle East, Ethiopia and is

now in charge of Operation Lifeline.

The mid-morning heat is all consuming, patches of sweat stain Nils’s United Nations-issue light blue shirt at the armpits,

the shirt is open to the waist, beads of sweat glisten on the greying hairs of his chest, at this time of year Nairobi is about to become even more unbearable. Very soon us non Africans