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.

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

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

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 worlds 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

10

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, Gordons
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
11

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 Peoples 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.

12

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 Nilss 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

13