The name
The first harvest after famine is known as the bitter harvest, because the food cannot be shared with the people who have been lost.
Pilot episode
The Coming of Famine in the Nuba Mountains
Drought and flooding cause severe hunger in the Nuba Mountains. People watch for these difficult times. Yet these hungers are only turned to deadly famines when there is war.
Listen to the episode
Voices from the Nuba Mountains
- The signs“They have a belief that if there are some types of birds, when they pass by and they make that sound, the rain will come late, or they might not have rain.”
- War“The plane came and bombed the house and everything got burned. Now the food that we had got burned.”
- The mountain left bare“In normal time, the mountain is very green, very live. You can see life in the mountain. But during famine, you just see the mountain as if there is drought.”
- Sharing“When that food finish, they just suffer together, because you cannot, in Nuba Mountain, eat while the other one is suffering.”
- Songs“You can find someone sing about encouraging the people to hold on. The famine will pass. It's not a permanent situation.”
The series
Famine usually reaches us as a statistic, a headline or a warning. This series starts with the people.
How does a community recognise that famine is beginning? What does hunger feel like, beyond how it is measured? How do families survive when food, work and ordinary life break down, and what do they remember decades later? Each episode follows one human story, and uses research to understand it.
- A person first
- Every episode opens with someone who lived through famine. A moment, a memory, a sound.
- Then their world
- The place, the history and the circumstances that shaped what happened to them.
- Then the research
- Researchers explain what we are hearing: how famine begins, how people survive it, and what remains afterwards.