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“This isn’t a famine, it’s a sham-ine,” I hear one European reporter mutter in the hotel, concerned that the images he’s gathered aren’t going to be what his bosses back in the newsroom are expecting. That’s how TV works: You know the pictures you want, the pictures you’re expected to find. Your bosses will be disappointed if you don’t get them, so you scan the hospital beds, looking for the worst, unable to settle for anything less. Merely hungry isn’t good enough. Merely sick won’t warrant more than a cutaway shot.

The hunger is there, of course—you just have to look close. On the drive from Niamey to Maradi are fields of corn, sorghum, and millet. Crops are planted, but harvest is a long way off, and there’s little food to get families through until then. Adults can live off leaves and grass; kids need nutrients, and there are none to be had.

“It’s not so bad,” I say to Charlie Moore, my producer, and as soon as the words come out of my mouth, I wish I could take them back.

“It’s bad enough,” he responds, and of course he’s right.

It’s bad enough.

“IT’S PRETTY BAD out there,” the air force officer said as I was gathering my things. “Where are you staying?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted, and it came out sounding scared.

“What do you mean you don’t know? You can’t just go to Somalia. Who do you work for?” I was worried he’d take my phony press pass, so I told him I was staying with an aid agency; I just wasn’t sure of their exact location. The truth was, I didn’t have anyplace to stay, and I didn’t really work for anyone.

It was early September 1992, and I’d just landed in Baidoa, Somalia. I hadn’t been to Sarajevo yet. Burma was the only fighting I’d ever seen. After Channel One bought my Burma footage, I lived in Vietnam for six months, taking language classes in Hanoi and trying to shoot more stories. When my visa expired, Channel One still hadn’t offered me a full-time job, so I had to come up with another plan.

I was twenty-five, two years older than my brother would ever be. A day might go by when I didn’t think about his suicide, but then I’d be walking on the street, and a stain on the concrete would remind me of blood, and I’d run into a nearby restaurant and throw up in the bathroom.

I used to see my brother in Vietnam. Someone would round a corner or catch my attention in a crowd, and for a few seconds I would think it was Carter.

One evening in Hanoi, a crippled beggar stopped in front of me while I was in a café. He stretched out a twisted limb, asking for money. I glanced up and saw Carter’s face. Something about the gentle look in his eyes, the cut of his hair, the looseness with which it fell from the side of his head. The thought stunned me.

The beggar left, and I wanted to run after him, talk with him in case it was Carter trying to reach out to me. I didn’t move from my seat, however. It was a crazy thought, and I never told anyone about it. I was embarrassed, worried that even thinking it was a sign of delusion.

It wasn’t just people who reminded me of Carter. Once, I was eating at a food stall near my apartment in Hanoi and I noticed that the ceiling was made of pressed leaves. It looked just like a box covered with tobacco leaves that Carter once gave me for Christmas. The texture and color were the same. For a moment, I remembered him so clearly: the shape of his body, the color of his hair, the delicate thinness of his fingers. It had been four years since his death, and still nothing about it made any sense. Vietnam hadn’t filled in the shadows I saw when I looked in the mirror, or eased the sadness that seemed to flow through my veins. I was hurting, and needed to be around others who were hurting as well. I wanted to dangle over the edge and remember what it was like to feel. I also needed a job. Somalia had seemed like a logical choice.

Famine was sweeping the Horn of Africa. Tens of thousands of people had already died of starvation, and millions more were threatened. Somalia had