Not enough yams

     Kevin Carter's Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudane famine. The picture depicts a famine stricken child being stalked by a vulture. The child is crawling towards a United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.
     No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer who left the scene as soon as the photo was taken. He later confided to friends that he wished he had intervened. Journalist at the time were warned never to touch famine victims for fear of diseases.
Three months later, only weeks after being bestowed with the Pulitzer Prize, Kevin Cater committed suicide.
     I don't know why but this whole situation and environment reminds me of the story we are currently reading, Things Fall Apart,  by Chinua Achebe. He tells of the indigenous Ibo people and how they have to labor day in and day out, from harvesting crops to appeasing gods, just to get by. This was probably the fate for many children, starvation. In my opinion, starvation in the worst way to die. It is a slow and painful progress. You get aches everywhere, your brain does not register things correctly, your body slowly deteriorates and eats itself, and you are just too weak to do anything about it. This picture also reminds me of how early Europeans or "the white men" viewed Africans. They preceived Africans as primitive, socially backward, and, most importantly, language-less natives. The journalist at the time were warned not to touch famine victims in case of diseases, but leaving a boy stalked by a vulture when he is just a kilometer away from safety is a little more than heartless. So what was the real reason Cater committed suicide then? After the picture hit the front page of the New York Times, Carter was tormented by both the praise and the criticism it inspired. Which draw up the controversy, on whether to be witness to, or savior of, the subject's journalist depict?