Duniya and Muftah.
Muftah and Duniya.
Since rains first failed to fall in this eastern region of Ethiopia in early 2016, drought has disrupted life in ways seismic enough to register – if barely – on the Richter scale of global disasters.
Aid groups and Ethiopia’s government have warned that food aid may run dry as soon as mid-July.
For Duniya and Muftah, the future should have been set.
In six months, they were all gone – the entire life savings of his family withered to nothing.
“I knew then that we could not get married anymore,” Duniya says.
And without the wedding, there could be no life together.
Their livestock had died, too, so there was little to keep them at home, and anyway, they had family members near the road.
But he had his family and she had hers, and that was that.