CNN 20: CNN Remembers Famine in Ethiopia
JOHN TOWRISS, CNN DEPUTY BUREAU CHIEF, WASHINGTON: Even though it was 16 years since I have been in Ethiopia, I'd have to say that experience still haunts me to this day. As I sit here right now, I can remember that smell, you know, what it smelled like. And it's sort of, you know, that -- it's that smell of disinfectant, but also this smell of -- if there was a smell of hopelessness and death, I mean that was it. It is just -- it's just a bizarre environment, where it is not lots of screaming and yelling and people going, oh my God, my father had died, or my baby had died, or anything like that. It is just sort of quiet whimpering in small little corners, and there is thousands and thousands of people in these death camps and only a few workers. So, for the most part, death comes very quietly and very lonely, and people have to weep on their own. And, for example, in the case of this father, he buried his son with his other sons, and then later in the day lost them. In the end, only he was left. I spent probably five years as a cameraman, and all my time as a photographer for CNN, those are by far the most powerful and striking images that I shot. I was capturing the story, but the horror of what was happening before my eyes didn't really hit me until I came home. I got to the point where I couldn't even watch the video anymore. It was too difficult. It was hard.