Remembering the making of Living With Hunger, I cannot think of a worse way for our filming to have started. I was there as a fellow African to introduce myself to a group of poor and hungry Ethiopian farmers. I was hoping to live among them so that I could understand how they survive without food and also try to experience their suffering first hand, for four weeks eating and drinking only as little as they did.

‘What are they saying?’ I asked Gethu, my new deacon friend, as the crowd pushed closer, now waving sticks and threatening to beat me. ‘They are saying that you are big and black and that you are a devil and that you are going to eat their children and their pregnant wives.’

Well, being no stranger to hostillities in other peoples’ land, I kind of knew that this was all about the unknown and the superstitions that come out when the stranger comes. After a while, though, they calmed down. It was the head priest who turned the tide. He spoke to his congregation of Coptic Christians in front of their ancient church in northern Ethiopia. ‘I have heard with my own ears that Samura eats babies, but let us give him a chance to tell us why he is here.’

‘OK,’ I said to Gethu. ‘Just tell them that I’m one of them, the same blood, the same flesh and I’m just here to tell their story,’ and I think that was the moment when we really had the chance to tell our first Living with… story, Living with Hunger.