The country that boasts the source of the Blue Nile, tumbling out of the sparkling waters of Lake Tana, is synonymous in the West with drought and famine.

No wonder Ethiopian government ministers cringe whenever the topic comes up. They would prefer to talk about undoubted achievements — impressive economic growth rates, smart new roads and buildings, a streamlined efficient civil service, increased exports, reduced defence expenditure and so on.

It wasn’t famine that killed Jamal Ali’s mother. She died in a cholera outbreak that swept through their Ethiopian village when at last the rains came. Twenty-five years later Jamal, now a parent himself, is lining up for handouts in a food distribution centre in Harbu, Amhara, His prematurely aged face, hollow with hunger, creases further when asked about this unwelcome return. “It is a very bitter feeling. No one likes this begging. I am ashamed,” he said.

Up a steep, dusty track from Harbu to Chorisa village the tiny, duncoloured terraced fields bare witness to the third poor harvest in a row. This village is supposed to be an aid showpiece but even here fields of failed cereal crops are being turned over to lean-looking cattle.

A villager strips an ear of the cereal crop tef and cups the inedible seed in her hand for a moment before casting into a relentlessly sky. It’s not that the rains didn’t come, she said — they came just at the wrong time. The field was supposed to yield 500 kilograms of cash crop; now it might just save a few cows from starvation.

By Tsegaye Tadesse

ADDIS ABABA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Ethiopia appealed on Thursday for 159,410 tonnes of emergency aid to feed 6.2 million people, 25 years after more than a million perished in the country's notorious famine.

Aid workers say a five-year drought is afflicting more than 23 million people in seven east African nations.

Mitiku Kassa, Ethiopia's State Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, said this year's rains were especially poor.

"As a result, the number of people needing emergency assistance during the period Oct.-Dec. 2009 has increased to 6.2 million from 4.9 million at beginning of the year," he said.