“Look at my child, please help us!” cries the woman.
She hurriedly undresses the five-year-old girl, uncovering gaunt arms and ribs that are painfully visible under the skin. The child allows herself to be pulled around before starting to shake.
The mother and her daughter live in the famine-stricken region of Anosy in Madagascar’s far south.
Penniless, they have another 10 kilometers (six miles) to walk from the village of Fenoaivo to the nearest health centre.
Further along the road, a family holds a silent vigil outside the hut where their father has lain since dying of hunger four days ago.
“We can’t bury him because we don’t have a zebu (cow). We won’t have a meal to serve, which is the most important thing for us,” says the dead man’s daughter Rahovatae by a low-burning fire.
The family has been digging for roots, the only food available while waiting for help to arrive.
“There’s nothing left here where we’ve been digging,” says Rahovatae, a mother of nine, a spade in her hand in the small wood outside the village.
She tears off a piece of one of the cactuses they have been eating for want of anything better.
“I chop off the spines with a knife. It’s horrible, it’s bitter and it sticks to the roof of your mouth. Even when you cook it doesn’t taste of anything. It’s making us weaker,” she complains.
The deserted hamlet where the family lives is one of those known to aid workers as “zombie villages” – home only to small numbers of wasted people who seem to be waiting for death.
