A note to readers: The following interview could not have occurred. Woizero Desta Aklilu, if she existed, died more than a century ago in highland Ethiopia, and left no written records. This conversation is constructed from historical accounts of the Ethiopian Great Famine of 1888-1892, oral traditions, and ethnographic research on community decision-making during environmental catastrophe. Think of it as historical ventriloquism—we're putting words in the mouth of someone who cannot speak for herself, but whose choices echo in every modern community facing the question: when the land can no longer sustain us, who decides who stays and who goes?

We meet Woizero Desta in the imagined aftermath of the worst year, 1889, when her village in the highlands lost a third of its people to starvation and smallpox. She sits on a stone outside what was once the grain storage hut, now empty except for scattered chaff. The El Niño drought has broken, but the rains came too late for many.

You mediated disputes in your village. When did you realize this famine would require different kinds of decisions?

Desta: The second time someone came to me asking not about land boundaries or bride price, but about whether their neighbor had hidden grain.

Before, disputes were about fairness between people who would both survive to argue about it later. This was different. She brushes chaff between her fingers. This was about who would be there when it ended.

We had the traditional grain stores, you understand. Every harvest, families contribute. The council manages it. Very organized, very fair. The drought came in 1888 and the rains failed again in 1889. By the second year, the stores were nearly empty and people were eating the seed grain—which meant even if the rains came, we couldn't plant.

So you were managing a resource that was running out.

Desta: Everyone knew it too, which made everything worse. The young men wanted to give priority to the strongest—the ones who could farm when the rains returned. The mothers wanted priority for children. The elders said we should maintain tradition: everyone gets an equal share until there's nothing left.

Very noble. Also meant we'd all die at approximately the same time.

I remember one meeting—maybe six months before the worst of it—where a farmer named Ato Girma stood up and said we should stop pretending. He had counted the grain. He had counted the people. He did the arithmetic right there in front of everyone. At current rations, we had enough for four more months. After that, nothing.

The silence after he finished... I've never heard anything like it. Even the children stopped crying.

What did you decide?

Desta: She laughs, but there's no humor in it. We decided to form a committee to study the issue. Very responsible. Very thorough.

We spent three weeks arguing about whether Ato Girma's count was accurate, whether the rains might come early, whether we could forage more wild foods. All the things you do when you cannot face what you actually have to face.

Then the smallpox came. That, perversely, made certain decisions for us.

The sick needed more water, more care, more of everything. And they were going to die anyway—we all knew it, though no one would say it. So we had this horrible calculus: every resource spent on the dying was taken from those who might live.

But how do you tell a mother she cannot have water for her fevered child because we need to save it for someone else's healthy one?

Did you tell her?

Desta: I couldn't. But I did organize the young women to take the children who weren't sick yet and move them to the higher pastures where there was still some grass, some roots to dig. We called it "taking them to safety from the disease."

Everyone understood what we were really doing. We were separating families to concentrate resources.

The parents with sick children stayed in the village. The healthy children went to the pastures with young adults who could forage and walk long distances. Some families sent all their children. Some kept one back.

There was this one grandmother—Woizero Alem—who had three grandchildren. Two were healthy, one was already showing fever spots. She sent the healthy ones to the pastures and kept the sick one with her. She knew. We all knew. But she sat with that child and sang to her every night until...

She stops, picks up another piece of chaff.

That's what people don't understand about famine. It's not one big decision. It's a thousand small ones, each one a kind of murder or mercy or both.

Did anyone leave entirely?

Desta: Oh yes. Maybe two months after Ato Girma's arithmetic lesson, a group of young families—fifteen people—decided they would walk north to the mission station. Rumor of grain there, or at least the missionaries might have connections.

The council debated whether to let them go. Some said we needed every able body for when the rains came. Others said fewer mouths meant the grain lasted longer. One elder said if we let them go, we were admitting the village was dying, and that would destroy what little hope remained.

They left on a morning in the dry season. We gave them what little we could spare—some dried meat, water skins, a blessing. About half made it to the mission. The others... she shrugs ...the road was long and they were already weak.

Do you think you made the right choice?

Long pause.

Desta: The ones who made it to the mission survived. Some came back when the rains finally returned, helped rebuild. So for them, yes, obviously right.

But we lost their labor during the worst time. And their leaving did something to the people who stayed—made them feel abandoned, like even their own neighbors didn't believe we'd survive.

There was this man, Ato Yohannes, whose brother was in the group that left. He became bitter. Started hoarding what little he had. Stopped contributing to the communal efforts. He'd say, "Why should I share? My brother didn't." It poisoned things.

Every decision had costs. That's what I wish I could tell people now—there are no clean choices when the land itself has turned against you. You do what seems least terrible and live with it.

What about the seed grain?

Desta: Her voice drops. Maybe the hardest thing.

By the beginning of 1890, we were so hungry that people were eyeing those seeds. If we ate them, we'd have a few more weeks of life. But if the rains came and we'd eaten the seeds, we couldn't plant. Next year would be just as bad.

The council voted to protect the seed grain absolutely. Posted guards. Anyone caught stealing seeds would be... well, we didn't say what would happen because we didn't want to think about it. But everyone understood.

One night, a woman tried to steal seeds for her children. I won't say her name. The guards caught her. They brought her to me because no one else wanted to decide.

And?

Desta: I let her go. Took the seeds back, but let her go.

The council was furious. Said I'd undermined the rule. But I told them: if we become the kind of people who punish a mother for trying to feed her children, what exactly are we surviving for?

Some of the seeds got eaten anyway. People are clever when they're desperate. But we saved enough. When the rains finally came in late 1892, we planted. The harvest was small—we were so weak, we couldn't work the fields properly—but it was something. A beginning.

Looking back now, what worked?

Desta: Sending the children to the pastures. Most of them survived, and they were young enough to not remember the worst of it. They grew up and had children of their own. The village lives because of that choice.

Also, letting the young families leave. Even though it caused problems. People need to feel they have agency, even in catastrophe. Especially in catastrophe. If we'd forced them to stay, they would have died resenting us. This way, some lived, and the ones who came back chose to come back.

What would you do differently?

Desta: We waited too long to make any decisions at all. Those three weeks forming committees, arguing about Ato Girma's count—that was time we didn't have. We should have acted the moment we understood the grain wouldn't last. Every day we delayed, people got weaker, options disappeared.

And... her voice gets quieter ...we should have been more honest about who was going to die. We pretended everyone had equal chance. But the old, the sick, the very young—we knew. They knew. All this pretending just made it harder for them to prepare. To say goodbye properly.

There was this elder, Ato Tekle, who kept insisting he was fine, he'd survive, even as he wasted away. I think he felt he had to perform strength for the young people. But his last weeks, he was so lonely because no one could acknowledge what was happening.

We should have sat with him. Told him it was okay to be afraid. Let him tell us what he wanted remembered.

That's a very different kind of adaptation than building infrastructure or changing crops.

Desta: Yes. But maybe the most important kind.

When the land fails, the only thing you have left is how you treat each other in the failing. We didn't always do it well. But we tried. And enough of us survived to try again.

The young people now, they ask me: how did you decide who lived and who died? And I tell them: we didn't. We decided who got the chance to try to live. The rest was God's or the drought's or chance.

You can't control who survives. You can only control whether you become monsters in the attempt to survive.

What would you tell people facing climate disasters now?

Desta: She laughs, dark and sharp. That their committees and studies are just as useless as ours were? That the arithmetic is simple but the choices are impossible? That every option is terrible and you still have to choose?

She stands, brushes off her skirt.

And for God's sake, save the seeds. Always save the seeds.