Louis Vuitton and the Famine.

Her name is Limara. In the photograph she is approximately two years of age. Two days after I took this photograph, Limara was dead.

Three thousand, seven hundred and eighty three kilometres away, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is home to the largest Louis Vuitton store in the world, not a shop I would ever expect to visit, but on this particular day, about a week before the photograph was taken, I did pay it a visit, under the most unusual of circumstances.

I was in Paris with a colleague, en route to Niger to report on the famine affecting that country since earlier in the summer. We had just secured our visas and had some time to kill and a stroll down the Champs-Élysées seemed like an excellent way to pass a few hours. The autumnal Parisienne weather was glorious, the pace, slow and relaxed, it had all the mise-en-scene of a French melodrama.

Our meandering was interrupted by the twittering call of a diminutive Asian woman asking in a very strong accent if we spoke English. We said we did and she smiled, most winningly. She explained that she needed us to do something important for her, something that she herself could not do and that she would be most grateful if we obliged. We listened to her request and were somewhat bemused by it when she concluded.

She wanted us to go to the Louis Vuitton store and buy for her a particular item, a ladies hand bag from the new collection, the one on the printout from the Louis Vuitton website she waved in front of us. She said that as a Chinese national, the Louis Vuitton store limited the number of items she was allowed to purchase. I was surprised at this, but she claimed they were afraid of counterfeiting, and this was how they managed the flow of stock back to China. It made it very difficult, she added, for legitimate Chinese purchasers to buy Louis Vuitton bags; bags, she insisted, she adored. I had no reason to doubt what she said, however strange it seemed, but my thoughts on the issue were cut short as she took out a bundle of notes from another Louis Vuitton bag that was slung over her shoulder and counted twenty fifty euro notes into my hand, curled my fingers over the notes for me, then pointed with great enthusiasm at the impressive building half a block away. You go now, she said, you go, shooing us away with both hands. We both looked around, wondering was this some sort of hidden camera stunt but saw nothing unusual as we shuffled towards the shop. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw her step into a doorway, smiling and nodding with encouragement, flicking the backs of her hands at us to keep going.

We stopped at the door to the shop, unsure of what it was that was actually happening. Were the notes counterfeit, were we about to land ourselves in a heap of Gallic trouble, was this why she was so blasé about trusting two total strangers with one thousand euros in cash? Once more we looked around, this time she was nowhere to be seen. I shrugged, pulled the door open and let my colleague enter. The interior was as opulent as the exterior was imposing, staffed by beautiful wraiths, tall, slender and immaculately presented. Without prior discussion, we became the well heeled tourist couple, shopping for a little bit of French luxury, role playing a game with unknown rules, unsure of the result, but thrilled by the subterfuge.

Our masquerade did not last long, nervousness and uncertainty made us conclude the transaction with haste. A sense of dread crept over me as I stood at the cash register, watching closely as the wraith counted and examined the cash I had presented for payment. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to pass the notes beneath the light of a counterfeit detection device, but as each note was cleared, my unease cleared a little more with its passing. We exited the store with our purchase and walked back in the direction we had come, but there was no sign of the Chinese woman. As we reached the end of the block we saw her poke her head around the corner. We smiled, she beamed back and stepped out, hands outstretched in anticipation of her purchase. I handed over the bag, showed her the receipt and returned her change to her, the princely sum of eight euros. Bowing and smiling, she nodded her thanks, turned on her heel and walked off down the Champs-Élysées, leaving us amused, confused and bewildered by the whole experience.

By the time we had left for Niger, the lady and the handbag were but an amusing anecdote to be stored away with all the other dinner conversation topics, for recall at an appropriate moment, sometime in the future.

I had no idea that events were about to unfold that would forever link an expensive handbag with a small child in west Africa.

I met Limara in the autumn of 2005 at a CRENI (French acronym for an emergency therapeutic feeding centre, Centre de Récupération Nutritionnelle Intensive) near Tahoua, in the heart of famine stricken Niger. She had been brought there by her mother who had walked the sixty kilometres from her village in the cool of the night to avoid the dangers of the Sahel sun.

My colleague and I were at the CRENI from before dawn that morning, preparing to report once more on the children who would die that day, in the same way we had reported that story the day before, and on the day before that. Since we had arrived in Tahoua, we had reported on the deaths of so many children that we were now, for the want of a better description, shell-shocked.

We were desperate for a good news story, some story of hope amidst all this hopelessness, some story to show those at home how the euros they had donated to some relief agency somewhere would help keep a child alive, at least until the next sub-Saharan crisis.

We saw Limara and her mother enter the compound, we saw them guided to the triage nurse to be examined and we saw the triage nurse smile at them, as she did with all who came to her; what we did not see was the smile disappear from her face as Limara and her mother were brought to another part of the compound to be given water and Plumpy'nut. For once, the smile lingered.

The prognosis was good, she told us, malnourished but no malaria or anaemia. She'd go to the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital, she said, and after a couple of days she'd go home with her mother.

We decided then and there that we wanted to tell this story, this was our story of hope, we needed to tell this story, for our own sake.

Through an interpreter, we explained to Limara's mother what we wanted to do. She smiled, nodded, and with the pride of all mothers, fixed Limara's clothes and fiddled with her hair, tinged with red highlights, a sign of malnutrition. She spoke of her husband working in Libya, of the failure of the crops, the price of food, the other, older children back in her village and she spoke of Limara who, as the youngest, could not provide for herself, let alone any of the rest of the family. She spoke of the hierarchy of survival.

The eldest child was fed first so the eldest's strength could be used to provide for the next. Then the next was fed, providing the energy for this child to help with the survival of the family, and so on, down through the children until there was no food left. Then the youngest, the weakest, those who could not contribute to the survival of the family, were sacrificed to the famine. This pattern was not unique to Limara's family; this pattern was repeated throughout the region; this pattern went some of the way to explain why the vast majority of the deaths from this famine were occurring amongst children under five.

During the two hour drive across the Sahel to the MSF hospital in Tahoua, our spirits lifted by the good news we were to report, we discussed how we would tell the story, how we would follow Limara and her mother back to her village, how we would go from fear to hope.

The doctor in the hospital confirmed both the triage nurse's diagnosis and her prognosis, Limara would go home with her mother in a couple of days. We left the hospital uplifted, the weight of the tragedy all around us a little easier to bear.

Two days later, on the morning of our return to the hospital, instead of oppressively hot, the weather was beautiful, even though the temperature and humidity were exactly the same as all the preceding days; instead of nameless ghosts passing through my viewfinder, we saw women and children, with pasts, presents and now, futures; instead of dreading the day ahead, we were looking forward to it.

We made our way to the tent where we had left Limara and her mother but were directed to another area of the compound where mothers stayed while their children were in the care of the MSF. We searched all the tents but there was no sign of them. Our spirits dropped, we assumed they had left early for their village, had forgotten about our wonderful story, were eager to get on with life. We were completely wrong, on all counts.

The doctor who had examined Limara on her arrival told us that she had died during the second night. How was this possible, we asked, you told us the prognosis was good, how could she be dead? You said she did not have malaria or anaemia and her malnutrition was not life threatening, you said she would go home, you said she would live.

Limara did not die from malnutrition, she didn't die from malaria, nor did she die from any one of a number of famine related illnesses taking the lives of children everyday.

Limara died from undetected septicaemia. Septicaemia caused by an infection that occurred after an abscess she had had was lanced by a practitioner of bush medicine some time before she presented at the CRENI. Septicaemia caused by the fact that Limara's mother could not afford the eight euros needed to take her daughter to the public health centre in Tahoua, because that eight euros was needed to provide food for the other children, the children who could work to help provide for the rest of the family. Limara died, in one way, so that others might live... but that choice was not hers to make.

Limara's death hit us hard, very hard. Up until now, we had managed to carry on only by disconnecting from reality, by maintaining an emotional distance from those afflicted. But we had made a connection with Limara and her mother, they were no longer filed away under the dehumanising generalisation, victims. They were more than that, much more. Later, when the facade of composure was no longer required, the tragedy I was witnessing suddenly hit me like a brick. I broke down and wept, long and hard, massive sobs shaking my entire body. I thought of my own children five hours away by air, only five hours away, both under five and both safe and secure, nourished and cared for by their mother, with plenty of everything they could ever need, and more besides. I thought of my youngest in particular, only eighteen months old, well fed and happy, and only a few months younger than Limara, with a whole life ahead of her. I thought of eight euros, I thought of how significant that sum was when you didn't have it, and I thought of something most unexpected, I thought of Louis Vuitton.