africa14

BONGA, ETHIOPIA 12MARCH 2003 - Ruth, a teenager belonging to the Uduk tribe from the Sudan, is fanned by a midwife as she is in labour expecting her first child in the Bonga Refugee camp on the border of the Sudan March 12, 2003. . The Uduk are a tribe that is threatened by extinction and numbered about 7000 refugees when they arrived in Ethiopia in 1989, fleeing a civil war in Sudan. Today the population has skyrocketed to more than 17,000 Uduks in the camp where there are on average 100 births a year. This success is attributed to the polygamous practices of the Uduk, young marriages and an aversion to any kind of birth control.