For Kevin, the war in Sudan - said to be a genocide of the Christian Dinka and Nuer tribes by the Islamic government - was a chance to free himself of his crazy infatuation. So one-sided was the relationship that a desperate love letter he had dropped off at the woman’s house was read out to the guests at a dinner party she was giving, leaving them uncomfortably amused. He also wanted to get off the white pipe. Sudan seemed to present the possibility of making everything right and revitalizing his career, which seemed to have come to a dead-end at the cash-strapped Weekly Mail. The newspaper had not been interested in the Sudan trip and insisted he take leave if he wanted to go.

Kevin approached various people for whom he had freelanced in the past. Paul Velasco, then owner of the South African photo-agency SouthLight (now renamed as PictureNet Africa), advanced him some money, as did Denis Farrell at the AP; he also borrowed some from me. Combined with his salary, this was enough to cover the air ticket and hotel accommodation while still meeting his commitments back home.

Kevin was on a high, motivated and enthusiastic about the trip. He was on the rebound from his spectacularly unsuccessful relationship when he met Kathy Davidson at a party. A good-looking, intelligent and pleasant school teacher - the perfect antidote to his usual choice of hard-edged women. Kathy found him intriguing and attractive, and let him have her telephone number.

For Joao, the excursion was a chance to expand his career. He was still working at The Star when a former photographer, Rob Hadley, who had taken a job with the United Nations’ Operation Lifeline Sudan project, had offered him and Kevin the chance to get into southern Sudan with the rebels. Joao had jumped at the offer, and began making the arrangements. Newsweek Magazine had promised money-a guarantee to secure a first look at the pictures. When Joao approached Ken to get leave for the trip, Ken instead secured Joao an assignment from The Star’s foreign news service. If his pictures from Sudan were as strong as those from his self-funded trip to Somalia the previous year, it could lead to other assignments with major international magazines. His dream of being a war-photographer beyond the borders of South Africa had begun to materialize.

Fax messages from Rob stressed the latest downturn in Sudan - the major rebel factions had split into tribally based groupings with the result that entire villages had been massacred by opposing tribal militia, and the government had seized the opportunity to launch a massive offensive against the divided rebels. The part of southern Sudan that Joao and Kevin wanted to get to was an especially vulnerable area in the remote hinterland dubbed the ‘the Famine Triangle’ by aid workers.

The Southern tribes of Sudan are Christian or animist and had been grouped together under the rebel umbrella group, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). They had been fighting for autonomy from the Khartoum government, which had been dominated by Islamic northerners ever since independence in 1956. The low-key war had been spurred to new intensity in the 80s by the government’s adoption of Islamic Sharia Law. The story which Joao and Kevin hoped to cover was the recent bloody split in the SPLA. Sudan is a notoriously difficult country to work in, with a government that refuses journalists entry to the south, and rebels that are either pressshy or expert at manipulating the prying eyes of outsiders. The breaking and forging of alliances makes it difficult to predict the situation from one week to the next, and aid organizations have great difficulty in getting food aid in with any regularity.

Kevin and Joao prepared carefully for the trip. The day before they left for the Kenyan capital of Nairobi - the best transit point for trips to southern Sudan - they met at Kevin’s rented house in the Johannesburg suburb of Troyeville. Kevin’s entire bedroom was covered by numerous packets and bags. Ken had accompanied Kevin on a shopping trip for everything from mosquito nets to dehydrated food - they did not know what they might need. Joao and Kevin sat on the bed, laughing and excited, and shared a joint. Ken was drawn into their excitement, and took a picture, then left them to finish their packing.

The next day, after a five-hour flight north, Kevin and Joao arrived in Nairobi and went to the Parkview Hotel, one of the cheaper, rather dingy, hotels that cater to backpackers and other budget travellers. To economize, they shared a room that enjoyed a view of a muddy alley. The telephone only reached as far as the lethargic receptionist and there was no television.

It was a Sunday in Nairobi and deathly quiet. They went for a walk, Kevin hyper-active, striding and talking fast. They ended up drinking beer on the colonial Oaktree Hotel’s veranda, watching the tropical sun set over the city. Kevin was excited and happy to be in Nairobi, and they were both looking forward to getting to Sudan.

The next day things started going wrong. Kevin tried to change a 100-dollar bill and the bank rejected it - it was a counterfeit. They contacted Rob at the Operation Lifeline Sudan headquarters at Girgiri on the outskirts of Nairobi, but further disappointment was in store for them. The plan had been that they would fly in on a food drop, and spend about a week on the ground before being picked up on the next food delivery, but an upsurge in fighting meant it was unsafe for the planes to land, and the aid flights had been suspended. Their trip was put on hold - indefinitely.

Every day they went out to the UN compound to see if the situation had changed, but for five days they got the same negative answer. The disappointment built up in the tiny hotel room. Joao was furious, unhappy. All his careful planning was going down the toilet. Time passed slowly and painfully; they spent sparingly and ate in increasingly cheap restaurants. They did the rounds of the aid agencies, to see if any of the other organizations were flying in, despite the fighting. They abandoned the more expensive personal taxis and began using matatus - the colourful local minibus taxis which pack in up to 20 passengers. The drivers seemed to be in competition as to who could fit the largest disco speakers in their vehicles. When the buses were very full, the speakers would serve as seats, and on one such crammed trip Kevin had to sit on a speaker. The reggae that blared out of the speaker was too loud for anyone to speak and be heard, so Kevin sat back with an amused look of contentment, and took the occasional picture through the window with his cherished old Leica M3.

In spite of their lack of progress, Kevin was having a good time. All he could talk about was how this trip was going to work out and how everything was going to be great. He made plans to resign from the Weekly Mail, go freelance and pursue a relationship with Kathy - get some stability in his life. Joao, on the other hand, was uptight. The pressure was getting to him, he had sold the trip to The Star and Newsweek on the strength of combat images, and there he was, stuck in Nairobi with little hope of getting near the fighting any time soon.

Then suddenly there was a UN trip to Juba-a besieged, government-held town in the south of Sudan. A barge carrying food aid had been travelling up the Nile and had finally made it to Juba. It was an ‘in-and-out’, a one-day affair. Since Kevin had the guarantee from the AP, the UN put him on the plane flying in. There was no room for Joao, who had to stay behind. He was livid. Joao had done most of the preparatory work, set up the main part of the trip, and Kevin, who had mostly just followed his lead, was getting into Sudan while he cooled his heels. He assumed the worst: this was it - there would be no other chance to get to Sudan and he would return home without having shot a frame.

What Joao and Kevin did not know was that the UN was having great difficulties in securing funding for Sudan. An appeal earlier in the year for 190 million dollars had barely raised a quarter of that. The UN hoped to publicize the famine in which hundreds of thousands of southern tribesmen faced starvation. Without publicity to show the need, it was difficult for aid organizations to sustain funding. There is nothing like a disaster to boost an aid agency’s profile, and they needed to have the media cover the existence of the emergency. There are those who insist the war in Sudan would have ended decades ago if food and other aid had not been allowed to sustain the fighters; that the aid agencies and their food were manipulated, used by both government and rebels as a weapon of blackmail against the civilians in their areas of control, but Joao and Kevin knew none of this - they just wanted to get in and shoot pictures.

Kevin flew off to Juba while Joao sat brooding in the depressing hotel room. It was still daylight when Kevin returned. The trip had been a waste of time, he told Joao. They had landed, been taken to a pier on the While Nile, shown a barge with food being unloaded, suffered through a press briefing - and that was it. Despite the barge having had to travel for two months up the great river, during which it had been raided for over half of its cargo by famine-stricken people on the way, the only half-way interesting pictures Kevin found were of children scrambling for some grain that had spilled on to the dock. Kevin tried to alleviate Joao’s sour mood by showing him the negatives to prove just how useless the trip had been. Though Joao realized he had missed nothing, the knowledge did not make him feel any better. Joao was given to omens and they were looking pretty bad at that moment.

They decided to give it two more days and if nothing changed, they would head home. But then they received the news they had been waiting for: one of the rebel factions had given permission for the UN to fly in. In addition to the cargo plane carrying the food, Rob was going in on a light plane to assess the situation on the ground. Joao and Kevin were welcome to join him, but there was no guarantee as to when they could be picked up again. The following afternoon they were in the air, once again buoyant at the change in their fortunes. Three hours later, they landed just inside Kenya’s northern border, at the settlement of Lokichokio, just a few hundred metres from Sudan. Lokichokio was a tent-city, an UN forward-base for the big Hercules cargo aircraft that flew food and medical supplies into the famine areas.

Kevin and Joao were allocated a tent, then they had dinner out in the open, under a crystalline African sky. Dinner was good and the beer was cold, and they hoped to have more under the seamless canopy of stars, but the bar closed soon after ten. Back in their tent they could not sleep - too much excitement, too many thoughts of what might happen to them tomorrow.

‘What do you think is waiting for us there?’ Kevin asked, his voice loud in the dark silence that had settled on the camp. Joao could see Kevin’s profile, lit by the glowing tip of his cigarette.

‘Flies and hungry people, from what I’ve heard,’ Joao replied.

Their conversation skipped from topic after topic, but unlike all other similar conversations Joao had persevered through with Kevin, this time it was all positive. No self-indulgence, no self-pity. The future looked bright: Kevin was confident that the trip would be successful, that he would be able to cover his costs and make some money. This new girl, Kathy, was going to be just right for him. But mostly they spoke about South Africa, their work, the violence and where the country was heading in the coming years and the upcoming vote. The first elections that all South Africans could finally take part in were just 13 months away.

The conversation came around to Kevin’s tattoo. He had a misshapen map of Africa drawn on his right shoulder, clearly the work of an amateur. Joao told him he had seen better tattoos on convicts. Joao also had a tattoo on his right upper arm showing a winged angel, with the motto ACCEPT NO LIMITS on unfurled scrolls. It was also less than fantastically well drawn, but it was a work of art compared to Kevin’s.

After a lengthy discussion of tattoos, they decided Kevin’s should be re-done, reshaped so that the continent would look like the real thing, all in black, but with a single red tear coming out of South Africa and spilling on to his arm. The tear would somehow signify Kevin’s own pain as well as the pain of those whom he had photographed. They laughed that it would at least look better than his current tattoo. The pilot, who was trying to sleep in the adjoining tent, pleaded with them to keep quiet. They lowered their voices, noticing that dawn was not far off - they could hear the sounds of workers preparing breakfast.

Two hours later, their plane touched down in the tiny southern Sudanese hamlet of Ayod. It taxied to a halt at the end of the dirt airstrip and the pilot turned the plane in to position for a quick take-off, should it prove necessary. Half-way through the turn the front of the little plane lurched to an abrupt halt. They climbed out and saw that the front wheel had sunk into thick sand and the plane was stuck. It was nothing serious, the plane was undamaged, and they had started to push it out of the beach-like sand when they saw the massive cargo plane approaching. The cargo plane was making its approach for descent. Fortunately, dozens of Sudanese had come to greet the plane, the sound of aircraft meant food, and they quickly helped to wheel the little plane off the runway, averting what could have become a complicated situation.

As the cargo plane landed, its giant propellers raised a storm of sand and pebbles. The Sudanese crouched low alongside the runway, braving the hot, stinging blasts to be nearer the food. There is never enough food in these circumstances to feed everyone and the hungry villagers rushed the plane to try to ensure that they got their share of nutritious biscuits and maize meal. Those too weak to get to the runway had to rely on the aid workers for food. Some 200 metres from the runway, a low brick building from which the food aid was distributed stood out among the surrounding conical huts made of long thatching grass. That was Ayod. The first food consignment after months without aid attracted a pushing crowd of hungry Sudanese. They wore patched rags or walked around naked. Mothers who had joined the throng waiting for food left their children on the sandy ground nearby. The small food aid building also served as a clinic and was full of ill and starving people. There were those who needed special care if they were to survive, and others that could only be comforted before they died. Kevin and Joao separated. There were pictures everywhere. Once in a while, Kevin would seek out Joao to tell him about something shocking he had just photographed. In one of those foul-smelling rooms, Joao saw a skinny child lying spread-eagled on the dirt floor. It was dark and he struggled with the light, trying to get a frame. Kevin joined him and went down on to his knees to shoot the picture; he then looked up at Joao, wide-eyed. Despite all the happy anticipation of the night before, all the excitement had disappeared now that he was witnessing the effects of the war-induced famine.

Joao left the room. He wanted to find rebel soldiers who could take him to someone in authority. Their plane would take off in an hour and they needed to secure rebel permission to stay on. Joao found a group of fighters. They were dressed in rags, the only indication that they were indeed soldiers were the AK-47 assault rifles hanging limply from their shoulders. Kevin joined Joao and they tried talking to a rebel with deep traditional scars etched vertically on his cheeks, but the fighter spoke no English and communication rapidly broke down. They kept frozen grins on their faces as they tried to mime their way through the conversation. The only thing that was apparent was that the rebel had developed an interest in Kevin’s wristwatch. Somehow, Kevin gave the rebel his watch. Joao was surprised, but understood Kevin to be giving the soldier the cheap watch in an effort to ease his conscience about all those hungry people he could not help - or to secure goodwill to help them get across to the fighting.

They separated again. Joao photographed a half-naked man walking past him, completely oblivious to the white stranger. He went back inside the clinic complex, where he was told that permission to stay had to be obtained from the rebel commander, Riek Mashar, who could most probably be found at Kongor. This was good news; their little UN plane was heading there next.

Joao left the cool of the clinic and returned to the harsh sun and headed in the general direction of the runway, to where he had last seen Kevin. He came across a child lying on its face under the hot sun - he took a picture. Joao assumed the child had been left there by its mother while she went for food. He moved on to where he could see a man on all fours, digging at the arid soil with a hand tool of some sort, trying to plant seeds in the desiccated ground, hoping that the rains would ultimately arrive. Kevin had seen Joao and was coming towards him, moving fast, frantic. ‘Man,’ he put one hand on Joao’s shoulder, the other covered his eyes. ‘You won’t believe what I’ve just shot!’ He was wiping his eyes, but there were no tears, it was as if he was trying to obliterate the memory of what he had photographed, of what was burnt on to his retina.

Joao gave him a look. He didn’t like this ‘I-shot-shit’ at the best of times, much less when he had not seen any outstanding picture opportunities, but Kevin continued, not even noticing his friend’s sceptical look. ‘I was shooting this kid on her knees, and then changed my angle, and suddenly there was this vulture right behind her!’ Kevin was excited now, and talking fast. ‘And I just kept shooting - shots lots of film!’ His arms were all over the place, as they usually were when he was recounting something exciting.

Joao perked up, ‘Where?’ looking around, hoping to catch up on this amazing-sounding scene. If it were still there, he needed to shoot it. ‘Right here!’ Kevin said, pointing frantically fifty metres in front of them. Joao could see a child lying face down on the dry, grey-brown soil. The child looked similar to the one Joao had photographed a little earlier, but there had been no vulture near it then, and there was none now. ‘I’ve just finished chasing the vulture away!’ Kevin’s eyes were wild, he was speaking too fast, and losing words. He kept wiping at his eyes with the green bandanna he wore around his neck. ‘I see all this, and all I can think of is Megan.’ He lit a cigarette and dragged hard, getting more emotional by the second, the thin grey smoke disappearing into the air. ‘I can’t wait to hug her when I get home.’

Joao sensed immediately that he had missed out on a big moment, and, imagining what the picture would look like from Kevin’s description, knew his own take was going to look bad. Joao consoled himself with the thought that Kevin always got overly excited. He, on the other hand, had nothing to get excited about at all. But he was prepared to wait and see the pictures, being used to watching Kevin get electrified about images that sometimes turned out to be very average. Minutes later, they were back in the plane and leaving Ayod behind.

Kevin was telling Rob and the pilot all about the moment he had just experienced and how it made him feel, and that all he could think of was his own fortunate young daughter back home. He repeated how much he looked forward to seeing her, to hugging and kissing her. ‘Just five minutes in Sudan and he is blabbering about how terrible it is and how he’d never seen anything like it, all because of war,’ Joao thought. Up in the air, away from the realities, Kevin’s mood improved and he seemed a little happier. The realization of what he had shot was seeping in, for both Kevin and Joao. Joao sat quietly in his seat, withdrawn, disappointed and wishing he were elsewhere. The flies that had persistently followed them at the camp took off with them, making themselves at home in the plane. ‘So far my prediction is right,’ muttered Joao miserably to himself; he felt he had nothing but pictures of some hungry kids and half-naked men with guns. ‘Flies and skinny people.’

‘It all started when we were trying to illustrate a story out of the Sudan and it was really hard. Very few people got in. Nancy Buirski called around. She called you and you said Kevin had pictures.’

That phone call from The New York Times’s foreign picture editor Nancy Buirski had come late at night, waking me with its insistent ringing. There are few things I hate more than those late-night calls - people seem to ignore time differences, and I am partial to my sleep. Nancy Buirski wanted to know if, by any chance, I had recent pictures from Sudan. They were doing a story and needed to illustrate it. Their Nairobi correspondent had been in Juba when a food aid barge had arrived after 59 days of arduous and dangerous travel up the Nile. (It was the same barge Kevin had flown in to photograph, before he and Joao had both finally flown in to Ayod for those few, fateful hours.)

I told her that I had never been there, but that a friend of mine had returned from Sudan just a few days earlier with a great picture: an image of a vulture stalking a starving child who had collapsed in the sand. Was that the kind of thing they were interested in? From what had been a long-shot phone call, suddenly Nancy got excited. I gave her Kevin’s phone number. I had a strange feeling, a kind of jealousy, an envy, about introducing that picture to people. I, like many others, knew that it was going to be a massive picture and had been telling Kevin that, encouraging him to make the most of it, but when Nancy Buirski called me, I had a moment when I thought about not telling her of it. It was silly, and just a fleeting thought, maybe because he had shot it with a lens borrowed from me, maybe because I liked being the only South African Pulitzer-winner. In reality, I did not hesitate in telling her about Kevin’s vulture picture, but the selfishness of that short-lived, regretful thought has stayed with me, bothering me.

When that picture and a selection of others were finally transmitted to the Times, Nancy Buirski was waiting at the machine for it to roll off. Nancy Lee says she cannot forget the moment when she first saw the vulture picture - the Times, at that time, still had the old-style wire machine which would suddenly spit out prints, one at a time. Once she saw the picture, she instructed Buirski to make sure that Kevin not sell it to anyone else before they had published it.

Nancy Lee recalls that after the picture ran, people started calling. There was a lot of interest in what had happened to the girl. So she called Kevin and asked him. He said she had continued on to the feeding station. ‘Did you help her?’ ‘No, she got up and walked to the feeding centre, we were very close, within sight of it.’ ‘So you didn’t do anything, you didn’t help her?’ ‘No, but I know she made it, I saw her.’

The Times then ran an Editors’ Note saying that the girl had made it to the feeding station. But Nancy Lee was still unsatisfied, ‘I remember Nancy Buirski and I both felt uncomfortable. If he was that close to the feeding station and the child was on the ground, then, having taken the picture - which was, I think, important to do - why had he not gone there and got help? What do you do in cases like this? What is the obligation of any news professional in the face of tragedy in front of them? I don’t know; I have a humanistic feeling about it and a journalistic feeling about it. If something terrible is about to happen and you can stop it, if you can do something to help once you’ve done your job, why wouldn’t you? It bothered me, as a person. He could have done it, it would have cost him nothing. She would have weighed something like ten pounds. He could have picked her up and carried her there, could have gone there and got someone to come back and help her, whatever.

‘I don’t like to judge people, I was not there, I do not know what the situation was, I don’t know. But I would have helped the girl, me, as a person.’