By Basildon Peta

Kazungula, Zambia - As the omnipotent British agent James Bond, code number 007, Roger Moore had no trouble saving the world from fictitious baddies. This week, as Unicef's Goodwill Ambassador, he was struggling a lot harder to save the people of Zambia from the real evil of famine which is creeping over their land like the Black Plague.

Among the wretched denizens of this remote village, 520km south of the capital Lusaka, the name of one of the world's most acclaimed entertainers did not ring a bell. The applause and fanfare that would normally accompany the arrival of a celebrity was missing when Moore's convoy of 4x4 jeeps descended on Maunga Primary School. The people there were too desperate for pleasantries. They got straight to the point.

"Sir is there any way you can help us? We used to be human beings like you, but now we are animals. We have no food. We have to share the same food with animals in the bush," Cathrine Muwondo, 60, said.

'This is an appalling situation. It's awful'

The men, women and children, clad in rag-tag cloths, had gathered under the huge musasa tree with the pain of permanent hunger etched on all their faces. Some had brought buckets in anticipation of corn handouts from Moore, 75, and his wife Kristina. But he quickly clarified his mission.

"We are here to try and help you. Our mission is to see your plight and to lobby organisations and governments to help you," Moore explained.

For the next five hours, Moore listened to incredible stories of survival that provoked him to declare that this was his worst encounter with hunger in the 12 years he has worked as a goodwill ambassador of the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).

"I have a sense of guilt, I think we should all do more to help these poor souls," he said in an interview afterwards.

The women demonstrated how they pounded open the Mungongo wild fruit that has become their sole source of survival. They explained their agony in travelling long distances of up to 20km to fetch clean drinking water.

School officials explained how hunger had caused massive dropouts at the school. How some pupils reported for school completely drained after having first accompanied their parents in the bush to scout for wild fruit and roots for food.

Many pupils told Moore that they had not eaten anything the entire day, and were not expecting any meal in the coming days. Moore looked at his watch and shook his head.

"This is an appalling situation. It's awful," he said. He lamented the lack of coverage of "these real issues of life and death" in the international media.

"The world needs to see these pictures to respond. Unfortunately the pictures about important issues in life are not making it into the international media headlines," he said. - Independent Foreign Service