Photojournalist Cheryl Hatch slept in refugee camps and holed up in front-line bunkers to capture the words and searing images for "The Struggle Continues," a pictorial account of the role of women in Eritrea. The tiny African country is currently engaged in a border war with Ethiopia. "It's a stupid, bloody war [now two years old] that's costing Eritrea its progress and bleeding its future," says Hatch, an adjunct professor of photography and visual communication at Oregon State University.

Hatch's project was funded through a Pew Fellowship from Hopkins's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The program, new to SAIS, is aimed at encouraging journalists to tackle important international stories that might otherwise go unnoticed by the media. Before traveling to Africa in November, Hatch spent 10 weeks at SAIS doing preparatory research. As the first photographer to be named a fellow in the program, she says, "I was breaking new ground."

She's heartened by the attention her work has received since her return (her photos and story have been picked up by the Christian Science Monitor and San Francisco Chronicle, among other newspapers), and hopes the exposure will "get people talking" about a situation few know anything about.

RETURN TO JUNE 2000 TABLE OF CONTENTS.