I know how lucky I am. One woman walked 100km to find food. Her six-year-old died of hunger on the way; Rupert Everett's exclusive personal diary of his visit to drought-stricken Africa.

It was an emotional moment for Rupert Everett as he cradled the dying boy in his arms. The child was little more than a bag of bones and there was a scary resignation about his hollow eyes that brought a lump to the Hollywood star's throat. It was a scene that could have come straight out of one of his movies, but this was real life.

Rupert, 41, was asked by Oxfam to tour drought-stricken Ethiopia and Kenya, which face another terrible famine on the scale that shocked the world back in 1984. What he saw in Africa was a world away from the glamorous circles he moves in.

One of our biggest movie stars, Rupert shot from jobbing actor-status to Hollywood's A-list after starring with Julia Roberts in My Best Friend's Wedding. He now numbers Madonna among his close friends - in May his co-star in the recent box office hit The Next Best Thing even threw a star-studded party to celebrate his birthday.

Ironically, that glitzy bash in Los Angeles prompted Rupert to take a fresh look at his life. And, on the advice of two Buddhist friends, he decided to devote more time to helping those less fortunate.

"I've been very lucky and I felt I should give something back. This trip seemed like a challenge I should take up rather than withdraw from," he says.

Two weeks ago he took advantage of a break in his hectic filming schedule and went to Africa. There, Ethiopia is on the brink of disaster, trapped in what Oxfam calls a "creeping crisis". The situation has been worsening since March and drought has already claimed 100,000 victims. If the rains fail again the country faces another full-blown catastrophe.

Rupert's week-long tour, which he paid for out of his own pocket, took him from the South-Eastern tip of Ethiopia and on to Northern Kenya. Along the way he saw some of the measures that Oxfam are taking to relieve the threatened crisis - water tankers, health projects and feeding centres.

Minus his usual entourage of friends and fans, he looked nervous clutching a single hold-all, but was more than happy to rough it in Oxfam's relief shelter. There the things we take for granted are scant. There are no land lines and mobile phones refuse to work. Although Rupert made light of this, confessing that, "This is the first time I've been completely unreachable and it's rather nice", he often seemed uncomfortable as well as saddened in the face of the overwhelming poverty and suffering.

He met a woman who had walked for 20 days with her seven children to search for food and another who traipsed 100km only to see her six-year-old daughter die at the roadside. He also spoke to a man who cannot feed his family of nine because his cattle have died, and met people dying of TB and full-blown Aids who have no access to basic drugs.

These harrowing encounters brought home to Rupert how easy life is in the West and also that action needs to be taken now, before it is too late.

"It's worthwhile for everyone to look outside their own communities and have their horizons broadened," he says. "In the West we spend far too much time worrying about our careers, our relationships and our own problems.

"A lot of our feelings are devised to get what we want. For us, love is more about emotional need, but the people in the drought areas of Ethiopia and Kenya haven't got the luxury of wallowing in such emotions. They are too concerned with how to survive. If people give just pounds 5 to help their struggle then this trip will have been worthwhile," he says.

Here, exclusively for The Look, is Rupert's diary of his seven-day visit.

Day 1

Leaving Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, I take a three-hour flight to Gode in the South-East - an area with virtually no roads, where it's a constant struggle to move and deliver food. The rains have failed here for three consecutive years and there are 400,000 vulnerable people dependent on food aid. They are Nomads and used to great hardship, but they face the gravest crisis since the famine of 1984.

In the past, I've questioned whether a celebrity coming to a place like Ethiopia does any good but, although I feel uncomfortable about it, I suppose it's an effective way of getting a message across when no one will listen. Driving to the Oxfam compound I'm conscious that, in the West, we're used to having a lot and wanting more and I will soon be confronted by people who have nothing. It's hard for us to begin to imagine what that's like. Perhaps that's why we switch off so easily.

The compound is very basic. Previously a traders' hotel, it has bare, box-like rooms, cold water bucket showers and a pit latrine. The Oxfam folk are worried that I won't like roughing it but I tell them not to worry - after all, I spent five years in an English public school!

Dat 2

I visit one of Oxfam's therapeutic feeding centres set up four months ago for severely malnourished children. It took some of the mothers two weeks to walk here with their children. The centre which is clean and efficient feeds 200 children, all of whom have five feeds a day with a high-energy cereal based food mix. Malnourished children can be revived pretty quickly, so most of the kids don't look too bad, but there are some scary new arrivals. One little girl has no hair or nails.

Another screams with terror as she's fed through a plastic syringe. One of the village elders is always with us. Twice he asks me to send a message to the Queen of England, to ask her for help. The Nomads in this remote and inaccessible region are close to slipping off the edge. There are still some isolated pockets where aid can't reach.

It's terrifying to think that in 1984, organisations like Oxfam were burying 200 children a day. This could become reality again here very soon. The elder tells me he has lost all his cattle. "We will all die if we don't get help soon," he says.

Perhaps rudely, I tackle the tricky question of birth control. "I have nine children and I trust God will protect me," he says. The idea of contraception is alien to his culture but a birth rate which is growing at three per cent per year means catastrophe is inevitable. Later, I meet Rahma who walked for 20 days to get here with her seven children. Too malnourished to breastfeed, her baby boy was practically dead on arrival.

Today he looks much better, but Rahma constantly rubs her left ankle in pain. One of the things which has struck me most about this place is the state of people's gnarled and cracked feet from walking.

Day 3

We visit Bulhagray which adjoins Gode. It's a village which illustrates the scale of the problem facing the aid workers. Three months ago there were 8,000 people living here, now there are 25,000 with the number rising daily as people swamp the region looking for food and water. Each family used to have up to 150 cattle but now most have none at all. Oxfam has opened a clinic here offering basic health care and vaccinations.

Latrines have been built and clear water provided. Water seems the key to everything. At the supplementary feeding centre, people come to collect food and have their children weighed. When they reach 85 per cent of their optimum weight they're discharged. There I meet Ebla, who walked 100 kilometres with her three children to get here. Her eldest child, aged six, died on the road from hunger and thirst.

Walking through the dusty village to have tea in the elder's circular hut, I suddenly feel disorientated. It's hard to take everything in because it's all so different, but inside the elder's house it's beautifully cool and he offers us all sweet tea. He tells us to treat his home as our own and think of him as our father.

Day 4

I realise I'm a typical Englishman - cold and closed in my outward reactions. Some people who come here react very emotionally to what they see, but I don't think emotion is useful in a situation like this.

There's a danger of hugging people to death. They don't need our tears, they need our money. So often in the West we're obsessed with ourselves and our own problems, whereas these people don't have time to indulge in all that stuff.

Survival is everything. We end the day in Gode's hospital, one of two catering to a catchment area of four million people. It is full with the very sick and has two tuberculosiswards. Although the resilience of the people in Gode is inspiring, there seems to be no escape for them.

Day 5

We fly to Kenya from Addis Ababa. The problems here are different. In Ethiopia there's enough food but the roads are often impassable.

In Kenya they have good roads but not enough food. Before heading north into the drought region, I visit an Aids project in Nairobi which Oxfam are helping with. The Kibera Community Self-Help Programme offers HIV/Aids services and is based in East Africa's second largest slum where half a million people live.

A third of them are HIV-positive. There are also 50,000 Aids orphans here. This community, where only a tenth of the population have any work, is also blighted by the drought. Prices have risen drastically and some of the HIV-positive women who have been trained with new skills (such as selling charcoal or firewood) are now struggling to survive. I meet two who tell a typical story.

Marcellina is 39 and her three daughters (aged between 17-24) and her 14-year old son are all HIV-positive. She's earning less and less money from selling charcoal and is getting weaker by the day.

Meanwhile Lydia, 40, has full-blown Aids and looks very sick. She cries as she tells me she's staying alive just to see her ten-year old daughter through school. It's a scandal that there are virtually no drugs in Africa. Here Aids is a disease of poverty, which means that improving people's lifestyles and basic health is the only way of extending their lives.

Day 6

We leave Nairobi at 6am to fly to Wajir in Northern Kenya.

The area is nothing but desert, scrubby bush and vast expanses of sand. The people here havenothing and unless governments and the international community help them soon, there is little hope of them surviving. Driving for four hours down hot, sandy roads I suddenlyfeel dazed and depressed by everything I've seen. It's so much to take in. Our first stop is a small feeding centre.

New arrivals are waiting outside having been driven from their homes by clan conflicts, but there's not enough food for them. For the first time I see a child who looks like those images of famine we've become used to.

His skin is falling off him. His eyes are dark and hollow. Down the road, water has arrived in a tanker. Often people walk 75 kilometres every two days with their cattle and camels to get water. The cattle are weak and thin, and their carcasses litter the roadside. One old man tells me, "We have been thinking about water for months and this is a dream come true".

At Wajir there is a water pump with animals drinking. Some have waited days to get their turn at the trough. Most of all, I'm impressed by the portable well-digger which bores a hole that can last as long as it's needed and then be closed up again. Just drilling for water at random isn't a good idea, because it concentrates the population around wells, destroying the land and the nomadic way of life.

Day 7

Time to go home. It's been a privilege to witness another culture up close and be reminded of how lucky I am. It's also been an opportunity for me to be more outgoing instead of always looking inwards.

The further into the problem I've waded, the more I've come to realise that this is an incredibly complex subject and it must be frustrating for an organisation such as Oxfam because they're always just keeping things at bay rather than having the resources to be one step ahead. One of the strangest things is that donors want instant gratification.

They aren't moved until they see those terrible images of famine and they want to feel their pounds 5 has gone directly to help a dying baby. They don't realise that if they gave to development as well - to water, health and education - there's less chance that those babies would be starving in the first place. To give to the Africa Drought appeal, call 01865 313131 or see www.oxfam. org.uk/africadrought