What emerges is a perspective full of grey areas between livelihoods and ethnicity, and between local skirmishes and war.
Without livelihoods, they were reduced to long days and evenings full of waiting for news of missing relatives or much-needed aid.
Cassius Clay, Sr., who earned his livelihood as a sign painter, was a braggart, a charmer, a performer, a man full of fantastic tales and hundred-proof blather.
It is a region much like Down East Maine, full of small, tight-knit communities of hardworking people who earn their livelihoods from tourism and fishing.
He writes a damning report full of irrefutable scientific evidence that the town's environment, and indeed its very longterm livelihood, are in peril.
"Africa is full of poor people who are very highly dependent on climate-related issues for their livelihoods," says Bob Scholes, an ecologist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria, South Africa.
Full rails, full of coal.
The lives and livelihoods of millions of people were affected.
The legacy of slavery is still costing some blacks their lives, others their livelihoods, and most their full measure of dignity.
Recognising there is a real cost in terms of people's livelihoods, we have given ENO three full years of transition funding totalling £7.6m on top of their core grant, to help them adapt.
