DATE=10/13/00
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=ANGOLA DISPLACED
NUMBER=5-47164
BYLINE=CHALLISS McDONOUGH
DATELINE=MENONGUE, ANGOLA
INTERNET=YES
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: The war in Angola has forced hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes. Some flee over the borders into Zambia or Namibia to escape the fighting. But the vast majority never leave Angola. They have been flooding into government-controlled towns where the United Nations and non-governmental organizations are struggling to house and feed them. VOA Southern Africa Correspondent Challiss McDonough visited a center for internally displaced people in the southern Angolan town of Menongue (pron: men-OHNG) and filed this report.
TEXT: /// OPEN WITH MUSIC -- CHILDREN SINGING ///
The United Nations children's fund rates Angola as the single worst place in the world to be a child. There are more than two-million children here under the age of five. UNICEF says more than half have already had their growth stunted by malnutrition.
At this small pre-school in Menongue, children get two nutritious meals a day. But the cost of those meals is high. Most of these children live here, in a camp for internally displaced people run by the World Food Program and an Italian aid group known as InterSOS (pron: inter-sauce).
Although the government-controlled town of Menongue is relatively secure, several nearby areas are still hotly contested. Fighting between the government and UNITA rebels has driven thousands from their homes. The World Food Program says it is assisting 19-thousand of these people in Menongue alone.
Further down the road, the agencies are resettling the children's families into a makeshift village. Part of the operation is a transit camp, where the agencies feed new arrivals and find them shelter. But the longer-term goal is to create semi-permanent homes for the displaced.
Maurizio Gentile of InterSOS says the aid agencies do not consider this a temporary resettlement.
/// GENTILE ACT IN PORTUGUESE ///
He says it is absolutely indefinite, because who knows when the war will end? It has already been going on for thirty years.
People in the camp build their homes themselves, molding bricks out of the red earth and cutting grass to thatch the roofs. There is a communal kitchen, where several girls and young women cook food for the village. And on the land sloping down toward the nearby river, they are getting ready to plant vegetables -- so they will not have to be totally dependant on aid agencies for food.
But the war that drove these people here is still complicating their efforts to create a new life.
A group of five or six young men is getting water from a well, in the area where they intend to farm. Less than 50 meters away, a bright red sign reads, in Portuguese, "Perigo, Minas." Danger, mines. Maria Flynn of the World Food Program explains why the water is needed.
/// FLYNN ACT ///
They were preparing the land over here... do you see that red sign over there? They found an unexploded bomb yesterday. And because it was too deep into the ground to reach the detonator, they are wetting the ground to soften the ground, and to be able to remove it.
/// END ACT ///
Ms. Flynn says it is the second explosive device they have found buried in less than a week.
/// FLYNN ACT TWO ///
So when we're talking about the difficulties, we must take into consideration that when you start resettling people into land that has not been used, these are the things that you find. And these are part of their daily lives.
/// END ACT ///
The land-mines and unexploded bombs in the fields are from wave after wave of war in Angola. Some of them are more than 20 years old. This province, Cuando Cubango, borders both Zambia and Namibia, and it may have more mines than other areas of the country. But over all, aid workers say the challenges facing people in Menongue are no different than anywhere else in Angola. In fact, it may be better here than elsewhere because there is an abundant supply of water. With water, people can grow food.
Once they get the mines cleared, people in the Menongue resettlement camp hope to plant enough to feed themselves, and maybe even to sell at the market in town. (Signed)
NEB/CEM/KL/PFH
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