Ruaridh Nicoll follows Princess Di on her tour to meet Angola’s victims of war as part of a Red Cross campaign to ban landmines internationally
THE Red Cross convoy passed shanty dwellings and huge piles of evil-smelling rubbish to bring Diana, Princess of Wales, to her second stop on the second of her four days in Angola this week – an orthopaedic workshop where men, mainly ex- soldiers from Angola’s 20-year civil war, stood like flamingoes on their single legs.
In a tiny cubicle, she sat and talked to Sandra Thijica, a 13-year-old girl who lost one of her legs to a landmine in 1994 in eastern Angola. The little girl looked almost happy. ”She said she would have her picture taken with me,” Sandra beamed afterwards.
This was Diana’s first trip to Africa, and by the end of the day she had seen plenty of the bitter life many of its people lead. Angola, she said, was ”amazing and appalling”.
She has now seen some of the rougher bits of this destroyed country, albeit from the safety of the Red Cross motorcade, which was flanked yesterday by a couple of the president’s smart Harley Davidson outriders.
At one point it ploughed through Luanda’s thick, anarchic traffic, passing at one stage Africa’s largest open market, where people were selling everything from beer to car aerials.
”Which one is the princess?” shouted one onlooker, evidently expecting a dignitary to be in the usual big black car rather than a white Land Rover.
As the convoy pulled into the Kikolo health post the sound of drumming gave way to the vision of well-toned stomach muscles rippling on the bodies their gyrating owners. On the other side were rows of women holding young babies.
Diana stepped in, a tanned white woman in khaki jeans and a blue sleeveless shirt, among the colourful, breast-feeding Angolan poor.
She picked up Andre, the two-month-old baby of Maria Bemba. ”She has come to help us,” said Bemba. ”She said she will help us to get the medicine to treat my baby. He is ill.”
Once Diana had passed Andre back, Bemba returned to her breastfeeding. While the princess did not yet look comfortable in her new role of ambassador to the war- wounded, she seemed fascinated. One maimed ex-soldier, Bernardo Cupnula, called her ”the princess of peace”.
Lunching at a school which teaches landmine-awareness classes, Diana chose only rice from the table of food – ”You should be safe with that,” she told me – and said that she would like to return to Angola.
”But if I am to carry on with this anti- personnel mine issue, then there are many other countries which I will need to visit,” the princess added.
Around the room, workers were being trained to teach others how to spot, mark and avoid the nastiest legacy of these anti-civilian wars. There is supposed to be one landmine in Angola for every man, woman and child who tries to make a life in this forgotten country.
Overhead a poster showed a woman with her legs exploding, a baby on her back getting hit in the face.
”When you walk please check your way,” the caption read.