There are half a dozen beds in the hospital in Cuemba. But there are no mattresses, so children lie on the concrete floor rather than on the bare metal slats. One little girl is curled up in the corner, coughing under what seems to be the only blanket available. Other children have nothing to cover their bony limbs during the winter nights here in the Angolan highlands, when temperatures regularly approach freezing.
Every day nearly 10 children out of every 10 000 die in and around Cuemba. To put that in perspective, it’s about 10 times the death rate that is considered to constitute an emergency. Children, and adults, are dying of hunger in one of Africa’s most fertile regions. It’s only now that the Angolan war has ended that its consequences are beginning to become apparent.
For the past fortnight a daily World Food Programme (WFP) cargo flight has been churning up the red earth as it lands on the local airstrip. But the aid operation began a year too late, some humanitarian staff believe. Erwin van der Borgt of Médécins sans Frontières (Belgium) — one of the first aid organisations to go to Cuemba — says it is not known how many people died in and around Cuemba before the United Nations decided that the area was secure enough for its operations.
”Although the area has been under control of the government, hardly any assistance was being provided to the population,” he says.
The result: 50 000 people in urgent need of assistance in the Cuemba area alone. A few hundred of them –the entire population of Canhumbu village, 7 km away — have assembled in front of a burnt-out government building on the edge of Cuemba town. Here they are to receive ration cards from the local authorities, which entitle them to food from the WFP deliveries.
A young woman called Fausta is holding a small rodent by its tail. ”I’m going to eat it because we don’t have any crops. I’ve eaten them often before.”
For people who, like Fausta, lived in the mata — the bush — rodents were the best source of protein to be had.
”There were only sweet potatoes — a tiny, tiny, tiny bit for each person,” says white-haired Aurelio Luhando. He says he was in the mata for eight years, ”because of Savimbi”.
Did he lose family members? His understatement is telling.
”Only three members of my family died from hunger.”
Van der Borgt argues that the hunger is not simply the result of war itself, but of the specific strategies pursued by Unita and by the Angolan Armed Forces as they struggled for the control of the countryside.
”Civilian populations were the target of both parties to the conflict — the government troops had an interest to force civilians to leave rural areas and take them to areas under their control,” he says.
”Unita from their side had an interest to keep control over those populations as well, but they were continuously on the run in the bush and they often forced those people to follow them. They were not able to settle, they were not able to cultivate.”
There is certainly no sign of cultivation between Cuemba and the village of Chindumba — a tortuous 30km drive, most of it through forest, on a sand track suitable for a military lorry but not much else. As the crow flies it’s only 18km, but few bridges are still usable after the war, necessitating this roundabout route.
In one corner of the village the brick buildings of colonial times have crumbled, pawpaw trees now sprouting among their foundations. Elsewhere, wood and thatch huts have been rebuilt. Children cheer as the truck arrives, the excitement fading fast as they realise there is no food on board. Until the road has been improved, people will have to walk to Cuemba to receive their rations. Some are in no state to do so — it’s hard to move beyond the cliché of ”skin and bone” to describe the child who clings to his equally emaciated mother — both of them were in the mata for years.
The WFP is concerned that its food stocks for Angola could run out in the coming months unless donations are received soon. It intends distributing seeds and tools so as to reduce the dependence created by a famine that has nothing to do with the weather, and everything to do with war.
Chindumba was abandoned until recently, says Pascoal Mahuepe, a local WFP official: ”Most of the people fled to the bush. In the bush they could not cultivate — or if they could cultivate, any soldier could come from Unita or the government side and get their food by force.”
Donisa João is among those who have come back. ”I was born here — but left because of the war, the hunger,” she says.
”I was in the mata for a year — there was nothing to eat there — there was a lot of illness. We ate leaves and wild roots. Then we were in Cuemba for a year. But we received nothing in Cuemba, it was no different.”
The Angolan Armed Forces recaptured Cuemba town from Unita in 2000, but the two armies continued to do battle in the surrounding countryside and the UN deemed the area too dangerous for aid agencies to operate. The agencies did, however, set up emergency feeding and medical facilities in Camacupa, 75km to the west. Soon 200 people a day were arriving in Camacupa, most having walked from Cuemba.
Aid agencies, including Oxfam, urged the government and Unita to take responsibility for the welfare of displaced people in areas under their control. There is little evidence that the warning was heeded.