Three months ago Calala was just a forest. Now it is home to 4 500 people living in solidly constructed huts. Calala, in the easternmost reaches of Angola, is one of the 34 quartering centres set up around the country as the central feature of the peace plan signed by Unita and the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) on April 4.
“I learnt to build houses like this in the bush,” says a former soldier, tying wooden poles together with strips of bark. “I’ve built lots of houses like this before.”
There’s even a hospital constructed along the same lines, complete with a surgeon in full green theatre gear. Forceps, stethoscopes and kidney dishes lie on a rough wooden table — relics of Unita’s days as a South African and United States-backed professional army.
At Ndele, a quartering centre in central Angola, Unita’s men have taken it upon themselves to repair all the bridges on the 50km road between their camp and the town of Kuito. Their constructions of logs and sticks are a little rickety, but strong enough to take an army truck.
“We have the manpower to build the bridges, we just lack the materials,” says camp commander Colonel Faustino JosÃ