Sovica Ricardo Justo is trying to keep his composure, attempting to look nonchalant. It’s not cool for a 17-year-old to get soppy and soft at a family reunion.
But his laid-back demeanour crumbles when he sees his older brother, Satuma, across the street. Sovica clasps his hand over his mouth and the tears well up in his eyes.
Satuma dodges the traffic in the ever-busy Angolan capital, Luanda, to get to the younger brother he hasn’t seen since 1992, ”when he was just a baby”. In what has become a traditional greeting, he hoists Sovica into the air.
For staff at the Angolan Red Cross and the national delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), scenes like this are now familiar.
The humanitarian organisation has spent almost two years helping reunite families separated by 27 years of civil conflict, bringing 836 children back together with parents, aunts, uncles and siblings.
It’s an emotionally trying job — albeit in a happy way — but even burly security guards at the Red Cross offices are forced to wipe their eyes as Sovica’s older brother, Castro, hugs him to bursting point.
These heart-warming reunions take place as often as once a week, and illustrate the success of the project that began just two months after the government signed a peace deal with its arch-rival, Unita, in April 2002.
Annick Aebi, coordinator of protection operations for the ICRC in Angola, explained how, in some respects, the job of the Red Cross was easier at the start of peace. Many people searching for loved ones were holed up in transit camps, providing a relatively easy pool of people for the Red Cross to match up.
Sovica had fled the war in the central province of Huambo. After roaming barefoot around the country for almost a year he arrived in Luena, the capital of Moxico province in the east. He knew he might find his family through the Red Cross reunification programme.
His was one of more than 145 000 messages passed on by the organisation last year, and Sovica was fortunate because his family in Luanda were also aware of the tracing project. His siblings spotted their brother’s name in the Gazeta — a list of separated parents and children — and contacted the Red Cross, who set the wheels in motion for a reunion.
Not everyone in Angola knows about the programme, and with the scaling down of emergency operations and the closure of transit camps, there is no longer a quick and easy way to link up the seekers and the sought.
”We now have to move into the second phase of the operation,” Aebi said. ”It’s no longer a project for the masses, it’s much more individual. We have to go to the people, to the individuals, to discover their needs. It’s a completely different way of working.”
”There is still a huge number of people in Angola who are not well informed about our activities — that’s why we’re trying already to work with churches, because they have such an extensive network and by working with them, our activities can have a much bigger impact,” she added.
Aebi likened the work of Red Cross workers to that of detectives who have to piece together a jigsaw of information. In Angola, with the communication infrastructure decimated by the war, that is no easy task.
”In the first phase, we didn’t need to look for people — people came to us. But now it’s much more difficult,” she said, stressing that spreading the word has become a key strategy. ”We need to be present in public places, like churches, but also markets and civil administrations, so that we can reach more people.”
Exacerbating the problem is the sad fact that for many families, finding food to put on the table takes top priority.
”Even after the war, many people are still living in terrible conditions and are much more concerned about what they will eat tomorrow — they have priorities other than finding their loved ones. Yes, they want to do it, but they have to deal first with the harsh realities of life,” Aebi explained.
Although Sovica’s family home in the shanty town of Kicolo, 30 minutes’ drive from Luanda, is modest at best, at least his brothers and sisters have sufficient food.
Having set himself up as an entrepreneur ”buying and selling all kinds of things”, Sovica has returned with a few hundred kwanza in his pocket and a box of rice, sugar and sweets as a gift for his long-lost relatives, and is eager to start working to earn his keep.
Others are not as lucky.
”It’s not uncommon for children to be quite disappointed or even shocked when they see the conditions in which their parents are living,” Aebi noted.
”We have to be careful and consider the interests of the child. Of course, the decision to go back is voluntary, but we visit the family and make sure they are ready to accept the child, and to evaluate the living conditions and access to education and food.
”It is important now for us to do follow-ups. We can’t do much about it, but it gives us an idea of how things are going, and draws our attention to potentially tricky situations and instances where we have to be careful,” she said.
Looking ahead, the Red Cross will have its work cut out for some years to come. It is still working on 609 unsolved cases where children are looking for their families, and another 1 030 cases of families looking for their offspring.
The third issue of the Gazeta, to be published next month, will contain about 12 000 names of lost adults and children — almost 5 000 more than the second issue.
”That illustrates the huge need,” said Aebi.
The Gazeta is also available on the ICRC website, which recently chalked up its first international internet success. An Angolan woman living in the United States tracked down her father after more than 20 years without contact. With cyber-cafés slowly appearing in even the remotest of provinces, this tool could yield more positive results in the future.
”As long as we see a need, the programme will go on,” Aebi said. ”That doesn’t mean we’ll assume the same strategy. We will evolve and adapt to the situation.” — Irin