Water after War: Seasons in Angola

Part One - Maquela do Zombo

Arrival

I flew to Angola to look for water in a wet land. I lugged a duffel bag crammed with books about shallow wells, solar pumps, and rainwater harvesting through the Quarto de Fevereiro airport in Luanda.

The name Angola was then synonymous with war. Civil strife had ravaged the country since 1975, when Portuguese colonialists abandoned this southwestern African nation. Weeks before I arrived, the United Nations began implementing a peace treaty between the Marxist government and Jonas Savimbi, the ruthless leader of a well—disciplined rebel army. A window of peace opened. The rebels promised to lay down arms during power sharing negotiations. This was when we entered this battered nation, where villagers gulped down contaminated water, and disease swooped around the country like a rabid bat.

A US State Department travel advisory warned against expecting hospitality:

Travel within Angola remains unsafe due to the presence of undisciplined armed troops, unexploded landmines, hostile actions against aircraft and widespread banditry

A tall Brazilian nurse met me at the cramped airport. We then drove along city streets, seeing boys crawl out of sewers where they lived, and businessmen speak on radios because Luanda’s phone system was decrepit. Outside the front gate of the organization where I would work, a guard with an AK 47 rifle pulled back a thick bolt before waving the driver in.

As part of our training, a group of us spent two days in a subterranean office being briefed on the dangers of working in a recent war zone. Afterwards, four of us flew together in a ten-seat plane captained by two spry young French pilots for Aviations Sans Frontières—Pilots Without Borders. The plane flew north under a banner of neutrality. A sticker below each window showed a red circle superimposed over the image of a camera. The words below read: Aerial Photography Not Permitted.

The plane crawled north above the Atlantic coastline, then veered east toward the province of Uige (WEE-j), traversing an invisible border separating government territory from rebel terrain. In more romantic jargon, we crossed ‘behind the lines.’

I pressed my nose to the window.

Beautiful country, said a coworker seated beside me. He was an elder, bald man from India named Suruup. In a big mess, he added.

I had heard tales of Angola, stories about bloodshed and war. I felt giddy and privileged about visiting this land, yet stayed apprehensive with uncertainty. Twice as big as Texas, three times as large as California, and the size of Britain, Spain and France combined, Angola was the Cold War battlefield where questionable allies aligned with the foggiest of causes. After Portuguese colonialists fled the newly independent country in the mid-70’s, laborers abandoned coffee plantations, diamond mines closed, and commerce jerked to a halt. Rebel factions—vying for control—sprayed across the land like soldier ants sniffing out enemy colonies. South Africa, Zaire, the Soviet Union, the United States, Romania, and China all pumped in arms and cash to fuel bazooka battles and guerilla attacks amid splendid hills and fetid jungles.

I recalled more wording from the State Department advisory.

The security situation in Angola remains extremely volatiletravel to the interior is unsafe because of sporadic armed clashesmost destinations in the interior are accessible only by airforeigners, including US citizens, have been the targets of violent robberies in their homes.

Angola’s airline—with Marxist flat at top

As the airplane leveled off, anticipation flowed through my veins. Angola’s situation was bizarre enough to provide daily intrigue. When the plane punched through a cloud layer three thousand feet above earth, we looked down at rolling green hills and clusters of palms tucked in valleys below. As we flew lower, I adjusted sunglasses and gazed at abandoned mansions, ancient rural roads, and hills that bubbled with springs. The plane’s white wings shuddered above a landscape steeped in superlatives. Once home to the world’s largest coffee farm, Angola now had the planet’s highest infant mortality rate. Beneath Angolan soils lay the best quality diamonds on earth, as well as the largest number of unexploded land mines per capita. The country’s eleven million residents shared their homeland with fifteen million of these latent explosives. The US State Department highlighted that even during a ceasefire, the general security situation was dire.

City streets are patrolled by police and soldiers who normally carry automatic weapons. They are unpredictable and their authority should not be challenged. Adequate medical facilities are virtually non-existent throughout Angola and most medicine is not available. Chloroquine—resistant and cerebral malaria are endemic to the region.

Angola was a land of physical and psychological scars, a nation kept in need. When this cease fire began and the country opened its doors to outside intervention, international relief agencies stormed in like caffeinated firefighters. If peace endured, residents who abandoned Angola years earlier might suddenly flood back to their motherland. Anticipating this potential human deluge, the United Nations pinned flags onto maps to identify where refugee centers should be placed to cater to these returning residents. The plan was simple. If the peace process worked and the war ended permanently, refugees trekking back from Zambia or Zaire to Angola could stay for a day or two at a special ‘reception center’ built near a border crossing. There, they could bare their arms for vaccinations, pick up vegetable seeds and gardening tools, and perhaps even swallow a hot and salty dinner before walking back to the rural home they fled from years earlier.

Our team worked for a US non-governmental organization (NGO) funded by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Our assignment was to build a refugee health center in the town of Maquela do Zombo, then fan out throughout the province to rehabilitate dilapidated rural health centers, transforming them to painted structures with intact roofs, rain gutters, meshed windows, and cabinets stocked with medicines. The UN expected a hundred thousand Angolans to flood back to their villages during the next two years. We would ensure that thirteen gleaming health clinics waited for their arrival throughout Uige province—each stocked with splints, gauze pads, iodine, aspirin, and other medical goodies.

That was the plan.

I kept my mind open about this situation, although a simple question hounded me. After decades of fighting, and having already rejected the results of a democratic election once before, why had the rebel leader suddenly agreed to a cease fire and surrender? Something about this scenario was not right.

Our group formed an international mix. Ana Maria was a strong willed Brazilian nurse with dark hair and a radiant smile. Samson was a stout Tanzanian doctor, trained in Cuba. He was short and jocular, forever telling jokes about our precarious situation. Suruup was an older man from India, a veteran of working with aid-related projects throughout the developing world. He appeared relaxed and unworried and frequently pulled a baseball cap over his eyes to take a quick nap. As the fourth team member, I was a civil engineer assigned to lead construction crews supplying potable water to health posts we were assigned to rehabilitate. Before this assignment I spent more than four years working on rural water supply projects in Malawi and Namibia. Yet I realized that conditions in Angola were more primitive and restrictive. This truth, combined with a rainy season that lasted from five to eight months each year, made me suspect that our progress would be slow.

The plane punched through clouds again and glided over meandering hills. Clusters of trees—eucalyptus, palm, and mango—  grew in neat clefts tucked into rolling vales. Turbid rivers slashed fertile lands between the towns of Maquela do Zombo and Damba. Other streams curled south from the border with Zaire toward old Portuguese centers at M’Banza Congo and Negage.

The plane landed on a dirt airstrip a few miles outside Maquela. We later learned that land mines were spaced along one side of the runway—as evenly as studs on a belt. When we stepped out of the airplane an African man approached. He clapped hands and smiled, then patted our backs.

Nurse, doctor, engineer, manager—welcome! he said with a grand flourish. I am Karim, from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. I flew in only an hour ago just to meet you.

Karim wore wrinkled khaki trousers. His shirt swirled with orchid designs. He appeared as though he was headed for a Club Med vacation. He was an affable bundle of enthusiasm with a big smile.

We loaded our bags into a Land Cruiser and rode over deep hummocks on a rutted road. The air was damp and heavy. Clouds hung low. Branches with fat leaves poked above the roadway. Boys ran beside the vehicle, leaping high to peer inside. The truck sloshed through mud, passing brick huts and bullet-pummeled walls of abandoned colonial mansions. We entered the town of Maquela.

Maquela do Zombo had been forgotten for decades, a tropical nook cut off by war. The meaning of the town’s name is obscure, but most likely refers to the local abundance of small river stones. Maquela’s low buildings sprawled over lush hills. The population, which rose or dwindled depending on the severity of war, hovered at about fifteen thousand. A string of cracked concrete lamp posts (the lights no longer glowed) ran through the middle of the wide and wavy unpaved main street. Tangled fields circled the town. Long grass poked between walls of bombed out buildings. Months of rain had kept the land olive green. Like other towns in the province of Uige, Maquela had no electricity, running water, public transportation, mail, or telephone system. The town that once hummed with the commerce of agriculture now puttered to the rhythm of meager trade trickling down from the border with Zaire, forty kilometers north.

I rolled down a window and sniffed the warm air. Nearby women stopped to watch our vehicle, one of the few maneuvering within town. The local people appeared rowdy, yet warm. Women in bright dresses carried buckets of water and firewood on their heads; smiling men paced in crumpled shoes and faded shirts.

Karim pointed to new logos recently painted on buildings along our route.

Norwegian Refugee Council. And there, he said, waving his hand at a pink home shaded by mango trees. "The French. Médecins Sans Frontières," he indicated, pointing to the renovated office and home of the organization Doctors Without Borders.

Our team was to complement the efforts of these other organizations in smoothing the country’s transition toward peace. Yet I wondered if Angola could emulate the success of her sister country, Mozambique, located on Africa’s opposite coast. This other ex-Portuguese colony had recently pulled through its own peace process. The soldiers there finally laid down their arms and quit slaughtering civilians. Could Angola do alike?

Where are we going? asked Suruup.

Let’s meet Sven, said Karim. He knows where you’ll stay.

Our little adventure was in full swing. Yet my uncertainty lurked. Who, exactly, was Sven?

Maquela

Sven pulled out two liters of beer from a crate. His thick Norwegian fingers plunked them down on the table before us.

It was ten in the morning.

Skol, said the barrel-chested Scandinavian as he toasted us. Welcome to Maquela.

I filled a glass and took a gulp and looked out the window. A scrawny man paced down the main street with a bed frame balanced on his head. Behind him, two boys thwacked sticks at a herd of thin goats.

Moist air circulated through the open window. Bright sunlight shone inside the warm and humid house where Sven lived and worked. Six of us hunched around a wooden table—four from our organization as well as Karim and Sven, a Norwegian construction foreman.

Where are my damn bulldozer blades Karim? Sven barked. And what about fuel drums? How can I repair roads if you don’t provide me with equipment? I’m fed up waiting for supplies.

Let’s discuss equipment later, Karim replied. First, can you show us our rooms?

Sven worked for a Norwegian NGO funded by the UNHCR. The UN considered him their principal liaison in town, their Man in Maquela. Sven had been there for weeks. He lived in this rehabilitated brick bungalow located at the quiet end of the dirt main street. He had installed a generator that powered electric lights and a refrigerator. Because our organization also received UN funding, Sven was our first link to this town and this troubled rural land. We looked to him as a voice of authority and guidance. We sat at a table and listened as he spoke.

What rooms? he asked.

Did you get our radio message? These four, said Karim, nodding toward us, will work and live in Maquela during the next six months. They’ll stay here until they find and renovate their own home.

Sven laughed.

I never got a radio message.

He swaggered to the door and nodded down the short hallway that smelled of fresh paint.

Look, Karim.

The Kenyan followed.

This building has two bedrooms, Sven said. Two. Small bedrooms. One for me. One for you when you visit. Where are these guys supposed to stay?

Suruup giggled. His tilted baseball cap drooped over his brown bald head and he smiled like a happy child. Dr. Samson raised his brows. Ana Maria rolled her eyes and brushed strands of long black hair across her lips. She reminded me of a well groomed but now irritated cat.

No rooms, Karim conceded. Where is a hotel?

Sven fingered his beard.

Thirty years of war, Karim. Think about it. No electricity, running water, mail, telephones, or decent roads in Maquela. The last bus left this town twenty-five years ago. And you want a hotel?

Yes, said Karim. Not even war shuts down the business of lodging strangers.

Sven shook his head. He walked to the window and pointed across the road.

Hotel Liberdade. It’s the only cement building in Maquela not bombed out during the war. You know why? Because the owner runs guns from Zaire for his rebel Angolan friends. See if you can get rooms there Karim. Don’t expect much.

We finished our beers. Our multiethnic squad crossed the wide dirt road. A breeze cut through humidity. The air smelt fresh. My head felt limber, even excited, by the uncertainty.

The less than glorious Hotel Liberdade

We ascended concrete steps and paced over a long porch. Blue paint flaked off walls of this dilapidated single story structure.

There was no receptionist. There was no reception. There was no staff. Instead, a dull boy with a pug nose seated on porch steps told us he knew the owner. The boy offered to show us an empty room. He stood on blistered bare feet and led us down the covered porch to a mangled wooden door, which he pushed open. We followed him into partial darkness.

I heard a clunk, and saw a chunky rat scoot into a hole. There were no lights. The window panes lacked glass. There were no curtains, towels, sheets, pillows, blankets, or wastebasket. Pellets of rodent crap lay on the dusty floor. A bare and filthy mattress that reeked of urine and mildew lay on a rotting bed frame. Stick sketches of fornicating figures were scrawled in charcoal across grimy walls. Cobwebs yawned over open spaces above where ceiling tiles were missing.

Flustered, we walked outside.

Karim instructed