Angola’s Land Mine Victims

After three decades of almost continuous armed conflict, Angola is today at peace. But it still remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world and those land mines continue to claim victims on a daily basis. As I noted before, I went to Angola in September 1997 and this time reported on the care of land mine victims and the war-disabled.

[begins with singing women]

The women sit in a tiny, crowded courtyard at a Catholic mission center in the central Angolan city of Huambo.

Some are nestled snug against the walls of the faded stucco structure, beneath the overhanging eaves, seeking shade from the relentless sun. Others seek shelter under a single umbrella.

As they sing, they sew or make paper flowers -- little items they hope to sell to make a little money to make their lives just a little better.

All of these women are amputees, or blind, or suffer other disabilities -- mainly the result of land mine explosions. Some have been abandoned by their husbands. Most have children they cannot care for properly.

[sounds of children]

These children sit in a nearby dining room, eating maize meal from plastic cups with tin spoons. There are perhaps 75 0r 80 of them, not only the children of the disabled but also some orphans, whose parents died in land mine explosions.

There are today in Angola an estimated 90-thousand amputees. No one can say how many others died as the result of land mine injuries. But accident statistics gathered in four Angolan provinces last year suggest 50 percent of all land mine victims are women and children.

Outside of Huambo, at a place called Bomba Alta, the Red Cross runs an orthopedic center where land mine victims -- men, women and children -- receive physical therapy and their first artificial limbs.

In one room, about half a dozen men are exercising their leg stumps, raising and lowering weighted cans attached to rope pulleys. Two other land mine victims -- one man, one woman -- are practicing walking up-and-down a stairway with their newly-attached artificial legs.

Red Cross aid worker Gerry Fitzpatrick says the center -- one of two run by the Red Cross in Angola -- makes between 50 and 100 prostheses every month, each of which has to be custom-fitted. It is not enough.

Belida: “How does that stack up against potential demand?”

Fitzpatrick: “Oh there's work here for the next 20 years.”

Many of the land mine victims taking courses at the National Rehabilitation Center in Luanda, Angola's capital, already have their artificial limbs. With help from the UN Development Program, the International Labor Organization and other agencies, about 160 of these war-disabled -- virtually all of them government soldiers or demobilized former combatants who knew little more than how to fight -- are now learning new, postwar skills as carpenters, cobblers, panel beaters and tailors.

One-armed 23-year-old Domingues Manuel Sampaio wanted to be trained as an auto mechanic, but had to settle for the tailoring course. Still, he hopes for a brighter future.

“When I leave here, I want to open a small business, a micro business. I want to buy some more machines and set up a little shop to employ people. And I hope with that, my future will look bright.”

Mr. Sampaio is from Luanda -- a bustling, crowded city with a growing commercial life and a sense of potential, despite the uncertainties of the ongoing peace process.

But back in Huambo, the war-rutted streets and shell-blasted buildings seem dead. There is little business going on and little immediate prospect for those seeking work, seeking an opportunity -- whether disabled or not.