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In Angola, survivors show Mia Farrow hope, friendship

Mia Farrow and her son Seamus, 14 Read the Media Advisory on the Farrows trip to Angola

The town of Kuito in central Angola, is an odd abstraction of incinerated houses, decaying colonial Portuguese houses, and extraordinary people. Russet dirt streets cut through the spindly burned neighbourhoods of warehouses that once stored the prosperity of this rich farming land. Now Kuito stores a wealth of stories, one for each person who still lives here, or has come to live as a displaced person from the ravaged countryside.

More than 3,000 bodies are interred in the gardens of the city's houses, including two in the back yard of the UNICEF office. Thousands of orphaned children survive with extended families, in displaced persons camps, and in the camps of former UNITA fighters. Mothers maimed by war hawk goods in the markets, still binding their babes to their backs while hobbling on aged prosthetic limbs.

Kuito, two hours flying time from the capital Luanda, underwent the longest siege of the thirty year Angolan civil war, surrounded and bombarded for eighteen months in 1993. Thousands of people died from battle and, with the airport closed to aid flights, thousands starved unnoticed to death in their houses. Each building was scathed by bullet and shrapnel in a way that would seem calculated were it not for the fact that this would defy the natural anarchy of battle. The savagery and suffering inflicted on Kuito's citizens, combined with the general good nature and generosity of the Angolans, has created some extraordinary survivors.

Mia Farrow sat on a step last week, under the burning winter sun, with a child on her lap, surrounded by some of those survivors, mothers without legs and arms, a number of them blind. Some children without parents, who had broken away from their football game to meet the Ambassador, began to sing for her, and to talk with Farrow's 14 year-old son Seamus. Each child was without parents, some orphaned, many separated during the conflict. Evangelista, who manages the shelter and family tracing programme that UNICEF supports, told her own story of survival in a quiet voice.

"Nothing could have prepared me for what I have seen and heard here," said Farrow afterwards. "Evangelista lost seven members of her family, including her own children, and her response was to take in eighteen orphans. Instead of saying "this is overwhelming, I call it quits," her response was to take in even more children. She's been responsible for more than a thousand children being re-united with the families they were separated from. This is typical of these people. Everywhere I have seen examples of devotion, dedication, ingenuity, and commitment."

"I spoke with one disabled woman mother-to-mother, woman-to-woman, who told me that she raised her eight children with no windows, no doors, little food, few clothes, no possessions. Yet she demonstrated such initiative that I could see that with just a little help in this country, these talented, warm-hearted, good people will make huge steps towards self-sufficiency. And what this woman asked for was help in obtaining nothing less than she deserved - a prosthetic arm with which to hold her own child."

From Kuito, Farrow travelled to the northern town of Malanje, to one of the 35 new camps around the country that house former UNITA fighters and their families, where UNICEF is supporting birth registration, education, and immunization. "Just five months ago this man who we saw today in a UNITA camp, was in battle," said Farrow. "Today he was registering the birth of his child and immunizing him, and is living and working in a civilian community. The will is there to change, and to make the necessary steps. And I know from speaking with a journalist there that three months ago people in that camp were virtually starving. Today, as the camp leader told me, and as I saw, every single one of the thousands of camp children are registered, sheltered, fed, and in school."

Farrow travelled to four of the most war-affected provinces, meeting with women and children maimed in war, children who were orphaned by war, teachers, doctors, aid workers, provincial officials, and former UNITA soldiers. She saw UNICEF-supported government projects to register the births of millions of Angolan children, and to trace the hundred thousand children separated from their families. She was briefed by MSF, (the partner to whom UNICEF has provided support in the Angolan therapeutic feeding programme) on the decline of the child caseload from the horrifying starvation of the peak early months of 2002 as the final battle between the warring parties came to an end.

UNICEF Special Representative Mia Farrow, together with her son Seamus and a group of children, in Kaduna, Nigeria during their 2001 visit. Read more

Speaking from the southern town of Lubango she said that she had been consistently impressed by the fortitude and warmth of the people. "I've met many interesting people in my travels, but I've never met kinder or more dedicated people this week. I saw the triumph of the human spirit. People with an abiding idea of how to love, how to care for each other. I met people who in the course of their difficult day were able to tell me of their lives, their difficulties."

"I'm moved and impressed by the commitment of UNICEF's NGO partners, individuals and groups. I hope that there will be an equal sense of commitment from the government to allocate funds freed-up by the advent of peace, to social programmes. Because this is a country that despite the wreckage has abundant natural resources."

Farrow met with a variety of UNICEF partners, in projects ranging from immunization posts to intensive feeding centres for malnourished children, and open-air classrooms in which teachers use basic kits to teach children who have never attended school. UNICEF considers the return of children to school a priority at a time when the country is trying to establish the foundations of peace.

Her son Seamus, a vocal advocate of children's rights in the United States, added, "What struck me was how the children of Angola have paid for the mistakes of their elders, and yet how much their spirit shines through. They have a commitment to making a life for themselves, getting an education. Looking at the children here I think that there's great hope for this country."

At a wrap-up press conference in Luanda on Saturday, Farrow said, "With knowledge comes responsibility, and as an American, I will carry this message back with me: Under the most negative circumstances, Angola has preserved its soul, integrity, and identity. Yes, there has been terrible destruction, but I see all the elements to make a peaceful, productive, Angola. I think that the people of the US would hope to see the leadership of Angola, a government now focused on its people, rather than war, and with a serious commitment to social programmes, to health, to education, to restoration."

A world-renowned actor for more than 30 years, Farrow has been a UNICEF Special Representative since September 2000. In January 2001, in her first mission abroad with UNICEF, she made an extensive tour of Nigeria together with her son Seamus.

A memorandum of understanding that formally ended the Angolan conflict was signed on 4 April of this year, after opposition leader Jonas Savimbi of UNITA was trapped and killed by government forces in February. More than 1 million people who were cut-off from the outside world in UNITA-controlled areas of Angola are now being reached for the first time in years. The Angolan government estimates that 100,000 children have been separated from their families by war, and that as many as 700,000 children have lost at least one parent. The births of more than three-quarters of Angola's six million children are thought to be unregistered, leaving them without any official identification.

With her local and international implementing partners, UNICEF is supporting government of Angola programmes:

• Accelerating the birth registration of children in displaced persons camps and the camps of former UNITA fighters;
• Tracing and reuniting children (including former soldiers) with their families;
• Immunizing children;
• Implementing emergency education programmes;
• Carrying on with HIV/AIDS and Mines Awareness activities.