By Tim Grant
February, 1997
Angola was a trip. Flying in over Luanda was like landing in matchbox town. Thousands of small concrete box houses spread out around over the ground below. The townscape is full of colorful murals on all available public properties spouting the glories of the peoples/ communist victories. The other vestiges that remain of communism is a huge unfinished plain gray concrete monument, the distinctive country logo and grinding poverty.
When you first meet them all the expats talk about there is the level of crime here. How they robbed the UN of its payroll out the front of their offices, how noone leaves any doors unlocked because armed men could break in, how they break your windows with spark plugs at stop lights, how the police were usually the worst of all, etc., etc. I didn't very feel comfortable the whole time I was in Luanda, but luckily its not any where as bad in the provinces.
The other thing they all talked about was Di being in town. I missed her completely, too busy. She was there to put a concerned, though completely removed, face to the problem. She unwittingly gave the cause a great boost, with the wide coverage of the debates back in London. Although few Angolan knew her or about what was going on outside their small battered world. On the news one night they showed Di being given a landmine as a souvenir by one of the UN chiefs. This to me was a foolish gesture, as so many people, especially children will see this high profile person casually handing such a potentially dangerous device. We wrote a letter to all the parties involved expressing our concern and fears.
They certainly 'dress to kill' here. Stylish, outrageous, colorful, kewl - just 4 adapt descriptions. One of the most popular color combinations for the women seems to be luminous lime green and orange together, usually in skin tight clothes. The black skin certainly sets it off.
The main purpose for me to go to Angola was to get photographs that were to be used for the conference slide pack (so campaign groups can educate the people at home about the mine problem) and to be used as a slide show at the conference itself. I needed slides that covered all the mine related issues - mines themselves, amputees, demining, mine awareness, land denial, etc. So one of the first things I did was to take photos of amputees in the main hospital. That was quite sobering. The people were quite open and most happy to have their photos taken. It was a little like Cambodia where I had to make excuses not to take all the patients photos (I didn't want to waste my film). As we were waiting for the nurse to dress a stump, a Korean Doctor walked in smoke in hand. We discussed the hospital conditions - how they had drastically improved recently since the Prime Minister was so shocked on his first visit there. I asked if there were any amputation happening that day, he kindly led us to a man in the next room. In fluent Portuguese he explained how this man had gangrene and his foot was about to be amputated from the shin down. He lifted the doomed leg as the bewildered patient stared on, hugging the sheets. I suddenly got turned off the idea of watching/photographing an amputation that day. Besides it wasn't a mine victim after all (and my guide/translator refused to come in as moral support). During wandering around the grounds I found where they throw the used dressings - straight out of the window of the ward into the courtyards between the 2 building - phew it stunk!
The women's ward was cleaner and a little nicer. The first woman I photographed had a beautiful face, and dressed in a sweet mauve nightie with small flowers on the edges. She had stood on a mine a few months before, but her intact leg hadn't set properly and she was waiting for her family to raise the money for the operation. I wondered if the perfectly shaped star scar above her lip could have been caused by the explosion. The woman next to her had a magazine on her chest opened to a advert featuring a large picture of a woman and baby's legs. I borrowed it and got her to look at it for a juxtaposed shot.
We asked an older one legged woman in the corridor if we could take her photo but she refused, explaining that she had lost her leg during the Portuguese war and she thought that was a good cause. But we should be asking the young amputees because this war not a good war.
One of the provincial towns I went to was Kuito, in the thick of it. This town had suffered a 9 month siege in 1993 and still bears the scars. It would have been a really nice quaint town 5 years ago. Most of the houses were suburban Portuguese, built in the 1950/60s featuring round windows, curved walls, uneven lines, pastel pinks, yellows & greens - just the way I like them. But now they are all full of hundred and thousands of bullet holes and RPG craters. I'm talking Swiss cheese here!! My first reaction was utter disgust at the carnage and waste, of how narrow minded and easily lead some men are. There was not one building which survived without extensive damage, not one pane of glass that wasn't broken. The driver told us of how he was given a gun from the gov't and told to protect his street. He was amazed that he survived. "During that time we could be sitting in a cafe, like now, and an RPG would come in, kill the person sitting next to me but miss me.
It wasn't hard to find amputees to photograph, we were stopping every few minutes to get a shot. I photographed amputees in many/every different ways ("Everything except giving birth" Mercedes said. "But I did photograph a pregnant woman!"). I was lucky I had Mercedes with me, she is a Uruguay woman, who came into Kuito on the World Food Programmes (WFP) first food airlift during a lull in the siege, and got stuck there for 3 days. During that time she broadcast reports out of the town by satellite phone, which was the first news the locals had heard about their situation in close to a year. Needless to say she is the Queen of Kuito now, and all doors are open to her. She would spend time to explain to each person before I photographed them, about what the International Campaign to Ban Landmines was attempting to achieve. They nearly all were very supportive and very interested in what we were doing. We thought this would be the perfect place for a campaign to start.
On the first night we went out on the town, just to see what happens there. On this night the one nightclub in town was completely empty, so we drove around to try and find where everyone was. Finally we found the most lively place in town was a funeral. After playing respects to the father we mingled between the card games and sing-a-longs. It was a little strange when I thought about where I was, at a wake for a young man who died of a preventable disease dodging mine victims as they hopped through the crowd. The woman clapped their hands and sung the local death song. Beginning with a slow rhythmic verse and finishes with a loud vociferous climax, to start again.
Of course we had to go and check the hospital to see if there were any 'fresh' mine survivors ( this is a point of contention, whether to call a person who has stepped in a mine a 'victim' or a 'survivor'). A 60 year old man (very old in African standards) had stood on a mine that morning as he mistakenly wandered into minefield that was in the process of being demined by HALO Trust. HALO told me later they were really pissed off that one of their men had to risk his life to go in and rescue the old man. Now his tattered body lay in a sterile hospital, the doctors and nurses standing around, waiting, they had done all they could. I photographed the old man from different angles, allowing my artistic flair to numb the reality. Close ups of his bloodied stump, his bandaged hand leaking yellow antiseptic, swollen lips protruding from a gap in his bandaged head, a wide view of the full destruction. I asked the nurses to cover his genitals, so I had the option to use the images in different forums. As we left Mercedes said she hoped he died, "What can a 60 yo blind amputee do in this environment?". He died that night. He was definitely a victim.
We found quite a few children survivors, which was lucky, because most are killed outright by the mine blast. I photographed them with flowers, at play and hanging in the streets. The worry, stress and fears of having a disabled child was clearly written on the faces of all their parents. There seems to be a better acceptance into the community than there is in Asia where they view amputees as deserving of their fate because of being a bad person in their last life. Here they don't try to hide the fact they have a false leg, openly using crutches to walk with. They have their friends and can hold down jobs - its quite refreshing.
We visited the French military deminers and because I was with the famous multi-lingual Mercedes we were welcomed and treated in a friendly manner. I asked them if they knew of any exposed mines close to the town. In Angola they seem to lay mines differently than I am used to in Cambodia, laying most of them around the vicinity of the town. They did know of some mines, and took us to 'no-man's land' between the government zone and the UNITA rebel areas. To a spot where the bitumen road finished and where the water from rains had washed off the top soil from the gravel to reveal a series of Chinese made 72 mines. These are the small plastic mines that incorporate an anti-handling device that causes them to explode with just a 10 degree tilt. The guy in charge instructed us not to go off the bitumen road (this is one of the few time I listen to the soldiers orders - when I am in or close to mine fields). I looked down and saw, a few inches in front of me, the top of a 72 poking out of the soil. Eeekk!, but don't worry I take good care of myself.