The Children of War – Les enfants de la guerre

The Children of War – Les enfants de la guerre[1]

In February 2005, I was sent by the Foreign Ministry to give a course to local inspectors and principles of schools at Augustino Neto University in Luanda, the capital of Angola.

I intentionally choose to begin the story of this fascinating journey with the things that bind us to the contemporary public debate over the airwaves and screeners all over the world. I refer to the discussion on the terrible state of the African continent and especially the miserable state of the population there. Out of the general population suffering from horrific poverty, I choose to tell about the vulnerable children of the civil war in Angola, the children living in the streets I met in Luanda. Children over here remain a marginal social group that is the product of a 30-year war between the various tribes of this vast country.

Children up to the age of 14 comprise 49% of the population of Angola, that is, about half of the adult population. Thousands are orphans, homeless because they have fled their homes or simply have no family, and spend the day and night on the city streets.

This is a relatively recent phenomenon in Luanda, since the war ended only two years ago, in 2002. (When we asked the members of our group: What caused the war to terminate? The answer was: The people just got exhausted…).

Due to many injuries and deaths, the war caused separation within the families and migration towards the urban settlement, especially in the big cities.

In many families, children suffer from terrible treatment and exploitation of their workforce, so many of them simply run away from their homes to become "free" at a young age, which makes it very easy for them on the streets of the city.

Another important figure to remember is that two-thirds of Angolan families live below the poverty line, which explains the increase in the number of children in the streets.

A distinction can be made between two groups of children: those who live in the streets and have a family, and those who live in the street and do not have any family unit.

The first, from time to time, can return to their homes, the second group has nowhere to flee (since they do not have a close family, because they are abandoned or because they are expelled from their home).

The children living in the streets are the most marginalized group in Angolan society. They usually live in subhuman conditions, children without education or training to work.

From the window of my room at the hotel, children take a "bath" in the puddle.

The street children come together in groups and you meet them on the side of the road selling any possible things. The kids are holding hangers, socks, two shirts, two towels and everything that comes to mind. From the money they collect, they purchase some of their daily food.

The unlucky ones, who are incapable to sell anything, eat directly from the garbage cans. This harsh look at their "breakfast" at the garbage can is a daily sight that we met on our way to study at the local university, the University of Augustino Neto (named after the first president of Angola).

We had trouble digesting this view, and it is the chief reason why I came from Angola suffering in body and soul.

Another phenomenon typical of the streets of Luanda is the phenomenon of children guarding car parking spaces. In exchange for parking (which is permitted by law) they get a few dollars and make a living.

Many of these children are addicted to drugs. And because drugs cost money and they have no money to buy, they breathe gasoline and if there is no gasoline, hemp smokers.

Streetlife carries a series of dangers. In the first place, a health hazard, the children living in the streets are much more exposed to illness than the children living in the houses (and there are also no proper sanitary conditions, no running water, no bathing and cleaning habits). On the street, you can meet many cases of malnutrition and hunger. There are quite a few children who live in caves with garbage around them.

The most common disease in the area is malaria and these children have the highest rates of disease, as the disease is transmitted through mosquitoes that attack the exposed body at night. Almost every person of the Angolan population suffers from malaria, at least once a year. People take medication and go on with their lives. However, the disease is quite dangerous and can even cause death.

Although some children are not exposed to sexual activity, the dangers of sexual contact are also a deciding factor in their mortality rates. Quite a few children are exposed to the sexual exploitation of anonymous people who cannot be punished. Some have sex with the same sex and AIDS is a high percentage of mortality. (If you ask Angolian if there is AIDS in Angola, you will be told that there isn’t really, or almost none, but we know from medical research that the number one cause of death in Africa is AIDS).

In Angola, there is no official political program that addresses social assistance for these groups of children. Some organizations are usually non-governmental, some are church-sponsored, but their activities are marginal and meaningless.

In Luanda, the capital, there is no municipal or private garbage disposal company. The garbage is collected and thrown into containers or on the street right through the kids who move from apartment to apartment and collect the garbage for a piece of bread or a few dollars.

Every morning, we drove in the university car along the bustling city streets with people and vehicles. Luanda is a city that can accommodate about half a million people and currently has about two and a half million residents. It is not surprising that most of them live in harsh conditions. The lucky ones manage to live in clay houses, although roofless or windowless but still something that can be reached and sheltered from the cold and heat, the rest simply live in the street or under the sky. The evidence I give below is an accurate reflection of reality. You see these kids on every corner of the street: selling something, washing their faces and feet with a bucket out of a hole in the town square, playing soccer in the local field, or, worst of all, eating out of the junk bins by the road. Bins that do not contain the large amount of garbage that accumulates and therefore most of the garbage is piled up, or thrown wherever possible.

All the pictures taken here were taken from the car, as photography is prohibited in many places in Angola and the police can confiscate your camera in a moment. Of course, these children are not happy to be photographed and therefore the photographs were almost hidden taken…

Here are testimonials of children living in the street as they appeared in a bi-monthly called "Economics and Commerce"[1] that I found in the Angola hotel room, February 2005.

"I'm already tired of this life"

My name is Walter and I am 9 years old, I arrived in Luanda in December 2003, with a few other friends. We stopped a cab, paid for it and arrived in Luanda. Here, in Luanda, we have no family and everyone is looking for a living area.

The truth is, I just came to know Luanda and I want to come back because I'm already tired of this life, of living and sleeping in the street. I sleep in the area of ​​Motemba, where the cabs park. But if anyone offers me home, I'll go. I also want to learn.

I get up in the morning and go to residences in the city to "dump the garbage." I wash my face wherever there is water.

In the residences, we are given money or food and then we stay in the street looking for money, for example, if we call for a taxi for these people.

In the evening, I walk through the residences again, knock on the doors to ask if they have any more garbage, throw it (into the street) and then we go to the store (near a supermarket), and are left to ask for a handout: "Friends, give me ten (Kwanzas - local money) to Buy bread. "

When a taxi shows up, we call the people. Sometimes when work is weak, we move to the Roque Rock area and then come back here.

At night, we stay there near the same restaurant, asking for money. Then go to sleep. Sometimes we stay awake, tell stories and finally fall asleep. "

Another testimony

"I don't like to stay at home"

"My name is Pilarte and I'm 14 years old. I live in the street because I don't like staying at home. My mom usually is drunk.

I like to inhale a drug or smoke hemp. There are those who after smoking become violent and want to fight, but I am not.

We sleep right here in the street. I wake up at 6 a.m., wash my face and my feet and we go to school. Sometimes I'm absent from school. Then I go to the residences to collect and dump garbage in the street containers. Sometimes people give us something to eat, and I eat.

Then I help people stop a cab and ask for money from people passing through the street.

Sometimes we go to the Roque area to buy something, go back and "call" taxis or help someone who asks us for some help.

Sometimes we're going to play soccer there on the 1^st May field, with other friends from the street from other neighborhoods in town.

At night, we're left to take care of cars, so when a car arrives; we go there and say, "Amigo, I'll keep your car." If he agrees, we take care of him and then he pays us... About 50 or 100 Kwanzas.

When there are no cars to keep, we are left to chat. If there are cars that need to be kept, we stay there until midnight. "

Nations have collected donations everywhere. The best musicians took the stage in the big city centers and played songs.

However, when you come to Africa when you move through the city streets, in the center and especially the suburbs, you realize that these donations will not reach the residents and certainly not these children living in the street.

---

[1] Economia &Mercado, Janeiro-Fevereiro 2005, Ano 6 N. 23.

---

[1] [1] "Children of War" is a term coined in recent decades in Black Africa. The aspects related to the law can be read in French at the following French language site: www.icrc.org/web/fre/sitefre0.nsf/iwpList2/Focus:Children_in_war?OpenDocument

http://www.unicef.org/graca/

First Chapter

First Chapter -  Supervisor Course in Angola

We arrive at Luanda

One autumn morning, in the city of Lisbon, Portugal, already outside the apartment door in which I spent about two months for research work on Jose Saramago, my mobile phone rings and across the line I hear the voice of Nora Mansour, the wife of the Israeli ambassador in Angola. From her remarks, I understand the Government of Angola is tremendously interested in a local education course, similar to what Felisa and I did last year on Sao Tome Island.

I returned to Israel and forgot about Angola. Towards January, frequent calls from the Israeli Embassy in Luanda and the Foreign Ministry in Israel began: The course is underway. Recent arrangements before flight: A very long security briefing warning us that Angola is not Sao Tome and there are many dangers lurking there for every man and woman. More vaccines and we are already at the airport in route to Johannesburg and from there to Luanda, the capital of Angola.

Felisa and I are getting excited. We both know that at least from the point of view of our joint work, no problem is expected, since we have already worked together and learned to know each other well.

Everything else was in heavy fog. An email I send to the Vice Dean at the University of Luanda is not being answered and this time we are almost going to the unknown. We have been told that all the students are educators, and we reckon we will meet with school principals and supervisors again, such as on the island of Sao Tome, and therefore we are calm, at least from a professional point of view. We are missing many details: We do not know how many participants expect us, are there any advanced electronic means? Etc. etc.

We'll have to "flow with the changes" again.

In the afternoon we land in Johannesburg, for a night's stay before the flight to Angola. Johannesburg is a city I know little from my stay there for two months, twenty years ago. However, at that time it was a completely different South Africa, a state controlled by whites through the terrible apartheid regime, which allowed the white minority to control the black majority.

I wanted to show Felisa Johannesburg but the taxi driver, on the way to the hotel, warns us not to go to the center of Johannesburg. "It's very dangerous over there. Thousands of people sit by the roadsides and can rob, kill and the like."

I was really sad. Even 20 years ago, I did not like my stay in Johannesburg, the reality in which white exploits black was and remains unbearable to me. But what is even more unfortunate is that even under the control of the locals, the people themselves do not live in heaven and the class divide has widened.

Felisa and I do not take a risk and stay at the hotel.

The next morning, Saturday, we are on our way to Luanda, the capital of Angola. Sure, at least the African landscape, the real jungle we saw in the past, will bring us back the good spirit that blew us away for the ride.

As the giant Boeing plane lands at Luanda Airport, we begin to understand where we are.

Cops and deaf cops walk around the terminal. Some positions and behind them are men sitting in front of a computer working slowly and exhaustingly. Long queues linger and we end up with one.

I look back and see this huge plane and I really want to take a picture of it. The moment I wanted to say this to Felisa we see a Japanese guy with a camera standing at the door shooting exactly the same plane. A few seconds after the poor man filmed the plane, two civilian-clad police officers and several other uniformed men attack him. He looks rather frightened and tries to explain that he just took a pretty picture. The Japanese began to sweat and his explanations were not received sympathetically. We saw how he was instructed to go into the back room with a finger and there for a quite long time. Of course, after they confiscated the camera.

Angola is a country that has known a bloody civil war that lasted 30 years. Only two years ago, the war ceased and its signals were evident everywhere, and this event lit a red light for us. We realized that you had to be careful here, and removing the camera from the bag requires extreme care.

After about two hours of standing in line, I arrived at a clerk sitting in front of a computer monitor, having trouble reading the script on my passport and what appears on the monitor. He seems to need eyeglasses. In retrospect, I think we hardly ever saw people wearing eyeglasses. stamping a passport and finally being allowed to tread on Luanda land. An embassy car was waiting for us outside with a local driver who knows several sentences in Hebrew and Avital, the consul of the Israeli embassy. While driving towards the hotel, we get the first lesson on how to defend against potential dangers in this country.

I look to the side of the road, looking for the witness of Africa, and I can't find it. Shabby-looking houses, huge piles of garbage in the streets, a derelict look that leaves me on the edge of depression.

When you think that Angola is one of the richest countries in the quarries: gold, diamonds, oil, you wonder why this is how its capital city looks?

A Portuguese writer Miguel Sousa Tavares who wrote a romance called Equador, tells a story of a king's official envoy to the island of Sao Tome. He describes how, on his way to the island, his ship docked in the port of Luanda and in the distance the city seemed metropolitan to everything. Only as the ship approached, the port did he recognize the apparent neglect. The story takes place at a time when Angola was still a Portuguese colony. Many Portuguese were there and life in the city was European, at least for the most part. After a few days of being in Luanda, on one of our trips to travel around the city (very little, really) I comprehended what the author expressed.

Avital warns us that in Luanda, you do not walk alone, you do not walk in the streets with any piece of jewelry, because it is immediately torn: over the neck, wrist or ear .... Be careful and drink only mineral water. "And don't worry as soon, the hotel will receive a comprehensive security briefing from the Israeli security officer." We start to worry ...

The hotel we stayed in was quite fancy, from the room window you can look out onto the wretched street and from a distance you see the Atlantic Ocean, clouds standing in the center of the sky and the color of the sea is black. I photograph the view over the window glass of my room, so I do daily, during the different hours of the day and evening as the sea changes color and slowly I begin to feel a close proximity to this landscape.

The security officer meets us in the lobby of the hotel and warns us not to leave the hotel but with the company of local people who come to take us in the car. Felisa and I look at each other, wondering among ourselves if we did right that we agreed to come to this scary place. Later, when we talk about the things we hear, we decide to be disciplined, because apparently the people know what they're talking about. Only after a few days of staying there do we feel safer, but we still dare not go alone, as we did in Sao Tome every day and night.

Nora, the ambassador's wife, very nice lady, comes to take us to a first work meeting at the university. First, we take a tour of the "room of Israel", a large room furnished with student chairs. The room and furniture are a contribution of the State of Israel, initiated by our ambassador here. Then we go to a meeting room attended by Vice Dean Vitorino and Anna, the lecturer who was appointed to be, on his behalf, in charge of the course. From our "side" sits Nora, the security officer, a local guy named Elbash who serves as the embassy speaker, Felissa, and I.

Anna is a black-skinned woman, tall, tall and beautiful. From both her laughing and serious eyes, we immediately feel that everything will flow properly.

It turns out that most of our students are lecturers of the university who train teachers to be teachers in the various subjects. Therefore, we will have lecturers (most of who have a Ph.D.) in mathematics, physics, literature, English, French and more. Most of them studied in Cuba, Portugal and Spain.

We ask whether the participants come voluntarily or are the course forced upon them. Vitorino says that all of them voluntarily enrolled. Moreover, city school administrators who heard about the course wanted to be admitted and he did allow some senior educators to join the group of the course.

At dinner at the hotel, (where the meal costs $ 45 Tabin!), Felisa and I summarize our impressions of today. It is clear to us that we will have to work hard, we expect the group to be at a higher level than the one in Sao Tome (in retrospect, we were very right). And we have to flow with the changes.

But what really worries us this weekend is the fact that we will have to be locked up in the hotel till Monday morning, because we were really prohibited from going outside. And we are the same two women, not very young, who felt free and happy on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, an island that resembles a real paradise, without violence and fear of walking in the (dark) city streets in the late night. We decide to check out the area and if we realize it's not really dangerous, we will wander around a bit and see what happens around the hotel. In the meantime, we gather in Felisa's room and prepare the first day carefully. A feeling of suffocation surrounds us. These closures in air-conditioned rooms, in tropical weather, the knowledge that we can't get out, get in our car and drive are unpleasant and today creep in between our rooms, the Internet room (the great happiness, the internet, the connection to the outside world!!!) and the lobby of the hotel, crowded with white businessmen, sitting in meetings with the locals and planning how to make a lot of money at the expense of the largely Angolan people with hunger.

Tomorrow our training will begin and the blessed agenda will take us out of this sense of gravity.

Second Chapter

 Second Chapter: The first day of our course at Augustino Neto University

On Monday morning, I wake up in my room overlooking the sea. The sky is cloudy, and the visibility is so poor and the coastal strip blends into the skyline that it is barely noticeable that it is the coast of the Atlantic.

At 8 am, a university car waits for us. Saballo, the wonderful driver who will accompany us everywhere for two weeks, greets us with a wide smile.

The distance from the hotel to the university is quite short, but it is a rush hour and vehicles of all kinds move on non-modern roads. The extended ride allows us to take a look at the roadside, to witness the children of the streets in their "morning wash", using a bucket of water drawn from the "well" in the town square. Other abandoned children play soccer in the local lot, along the side of the road young women are sitting next to plastic baskets trying to sell fruits. That's how they sit all day.

As we get out of the vehicle parked in the university courtyard and walk toward the "room of Israel" where the practical training will take place, waiting outside the room, the participants already wait for us. Men and women, who look at us with a curious look, naturally try to wonder a little about us before the course begins. It's very hot outside, extremely humid and no one dares to enter the air-conditioned room.

With a vivid face and a broad smile on our lips, we almost 'push' them in. When everyone sits down on the chairs of the university, the first day begins with the ultimate aim of deepening our necessary knowledge with our trainees. 

Course syllabus:

As a first exercise, we divide the course syllabus, whose main purpose is to instruct lecturers at the local university, who themselves are teachers in the various professions, schools in Angola, at all levels.

• Provide valuable tools and techniques to positively enhance the ability and capability of the participants.

• Instruct participants on how to properly prepare a detailed work plan that indicates the tasks they want to accomplish, with a particular emphasis on the issue of responsibility in the various execution processes.

• Increase the capabilities for the personal and professional growth of each of the participants.

• Strengthening teamwork and elucidating the potential benefits of collaborative work, enabling the raising of ideas and mutual assistance as a model that the lecturers will pass on to the teacher teams they are in charge of.

• Supervision processes as they exist in Israel as a model for future supervision in the modern Angola education system.

We ask all 32 participants to properly read the syllabus and address three key questions:

1. What is the chief topic you want to go into the focused most?

2. What is the topic about which you do not want any profound depth?

3. Is there another topic you demand us to satisfactory address?

We collect the answers and promise to adequately address the key issues tomorrow.

The keys' exercise

Felisa opens first. She speaks Argentine Spanish, and everyone understands every word, which is how she opens her wonderful key exercise, which is an opening exercise for successful recognition in any group of people.

In an adjacent room, Felisa scattered keys of all kinds: old and new keys, magnetic cards used as keys to hotel rooms, pictures of keys and every key imaginable.

The guidance is provided to people: Everyone selects one or two keys that symbolize their key to success. The participants respond positively to the request and a few minutes later return to the "room of Israel", each with the appropriate keys.

When the acquaintance round begins. Some remarkable things become clear to us. It turns out that most of the participants possess a doctorate in some field. Ph.D. in Literature and Ph.D. in Philosophy, and Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics and Sociology of Education and others are studying for advanced degrees, some at universities in France, Portugal, Brazil, and Cuba.

"A key that opens a door to something new"

Vera, a Bulgarian-born woman is the only white woman in the course, a lecturer in sociology, who has been married for over 20 years to an Angolan man, chose a key that is a magnetic card and said: Every key opens one door, but frequently it produces problems. Because it is impossible to open with this key all the time, and sometimes I stay outside. Anyone in the education system can obtain a different key to ultimately accomplish a similar goal.

Dr. Boza, who is the head of a department in the university, was asked to attend the course to serve as a personal example to the rest of the lecturers. (so he told us at the end of the course after the 'walls' fell and we became real friends.). Dr. Boza chose several keys: an extremely old key as we cannot in common be without our past, and the second key is a drawing of six keys that symbolize the variety of possibilities in life there is always a key that opens a door that we have not yet opened.

Dr. Dinis, who is a lecturer of pedagogical theories and is, also, a military man, chooses a key on which Hebrew letters are written because it instantly reminds him of history. He adds that it is not enough that there is goodwill to succeed, and it is necessary to study all the time. The considerable amount of education we all have is not enough, each one needs to maintain a specific area of expertise that will allow them to contribute positively to society.

Dr. Judith, an English lecturer, a gentle-looking woman, chose a simple key and says that opening a door is to discover something new. We learn but do not always know how to use the knowledge we have acquired.

Dr. Bimuinde, who is a biology lecturer, holds a modern key in her hand and says so: I am an ambitious woman, and I like to go deeper into what can be deepened, but I chose another key, (and here she pulls out a very common key.), which gives me a sense of security. I need security.

Louisa, who is completing her Ph.D. in France, chose a few keys: an old key to entering a house because every teacher needs keys to open and needs social conditions to develop. An automatic key that educational social processes need to evolve constantly, but she remarked that in the end, though the key is modern, it barely fits one door.

Dr. Boucosa, a professor of languages, chose ancient and modern keys and said the ancient keys symbolize the ancient methodological and ancient languages.

As for the modern method - he has the feeling that it is unique and therefore he feels he is always missing one key - he has to look for a key all the time...

Angelo, who is a Ph.D. French student, wondered if he needed to look for a key. He eventually chose a circular and spiral key. The ordinary keys have limitations, and they do not open every door, education should be open and therefore circular and spiral.

Wahaha, how should we move on?

About this issue, in the next chapter.