The journey home

As the convoy wove its way over hundreds of kilometres of rutted dirt roads not even the clouds of dust could dampen the spirits of the Angolan children on their way home from Zambia. Phillip Chiweka, 15, born in Meheba refugee settlement in northwestern Zambia had never seen Angola. His parents had fled Luena in eastern Angola in 1974 at the height of the civil war between the MPLA and the rebel group, UNITA. "I am excited about going home - my mother tells me it is very nice there," he beamed. People were almost flung from their seats as the six buses in the convoy rocked, bumped and swayed over the 162 km of seldom travelled dirt track between Mwinilunga in Zambia to the reception centre in Caianda in Angola's eastern Moxico province. A few Angolans got off their bicycles to whistle and cheer from the roadside as the buses made their way through the sparsely populated forest hugging the boulder-strewn track. Chiweka was among the 410 Angolans in the convoy bound for Caianda near Angola's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. After an overnight stop, the convoy hit the dirt road again for their final destination - Luena. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, intends to repatriate 30,000 Angolans by the end of November in an operation funded by the EU. The Geneva-based International Organisation of Migration (IOM), responsible for transporting the refugees, up until last week had brought 7,897 home. "Of these 5,233 [travelled] by road either to Cazombo, Luena, Luau and 2,664 by air to Lumbala N'guimbo [all in Moxico province] and Huambo [in the central province of Humabo]," Manny Villaflores, the IOM representative in Zambia, told IRIN. By the time the convoy had arrived in Caianda, rain had begun to fall on the Zambian side of the border. "We are concerned that the rains might come earlier this year, so we have begun moving refugees every other day from the Nangweshi camp [in Zambia's Western province] to Mongu [in the same province] - as the road between the two places is in an extremely bad condition - to be ready for airlifting to Lumbala N'guimbo," Villaflores said. Many of the Angolans had begun the journey in Ukwimi in eastern Zambia with an overnight stop in the capital, Lusaka, and continued to Solwezi in the northwest. The convoy then travelled to Meheba, 92 km outside Solwezi, for a two-night stop, collecting additional refugees. Officials from the UNHCR and the IOM accompanied the convoy, a medical team from the African Humanitarian Agency travelled in an ambulance to attend to medical needs during the journey, and food parcels comprising rice, fish, peanut butter, jam and crackers were provided by the World Food Programme. The food agency also ran kitchens at the various reception centres to provide the travellers with a hot meal of beans and nshima (maize meal). "Fortunately the journey has been mishap-free - no buses broken down, no accidents," said IOM's head of operations, David Coomber, who accompanied the convoy throughout the journey. When Angola's three-decade civil war ended in 2002, an estimated 441,000 refugees were sheltering in neighbouring countries. Since then, an estimated 218,000 have returned home -many under their own steam. More than 100,000 Angolan refugees are still living in Zambia and the UNHCR intends to repatriate almost all of them by next year. An excited Chiweka got off the bus in Caianda, dragging bags out while exclaiming, "We are home!" With his mother, he made off to the freshly plastered thatched huts at the reception centre for a meal, before settling down for the night and the final leg home to Luena the next day.