![]() ![]() The monthly salary of 17,000 kwanzas for a teacher with nine years of education is enough to buy two shirts, which sell for 7,000 kwanzas each.īut there is little to buy in Cubal. Railroad workers for the government-owned Benguela Railroad, once a busy transport route but now hardly operational, say they haven't seen a paycheck in nearly two years.Įmilio Tuapita, who teaches English at the high school in Cubal, said he had just received his January check in June. The schools are operating, but the teachers have not been paid by the government in months. They take people to increase the size of the UNITA villages, to increase the number of people on their side."Ĭubal has also been hit heavily by the war. But when UNITA comes, they take the whole family. They come at night and take people away if they are the right age," said Mr. In Cubal, the people of Capupa found food and relative safety, but men were frequently taken from their homes and forced to join the army. He said about 1,000 people had gone back to Capupa, but they returned to Cubal because there was nothing to eat at their old village. The people want to return but they don't want to harvest mines." Gungo, a devout Catholic who wears a small temperance button on the lapel of his tattered blue jacket. "The land doesn't produce here," said Mr. Although the war has been called to a halt, roads and fields are still covered with the land mines that were planted mostly by UNITA, but also by the army. But like hundreds of thousands in this war-torn country, they are afraid that going home too soon will yield a bitter harvest. ![]() ![]() Most of the Capupa refugees were subsistence farmers, he said. "They are just waiting for the mines to be cleared to go home." "All these people have land in Capupa," said Schuyler Thorup, a CRS relief worker who visited the dusty refugee village with the Rev. The Catholic mission donates sacks of meal and cans of cooking oil that come by army-escorted convoy from the port city of Lobito, where the Baltimore-based charity Catholic Relief Services has its warehouses. ![]()
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