Development Workshop (DW) was the first international Non-Governmental Organization to become active in Angola in 1981.
DW was invited by the government at the time to assist in developing the water and sanitation infrastructure. Meanwhile, the programme has expanded greatly. For twenty years now DW has operated mainly in the two main cities, Luanda en Huambo, where most refugees live.
Digging
Development Workshop started working in Huambo in 1997. Since the beginning of the war one million refugees have come to the district of Huambo.
The largest DW projects in Huambo include the digging of wells, the construction of schools, the Mubella factory that manufactures wooden schooldesks, and the Community Publishing project. DW emphasizes the importance of co-operation and community involvement. The organisation has always focused on development.
Wells in refugee camps are sunk by the communities themselves, and subsequently managed by community water committees.
Only when digging is impossible due to a rocky subsoil, a borehole is being sunk. The manager of the water project, Tino Mando, prefers manual digging, which, as he says, “goes with greater community involvement”.
Umbundu manuals
The inhabitants of Huambo lived in isolation for years. Newspapers, communication with the outside world, and libraries were ‘luxuries’ that weren’t part of their lives. There were no schools during the two years, in the early 1990s, when rebel forces occupied Huambo.
The present Community Publishing manager, Julio Quintas, started working with Development Workshop as a guard.
The DW director in Huambo noticed that Quintas was always reading and that people often came to ask for him. On inquiry it appeared that Quintas was an underpaid teacher who had to earn an additional income as a guard. He was then given the opportunity to work as an assistant within the Community Publishing project and was promoted to project manager two years later, because of his talent and close relationship with the communities.
The Community Publishing project expanded due to the support received from Kathy Bond Stewart (see also: www.icon.co.zw/acpdt), who had been posted by NiZA at the project as a consultant.
A large-scale investigation was started into the vernacular Umbundu. “The words that are typical of our people living in the uplands”, as Julio Quintas says. An Angolan team spent three months among the Umbundu communities in Huambo, registering thousands of words.
A selection from the list of words was then used to produce the very first Umbundu manuals to be used for learning to read and write Umbundu. The project was nominated by the Ministry of Education to tender for the production of the manual on a national level.
In March 2002 the school year was ushered in eight communities, with 33 teachers and 960 adult students.
Mass
For years there had been no newspapers in Huambo, until DW’s Community Publishing started editing and publishing a local paper entitled ONDAKA eighteen months ago. Ondaka is Umbundu for ‘our word’. Initially the editorial team had to try and extract news from the communities around Huambo; now there is a smooth supply of articles and letters slipping into the editors’ letterbox. Since the coming of peace people dare to speak out, the government is brought to account publicly and people are calling for investments.
Contributions to ONDAKA are also becoming more and more juicy as people no longer fear to denounce instances of injustice. There are proud reports that “ONDAKA was read during mass”. The circulation of the last ONDAKA was 399.
Peace is on its way
On 22 February 2002 Angolan rebel leader Jonás Savimbi was killed by government troops.
Things have moved fast since. Recently an Angolan colleague of Huambo origin who works in Luanda said to me cheerfully: “The next long weekend I will drive to Huambo.” For safety reasons it had for a long time been impossible to reach Huambo by car.
But there remains a long way to go. According to a DW Survey, Angolans associate ‘peace’ with employment, education for the children and finally a safe return into the interior. The infrastructure and employment opportunities as they are now do not yet meet these expectations.
Consequently, in the eyes of many, the peace agreement that has been signed does not yet constitute ‘real peace’.
Margrit Coppé is a Belgian-Portuguese photographer, graphic- and web designer. She has been working for DW Angola from February 2000.
More information:
Development Workshop
C.P. 3360 Luanda
Rua Rei Katyavala 113
Luanda (Angola)
Tel: (244 2) 44 83 71 / 77 / 66
Fax : (244 2) 44 94 94
www.dw.angonet.org
‘Angola-Stories for trees’ Edited by: Margrit Coppé and Fergus Power, published by Development Workshop www.storiesfortrees.net
