Entire villages such as Chiongo emptied out in the final -- and by many accounts, fiercest -- decade of war. In 1993, when rebels shot down a government plane over Luau, the last residents of Chiongo and its chief, Litwai Kayombo, left.
When Kayombo returned with the coming of peace, he said all that was left was a cinder-block schoolhouse and dusty ruins. Soldiers had stolen the zinc roofs off homes, leaving the mud-and-thatch huts to melt away with each rainfall.
Residents of Chiongo in eastern Angola, most of whom spent the war years in Zambia or Congo, line up to welcome more friends and relatives returning home.
(Craig Timberg -- The Washington Post)
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Returning refugees such as Kayombo and Guerra gradually brought Chiongo back to life by lashing tree branches into house frames, drying mud into bricks and weaving new roofs out of grass.
About 50 homes stand now where there were none two years ago. Goats and chickens walk among the huts. Women cook ground manioc, or cassava, into the stiff mush that is a staple food in northern Angola. Balls of dough sit on the new rooftops, rising in the sun before being baked into bread.
Still, the population of the rebuilt village is just 213. Before the war, officials say, 4,000 people lived here.
Government officials and aid workers say the situation is similar throughout rural Angola. Many of those dislodged by war see little reason to return to a simple agrarian life in a remote village. Meanwhile, the population of the bustling capital of Luanda, which was mostly spared in the war, has swelled from several hundred thousand to more than 3 million, overwhelming the city's infrastructure. Other cities have grown as well.
"These people, it's hard to see them going back to rural areas," said Mario Ferrari, the top UNICEF official in Angola.
Conditions in such villages as Chiongo would be even worse without the assistance of international aid groups that function as an alternative government in the countryside. The U.N. World Food Program delivers meals and rebuilds bridges. Doctors Without Borders provides medical care. The Halo Trust removes land mines.
Though the red-and-black flag of the ruling party hangs from a pole in the middle of Chiongo, villagers say they have received no assistance from the Angolan government. And what they have received from aid groups has been only enough to survive.
Donated seeds arrived late in the growing season last year, and villagers say the crops never matured. The World Food Program, which faces a shortfall in cash donations for Angola, recently cut rations in half and abandoned plans to provide food through two full harvests.
Most of the people in Chiongo are scheduled to receive their final delivery of U.N. food in September, nine months ahead of the next harvest. Some find occasional work on nearby farms, but they are paid in food, not money.
Among those expecting to lose their U.N. rations is Chilombo Keyono, a grandmother who returned to Chiongo last year after 18 years as a refugee in Congo.
"This means I am going to die," said Keyono, who did not know her age but appeared to be in her fifties. "What am I going to eat? I'm not going back to the Congo. . . . Because my country is now free."
