Powered by IFAD

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is once again responding to a cholera outbreak in one of Africa's capital cities.

This village falls on the way back from Calandula and the stop was quite accidental as I wanted to buy some bananas. The people out there were very excited to see the Oxfam car, and it turned out that Oxfam had been the first NGO to come to the village and work with the population to rehabilitate the water point for the returnees.

In the rural parts of Angola, where Oxfam is working, most Angolans make their living through a combination of subsistence agriculture and small-scale trading along the major highways. Few people are wealthy enough to own cattle or other large animals – though in some southern parts of Angola, pastoralism is common. As a result, most agriculture is undertaken by hand, with the help of simple tools.

The more than two decades of armed conflict in Angola officially ended with a peace agreement in April 2002-but the remnants of war remain everywhere. Louise Montgrain from Beloeil, Quebec recently returned from a one-year posting to Angola as an economic security manager with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and she can attest to the extremely difficult situation faced by the population.

There is no safe way to walk through Angola’s largest market,  Roque Santeiro. Locals claim it to be the biggest market in all of Africa, and while that is open to debate, few doubt its reputation as an epicentre of crime. It will take some courage to venture there, especially for a white, foreign woman.