Teófilo Muanda faced explosions and gunfire, endured freezing temperatures, endured a crowded train and a 73-kilometer walk before making it out of Ukraine and into Poland last week.
After finally crossing the border on February 28, he was met by Angolan officials, who told him that a Boeing 777 was on its way to take those fleeing the war to their home country.
It didn’t take long for Muanda, a 31-year-old graduate student in Kiev, Ukraine, to decide what he would do when the plane landed in Warsaw, Poland: he would not board.
The last time he lived in Angola, he could barely survive.
“Angola is my home, but I’d rather stay here than go through the same suffering,” he said in Paris, where he is staying.
The Angolan government sent a plane to Warsaw to pick up about 277 citizens and their families who had fled Ukraine after the Russian military invasion. Only 30 of them boarded the plane, which arrived in the capital, Luanda, on Monday (7), according to state news website Angop.
Interviews with four of those left behind revealed their concern about returning to their home country: the lack of opportunity in a stalled economy. They said they would rather take risks to find a better life in Europe, or wait for the war to end, than return to an uncertain future in Angola.
Angola is an oil-rich country of about 35 million in southern Africa, but its economy has struggled in recent years after oil prices fell in 2014. The coronavirus pandemic has added a layer of devastation to a country awash in debt, mostly to China.
Even with the recovery in oil prices over the past two years, about a third of the country is unemployed, according to government statistics. In 2018, nearly 48% of the population lived on less than $1.90 a day, according to the World Bank.
A native of the coastal province of Cabinda, an Angolan outpost north of the Congo River, Muanda said he faced significant challenges when he returned to his country in 2018 after graduating from Ukraine’s Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. In three years, the best job he could find was at an internet café in Cabinda, where he earned the equivalent of $65 a month. Frustrated with his miserable life, he returned to Ukraine last year.
Shortly after refusing his government’s ride back to Angola, he fled to Paris.
“What would I come back for?” he said through tears.
For other Angolans, the roots they have planted in Ukraine are very difficult to let go of. Felix Bote, 30, is majoring in oil and gas engineering and agricultural mechanics and is married to a Ukrainian who is still in the country. Officials at the Angolan embassy in Poland said he could be arrested if he stayed there, Bote said.
But if he returned to Angola, he would certainly have to depend on relatives for survival, Bote said. Then he and others said they would try to get new student visas or apply as refugees to stay in Europe.
“Make no mistake,” Bote said, “most of our group that stayed in Europe felt they would face a harsh reality at home.”
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
