We ve put down deep roots here and made very close friends. Hard as it is for Judith to be half a world away from Angola, she is excited by the prospect of living and working in Russia, a country with which the Matloff family has strong ancestral ties. This seems unlikely in the near future, however, as Angola is once again hovering on the brink of war. A whole new phase in the civil war began recently, she tells me, when the balance of power in the region tilted as Mobutu Sese Seko was trounced by Laurent Kabila s rebel forces in Zaire. As soon as Mobutu fell, the MPLA moved into the diamond areas in Angola, and a new offensive began.
Fighting is now heavier than it s been in two years.
Judith admits that her emotional links to Angola have made her abandon any semblance of journalistic objectivity. And as long as he is alive, the fighting will continue. They re overlooking all sorts of warning signs. She pauses and shakes her head. Holed up in a hotel room in besieged Luanda, thousands of miles away from family and friends, exhausted, demoralised and frustrated, Matloff came to regard this bottle as a symbol.