LUANDA (Angola): If you want to grasp the human cost of Angola’s civil war, take a stroll through Independence Square on a Friday afternoon.

At first glance there’s little to see except crowds standing in line to register their names, consult printed lists or record brief television and radio interviews.

But the haunted expressions tell another story — this is the place where people come to hunt for family members missing during almost three decades of war which many hope came to an end with the April signing of a ceasefire between the government and the UNITA rebel movement.

“How do you think a mother feels who has lost her son?” said Joana Mateus Bento, clutching a worn passport photograph of her son Antonio Lucas.

Two other sons had been killed, Bento said. Though she’d heard a report that the third son might be in Cuando Cubango province in the country’s south, there had been no firm news since he joined the army in 1983.

Paulina Cadete’s son served under a prominent general in the central city of Huambo in 1992. She said he tried to escape with a friend when the fighting became too fierce.

“I am happy that the war is over and now I hope that my son comes back,” she said, holding a picture of her son sitting on a table.

One of the biggest battles in Angola took place in Huambo after UNITA’s charismatic rebel leader Jonas Savimbi made the city his stronghold in the wake of elections in 1992. It fell to the government after a 56-day battle.

UNITA and the government of President Eduardo dos Santos signed a peace pact on April 4 to end 27 years of often savage conflict just six weeks after Savimbi was killed in a firefight.

Both women have joined a programme called Meeting Point for the Big Angolan Family set up in May by a TV production company and staffed by volunteers who come to the square every Friday afternoon.

So far 5,000 people have registered and recorded interviews later broadcast on state TV and radio. In the interviews they speak of details they can think of to help identify their relatives.

Yet it’s a measure of the size of the task that a mere 40 people have been reunited.