"That's my brother, that's my brother," Serafim Vunda, 18, gasped from inside a Red Cross car, putting his hand to the window, weakly waving to a boy sitting in the shade of a grass hut.
The brothers have not seen each other in 10 years, because at the age of eight Serafim, along with around 20 other children, was captured by UNITA rebels and forced into their service.
They have been reunited through a family reunification programme of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but are among the last to benefit from ICRC's help as the agency winds down its operations after 34 years.
With Angola's civil war over seven years ago now, ICRC has handed over its clinics to the government, while the Angolan Red Cross will take over the family reunifications, although it will depend largely on volunteers to support them.
In a country where such stories are all too common, Serafim is painfully aware that he is among the last to benefit from the ICRC's help.
For two years he was kept by the rebels in a woodland in northern Angola. He was made to carry guns and supplies, and forced to sleep rough and survive on scraps of whatever food he could find.
In 2002, following the death of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, and the subsequent end of Angola's 27-year civil war, Serafim, then 10, made his way back home to the town of Negage in the northern province of Uige.
But among the burnt-out and bullet-marked buildings he could not find his family, so he lived rough until he was taken in by a "foster" mother.
Serafim, who has had just a few months' schooling in his life and can barely read or write, spent the next few years working in the fields with his new family, growing sweet potatoes and corn, sometimes helping to sell it on the street.
Now seven years later, he's reunited with his mother, his uncle, his grandmother and his five brothers and sisters.
As he stepped out of the car, which had brought him hundreds of kilometres (miles) from the northern city of Uige via Luanda to the remote rural village of Mussende, a woman ran towards him, shaking her hands out in front of her.
Helena Azevedo grabbed Serafim and hugged him but then stepped back and wailed, her eyes closed, overcome with emotion. She was spinning around as she cried out.
The 43-year-old had never expected to see her son again. Serafim's father, Casimiro Sangola, had been killed in Uige and soon afterwards Serafim was kidnapped.
Helena feared Serafim was dead and when peace came to Angola, she returned to her family home in Mussende.
"It's been a dream to see him for so long and now he is here," she told AFP. "This is the moment I've been waiting for. It's been many years, but now my son is here, it's been worth the wait."
Serafim stood quietly as lines of men, women and children formed around him, waiting to shake his hand and hug him.
"I've wanted this very much for a long time, to be home," he said. "It's really possible to be reunited with your family even after all this time. This will be a new life for me, a new start."
The teenager speaks little of his time in the woods with UNITA, just to say that it was "very bad" and that "we had to do what they told us or they would beat us."
He said there was little food and the girls in the group were made to go with the soldiers as soon as they reached puberty, some becoming pregnant.
Serafim is just one of tens of thousands children who were forced to take part in Angola's civil war which robbed generations of youngsters of their parents and their childhood and many women of their husbands.
The search to find his mother began in 2007 when an Angolan Red Cross volunteer visited his town. Based on the information he gave and an existing appeal from Helena who had tried earlier to find her son, the organisation was able to make the link.
Helena then sent her son a "Red Cross message" asking him to come home. Some months later, he did.
Since the end of the war in 2002, the ICRC has reunited 750 Angolans and delivered more than 430,000 Red Cross messages to separated family members.
"Nowadays, it is typically the role of the National Red Cross or Red Crescent Society to take the lead in domestic matters of humanitarian concern," said Maryse Limoner, the outgoing head of Angola's ICRC delegation.
"The Angola Red Cross has a vast pool of volunteers and staff who will continue to assist those in need."
But Rafael Diassonama, who has spent more than 10 years with the ICRC, helping people like Serafim find their families, told AFP: "The fact that the process is coming to an end is sad for us because we know in reality there are many more families who still need our help."
"There are so many families waiting for information who depend on our help to find their children and after the closure of the ICRC here, who is going to do the searching, who will reunify these families?" he said.
"My question is, how can we resolve this problem in the future because there are still many scars from this war and still many dislocated children."
Source: AFP Global Edition
