Unfortunate events

I thought of writing about unpleasant things that happened recently. I initially considered the kid in a motorcycle who bumped into my (parked) car, the cooler box which got ran over on the way to the beach, and the car accident we had on the way back, which threw us off-road, broke my car’s front axis, and made me forget all about the motorcycle kid and his bump. Nobody got hurt in these events, so it’s all unimportant, especially given the number of sad stories around, a couple of which took place afterwards. Two days ago, a friend of mine saw a kid being ran over by a car. It seems the kid ran into the street after stealing a mango... Last night, one of the street kids who randomly sleep in my building’s entrance was unconscious on the sidewalk. This is not, in itself, a very unusual sight, as several of these kids prefer to spend the money they earn on hard liqueur and drugs rather than food. My flatmate and her brother actually dragged him closer to the building, where the rain wouldn't reach him. This morning, as we left to go to work, the kid was in that same spot, covered with a white sheet, dead. People say it might have been the drinking or the drugs, or maybe disease or hunger. It was most likely some mix of these... In Cacuaco, northern Luanda, some mysterious disease has been spreading, and keeping specialists in the dark as to what it is. So far there are not many dead... This is indeed a land rich in sad stories.

Amenities

(photograph received by email)

Somebody I know has recently told me that she doesn’t remember ever having electricity, running water and a functioning telephone line at the same time. For the time I have been in Angola, I confess, I have been luckier than that. However, days there are, like the recent ones, when a random combination of those fail to apply. I have in the meantime developed my preferences: I now know I prefer water to electricity, and electricity to the telephone. Preferences aside, it was with suspicion that I realized the water had been gone for 2 days, especially since in my neighbourhood water tends to be much more of a companion that electricity is. Unlike many other times, however, the answer was this time easy to find. It was just, literally, around the corner from where I live. For the sake of my co-workers, I can only hope they fix it fast.

From jungle to jungle

Last month I left Angola to spend a couple of weeks on a training session in New York City. Land of the free, east coast. In addition to learning more about my work, and meeting new and interesting people with common objectives, I surely made the time to visit sites of great interest like... well, the shops. The obvious question is then, does Angola turn men into girls? Hardly. What happens is that, even if you don't realize it in advance, you are prone to be overwhelmed with the ease with which you can go and do stuff when you find yourself in a country where places are easy to go and things are easy to do. It is then relatively straightforward to rejoice at the idea of doing exactly that – be it collecting t-shirts, buying the jeans you didn't need, getting the gadgets your friends asked you to bring for them, or even more eclectic things, such as choosing your favourite pterodactyl at the Museum of Natural History, spotting the portuguese painting at the Guggenheim, or deciding whether it was in that corner or the other where you saw Spiderman fighting the evil Doctor Octopus –. Yes, I even went jogging in central park in my first night in town, got lost while at it, ran some extra 5km, and still enjoyed my way back. The plan was sort of to do that everyday while in NYC, but somehow it didn't happen. This, I gather now, is probably related to the equally large set of options you have when the city ´doesn't go´ to sleep.

Great views

Kalandula falls

The stones in Pungo Andongo

The stones (detail)

Kwanza river and the atlantic

En route

To the south, on a particularly good dust road

On the way to nice Gabela, on the hill


Some odd dry plane amidst the green

Red sands in Malange province, stones ahead

Road trip

One week later then scheduled, my girlfriend arrived. Soon after, we had packed our bags and gone for a ride. In two weeks, many holes had been driven into, many more avoided, and a considerable amount of dust had been eaten. We had had a great time. Yet in spite of all the travelling, we saw only a tiny bit of this huge country, making it slightly awkward to point at the map and comment on how much we travelled. Angola is 13.5 times bigger than Portugal, and 2.3 times bigger than France. But we did drive 3000 Kms and we did see many nice things. Let me illustrate with some pictures.

Sofrimento

Cultures tend to develop a special relationship with part of their vocabulary. Indeed, it is relatively straightforward to identify words which in spite of existing in other languages, carry nevertheless much more significance in one particular language. Whenever you detect them, the part of your brain in charge of speech recognition lights up, while less obvious parts of your brain get busy on the ‘special meanings section’, something that can be overwhelming to the inexperienced, and a reason why some advantages exist to being a grown up. By hearing it more times, you get more used to the confusion it causes, and wisely choose to allot a special and deeper meaning to it all. Allow me to exemplify with saudade in Portugal, and, well, probably ‘pancake’ in Sweden. In Angola, one such word is sofrimento. It can be loosely translated as ‘suffering’. It is probably special over here because there’s so much of it, or because it comes in so many shapes and forms. It’s a very common experience to hear it being said. You can even see people smiling while saying it, using it in songs, or writing it in big bold letters in the rear window of their cars. The first time I realized it was a special word was curiously through a Dutch, in my first outing, by a grill, on the beach. He said to me, knowing I had been here only shortly, “So what do you think about Angola? (…) This is what Angola is to me. The rest is sofrimento”. It struck me as the kind of thing I wasn’t expecting to hear, in my first outing by a grill on the beach. But deep and wise nonetheless. On my own share of sofrimento, I can add that my girlfriend was supposed to be flying this very minute to come and visit me. Her flight was cancelled. It seems the Angolan government forbid British Airways from landing in Angola. Retaliation?

Gasosa

Let’s say you bought a second hand car, and want to have the paper work recognized by public office. First, you manage to get to the office. Well done. Then, and in spite of carrying all the necessary documents, one document is found to be missing: the fiscal id. It could be any other, really, but this is how the story goes. You confirm with the lady behind the counter that there’s no way you can have the document recognized without your fiscal id, so you submissively lead yourself downstairs while switching to bargaining mode. At the entrance, you expectedly find a big commotion of kids who had already insisted to help you as you went in. So you pick one and engage in the conversation. He says “car papers, fiscal id, no problem...”, so you start discussing the gasosa. If you have some skills, you might even cut it by half, and then you agree to hand him your documents, passport included. He goes to other kids, he buys official stamps from them, takes some photocopies and comes back a bit later to pick up the gasosa, plus, of course, the normal office price. Then you stay there and wait. You take your time to look at other people engaging with other kids, you wonder a bit about the ways of the world, and in conversation with your Angolan mate (without whom you’d have probably not felt comfortable enough to lose sight of your passport), you find out about the probable gasosa process. Part of it is for the kid who is selling you the service, part of it is for the guard who sells the kid the service of letting him through the back door. In the absence of more intermediaries, the rest is certainly for the lady who 40 minutes before assured you that there’s no way she could help you without your fiscal id. All in all, and to make the story short, I spent about a hundred dollars in gasosa that day. I am currently waiting for the vehicle property card, for the fiscal id, and for the Angolan driver’s license. These were all different gasosas. Some of these documents are known to take years to be ready (literally), in the absence, that is, of further, and greater, gasosa. Luckily you can usually drive (or do whatever documents allow you to do) with the respective receipts. Well, you may have to extend the receipt’s validity, in which case you know what you’ll have to do. On a related note, the IMF said Angola will grow by 35% this year (!). If they’re any precise on their numbers, it can only be more than that. Anyway, I can drive now.

Imbondeiro

Behold the imbondeiro, national tree of Angola. Mukua, the fruit, is visible on the younger tree. With the tree, its leaves and fruit, you can make juice, jam, soup and medicine, you can color things red, make rope and rough cloth. You can also use craters in older trees as barns or graveyards. Judging by the picture, parking your Toyota Hiace inside one is also a possibility. On an almost entirely unrelated topic, Mukua is the name of the club I am going to this coming Friday. It's famous for the Angolan dances kizomba, semba, and tarrachinha.

On the price of things

“I live in the most expensive city of the world”. Many different people, living in many different cities, often share this same thought. As I found out I was coming to Luanda, I naturally inquired on living costs, only to find out I was moving out of the UK and into an expensive place. Just how expensive is it? Well, according to some, it is the most expensive of all (click here and scroll down to the table), which is quite amazing, for a country in the 17th lowest rank of the UN human development index. More challenging than the amazing prices people ask for things over here, is however the inexistence of some other things you often take for granted. Much shopping is facilitated when you have a car, though. Not only because it allows you to go to that far away supermarket which has the toothbrush you’ve been wanting to buy for 2 weeks, but mostly because of the kids who go from car to car on the endless car jams, selling everything from cigarettes, bread and water (varying between the bottled and plastic bag versions) to irons, glass tables and small trees. It´s the informal economy filling in the gaps.

Outside Luanda

Last weekend I took the chance to go outside Luanda with some friends. It’s a good thing to go outside Luanda. The chaotic traffic is still there as you leave and when you return, but for the rest it is quite relaxing to the eye and to the nervous system in general. We drove some 160 Km south of the capital, to Cabo Ledo, and camped on the beach. The flora is quite amazing on the way, and I promise to post some pictures of it in the near future. I also intend to post pictures of Luanda, but those are harder to take, especially interesting ones. People are known to get into trouble with the police, military and other people due to photography shooting. For now let’s just enjoy the calmness of a weekend in the beach.

Jesus hasn’t come yet

Jesus decides on light and darkness. He also seems to do it exclusively out of his own will. My landlady keeps telling me that he’ll come, but so far he really hasn’t. In the mean time I’ve spent many of these nights on candle light, which is, to say the least, not the easiest way to get acquainted with your new house. You see, there is a problem with the fuses in the building: they burnt the night before my arrival. Sort of “a big panic evacuation”, the neighbour commented the other day, when I finally thought somebody had to be asked about why I have no electricity since I arrived. The thing is I rented this room from my to-be-met flatmate, who happens to be somewhere else in Africa at the moment. There is a landlady, but I didn’t have her contact. And Jesus? Well, he lives somewhere in this same building, and he commands a power generator which, I’ve been told, we share. The problem is obviously that the generator’s switch, along with its intrinsic problems, lives happily with Jesus, in his flat. I later got the number of my landlady - through the girl who lived in this room before me, and whom by sheer coincidence I actually knew from Portugal -, and basically called her for help. The landlady then patiently explained to me that things here tend to take a time of their own and are generally a bit confusing. This somehow reassured me, as it helped me realize that perhaps it is not my fault I’m failing to have a grasp on things. So I carry on, waiting for Jesus to come and help me.

So here I am

In the end, I did make it on the 3rd of May, and with all of my five bags and suitcases. To make it short, I flew over half of Africa, landed a nice landing, stood in some lines for some time, and passed through immigration, where nobody really saw or cared about “André”, my new middle name. I got the bags, and in the end, after quitting on being recognized by one of those people near the group holding other people’s name plates, I managed to call the office by borrowing the cell phone of some fellow immigrant, who had just been informed that his car ride was stuck in traffic 2 kilometres and 50 minutes away. Some time after, my own ride arrived, and off we went. First to the address where the apartment keys where agreed to be - and where there was nobody -, then to the office, where I met some colleagues, then back to the keys spot, and then, with the keys in hand, to find the apartment. Finally, to sweat an impressive amount by carrying heavy bags up 3 high floors under intense heat. It all went remarkably well.

Last minute notes

Will I fly today? I will not fly today? If I fly today, will immigration notice the name in the Visa is not quite exactly my name? Will they think it's funny? If not, will they care for my lame excuses? Will my future coworkers come to the rescue, or will I lastly win a free return flight? Is it free at all?... Stay tuned!

Next go, 03-05-07

I have rescheduled the flight to May 3. This should give Mr. Visa the time it needs to find my mailbox. As for me, I’ll be doing last minute shopping and arrangements, reconsidering malaria prophylaxis and starting this blog. I’ll be busy.

On how I nearly went to Angola on April 25

This is how it was supposed to start. April 25 2007, I hop on a plane, fly for 8 hours, get off the plane and feel the heat, some thousand kilometres south of the equator. Instead, I spent several hours checking for new emails, and ringing numbers to figure out who forgot to tell me what about the whereabouts of my visa. I found out, too late, that the visa wouldn’t arrive on time.

Why? What?

I have temporarily put aside my plans for world domination. I have taken up a job in Luanda, Angola. This blog is to keep friends, colleagues, ex-colleagues, the occasional cybernaut and other, smaller, web literate mammals, informed of things that happen in Luanda and its surroundings. Things that happen to me, things I see, things I fail to see and nevertheless go on about. This could be fun, even pedagogical to you, and will certainly be a good, cheap therapy for me. It’s the diary I never had, and in English. Internet connection allowing, surely.