Or maybe I just missed the confusão

Game park near Lusaka, Zambia

Let me break the silence
Even if not inspired to write
Let me simply post an image
And on it comment despite

So, to Zambia I went
Some many weeks ago
To discover a neighbour land
And of it to let go

Things of similarity
And of difference I saw
More of the latter, I cry
And not without awe

They’re more organized, less fastidious
More courteous and polite
And what Angola lacks the most
Big African mammals on site

But no beautiful beaches to see
No kizomba, no semba to free
On these, I’ll write another day
A day with something to say

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.