Tony's Life and Times

Generally when we had holidays or breaks from our work at the Luanda International School, Lotty and I went and wandered around in Angola, since we wanted to come to grips with this fascinating and complex country while we had the chance.  But on one holiday, several of our colleagues asked us to join them on a holiday in the neighboring country of Namibia.   A proper African holiday complete with lions, elephants and all the other trappings of Africa - most of which were absent from Angola as they had all been killed during the civil war (Mostly by Generals shooting them with heavy machine guns from Helicopter Gun Ships - Ah big game hunting is such fun!). So in due time the great moment arrived, and we all boarded the plane to fly us from Luanda to Windhoek International Airport.  On arrival we were first somewhat stunned by the modernity and cleanliness of the terminal, and then even more stunned by the fact that the guys from the travel company we had ar...

Our year in Angola was too short for us to really come to grips with the country, but we did our best to experience the place while we were there. As I have remarked in an earlier post on Angola, we arrived shortly after their dreadful civil war had ended. Well actually it was much worse than simply a civil war, they also had to contend with military invasions as well.   The South African working on behalf of the USA had invaded the country from Namibia (which at that time belonged to South Africa) and had wreaked bloody havoc wherever they went.  Not to be outdone, the Russians used the Cubans as their cat's paw, and sent troops and others to "help" the Angolans fight off the South Africans.  And to add to the confusion, there were also three Angolan armies all fighting each other as well.    All of this had been going on for something like 30 years, from the departure of the Portuguese colonialists. So it had been a very nasty three decades for the An...

This posting will be an account of my experiences as a supply teacher! I know, its unbelievable, but it has happened! While we were working at Luanda International School, it was understood that in need, I could be used as a supply teacher.   Something that I had hoped would never occur, as I have never wanted to be a teacher, and looked upon the whole concept with considerable angst and fear. However, one day the worst happened.  I was walking through the school office whistling a happy tune, and I was grabbed by the principal as I passed,  and told abruptly that I would be put into a class of kids for the first week of the next term as the normal class teacher was getting married and would thus return to school 5 days after the start of term. There I was....Caught! I gulped and kneeling on the floor, begged to be spared this torment... but to no avail, she was adamant... and thus it was done.... I had been promoted to the ranks of my fellow Luanda c...

Whilst living in China, I came to the conclusion that somewhere in the darkest depths of the local government of Beijing there was a bureaucrat who was grossly under employed. As we all know, any bureaucrat who finds himself with no real work to do, will quickly invent jobs for himself. There is some natural law about this, I just cant bring its name to mind just now.... but it has to do with the survival of this particular species (Bureaucraticus underemployedius). A number of local regulations came into effect which were hard to explain using logic as a starting point.    To wit:- All taxi drivers had to wear ochre shirts and rather startling striped ties. No dogs taller than 25 cms at the shoulder might live within the part of Beijing defined by the fourth ring road. All shops had to have identical letter type and sized name boards above their shops. Furthermore, a concerted attempt was made to wipe out one of the most creative and enjoyable uses...

While in China, one holiday we went on a trip to Xin Jiang Province, which is in the extreme north west of China, bordering on Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia (see map below). Map of China in which Xin Jiang is the ochre bit at the top left of China. Lotty had gone a week earlier than I could, as her work schedule was different to mine.  She had been on a long walk in the mountains in the east of Xin Jiang, and I joined her and the others of her walking group in Kashgar. I flew from Beijing to Kashgar a day after I stopped work, and went to the hotel where the other members of the small group we were going to be with for a few days were staying, and left my mobile in the taxi too, damn it! Never got it back either, rotten taxi driver!!!!!!! The next morning, bright and early we climbed into a small bus and headed out to the Karakorum Highway, an amazing piece of recent civil engineering that joins China to Pakistan over the heig...

After spending a year in Angola, which sadly ended with us falling foul of the Director and Principle of the school (two of the most unpleasant people I have ever met), it was obvious that we would have to move on. Part of our falling foul of those two involved me storming into the Director's office and gently informing him that if he didn't stop hassling Lotty I would deck him - meaning every word I said, which he, sensibly, believed. Lotty managed to get herself work in a new international school in Beijing (Beijing City International School) so we left Angola and did a totally ludicrous trip around the world, going to Australia, followed by going to France, and then England, and then Holland and then to China.   I got the feeling we spent the entire summer holiday in airports and planes - but we did manage to see a lot of good friends and family in between the planes happily, and duly arrived in Beijing. Having spent a part of my childhood in Singapore, and hav...

On what was intended to be a pleasant day's sail out of Newhaven with Lotty, myself and a friend from the Roundhouse, Mike Waterman, all aboard Mjojo, we found ourselves in serious danger of being thrown onto the rocks and drowning. Before setting out, we had (of course) listened to the shipping weather forecast, which promised us reasonably strong winds and clear visibility.  So, we cast off from the inner harbour of Newhaven (which for you non-Brits, is a fishing port on the south coast of England) and set out for a pleasant day on the English Channel. Obviously not us in this photo (we were rather too busy to take any photos), but it gives you an idea of what it was like. After about an hour's enjoyable sailing straight out to sea, the weather began to change, the wind getting stronger and stronger.  I listened to the shipping forecast again, and it was now telling me that we were about to be enveloped in a Force 12 to 14 storm.   Hmmmmm....... ...

While we were in Angola, I kept a blog in which I described more or less everything we did, saw and experienced in that extra-ordinary country.   So rather than rehash it all here in this blog, I have decided to simply post the link to that older blog, so if you are interested in what we did and saw while in Angola, you can read it all there.   Probably more interestingly too, as I wrote it all as it was happening to us. So here is the link to that blog:- http://tony-lotty-at-large.blogspot.com.au/ I hope you find it interesting and even a bit enjoyable.  It was a very profound experience for us both in so many ways!

When we arrived in Angola, the civil war that had been raging in that country for about 30 years had just ended with the shooting to death of Savimbi – the leader of one of the three waring factions, (UNITA) and a sort of uneasy peace was being observed by all the various parties to that terrible war. The end of Savimbi, and thus of the war It had started as a war of independence against the Portuguese who had colonised the country in the late 19 th century, and then once they had gone, it turned into yet another of those wars in which the USSR and the USA fought each other using surrogate armies. In this case it was the Cubans being the strong arm of the Russians, and the South Africans doing the USA's dirty work for them. The net result of all of this was a country that had an estimated 17 million land mines scattered around and endless shot up towns and villages, and a more or less totally destroyed infrastructure. Vast numbers of war injured people and an inte...