Thoughts On Living In Angola

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 Angolans, and they were left with a totally destroyed infrastructure, disease and  landmines being the main factors in their daily lives.   Polio, Cholera, Malaria and all manner of other horrible diseases were rampant, as was AIDS of course, and filth, no drinking water, burnt out military equipment all over the place, shot up buildings and massive internal displacement of whole peoples, infant mortality of about 25% before the age of 5, and an average life expectancy of about 35 years.  In other words, a mess.

In spite of all this misery, one of the chief impressions one had of the Angolans was of a people with an immense pride in themselves and a touching faith that now the war(s) were finally over, they hoped, they would create a country to be proud of, one which would have all the modern things they desired, and one in which life would be good.

For my part, knowing the level of corruption in their government, and the fact that the country was to a great extent owned by the Oil Companies, who were sucking the oil out of the sea along the Angolan coast as fast as they could go, I was less optimistic for their future.   But whenever I asked any Angolans about all of this, they simply smiled and said that their first priority was to ensure that the fighting was really over, and once they were totally sure of that, then they would make damn sure that things got better for them, and that the huge sums of money that the oil, uranium and diamonds were bringing into the country would not (as was then the case) simply disappear into the pockets of the Generals and top politicians, but would somehow filter down to them as well.  

To give a quick idea of the sort of wealth that was there for the ruling elite,I merely have to mention the General who owned two Boeing 747s, which he used exclusively for himself and his family to fly back and forth to Brazil in for their relaxation..... 

Up on the plateau, looking down the escarpment....

However, in spite of this horrible situation for the people, Angolans managed to survive, and in general, survive with an astonishing dignity and feeling for their individual worth.    Seeing them striding out of their God awful slums on their way to work, immaculately dressed and groomed, radiating an air of "I am as good as anyone on the planet" was a lesson in how strong people can be, that was not lost on me, at least.   The whole Angolan experience was an eye opener for me, and made an enormously profound impression on me, which will remain with me for the rest of my life.   We humans are an astonishing species, capable of the most awful things, but also capable of rising above the worst situations with a display of dignity and self-worth that is amazing.

So, the Angolans impressed me a lot, even if on occasions they also infuriated me with their apparent inability to take responsibility for things or use their imaginations to solve problems.  But later I came across these same characteristics in both China and the Philippines, so I now suspect that these character traits are common to all non-western societies.

The coastal strip just south of Luanda.... 

 Aside from the people, Angola is a breathtakingly beautiful country in so many different ways.    It has the typical red soil that seems to cover almost all of Africa.   In fact as far as landscape goes, Angola is divided into three distinctly different landscapes.   The relatively low coastal strip, which is flat and rather barren, full of those wonderful Baobab trees and low scrub for the great part.   At the southern end of this strip it suddenly turns into desert, a continuation of the Skeleton Coast of Namibia...   But it is sort of small scale. So the sand dunes which look huge, turn out to be no higher than about 20 meters high when you get up to them.   A sort of friendly small scale desert, which both Lotty and I loved when we went down there to have a holiday rest on the coast there.

A side street in Huambo

In passing, this is where we saw a poor fellow who had apparently been murdered.   We were being driven back to catch the plane back to Luanda, and saw beside the road an SUV that looked battered and odd, so we drove up to it to see what was going on, and found that it was empty, but there was a dead man lying nearby who had obviously not been killed by an accident involving the SUV. So a case of phoning the cops and letting them know there was a corpse for them to come and sort out.. And then on to the airport.   Death is not a very remarkable thing in Angola we had learned.

As I shall describe in rather more detail later, we also went up country, which in Angola is literally what one does.  As I said, there is a flat and low coastal strip, and not far inland it suddenly goes up a few thousand meters in an impressive escarpment to an enormous central plateau that stretches more or less to the other side of Africa.   Up there it is all pine trees, gum trees and rolling grasslands.  Superbly beautiful, and cool - which after the hot and extremely humid coastal strip was a great relief to us whenever we went up there.

Up on the plateau near to Lubango

I have only visited Angola, Namibia and bits of South Africa, so far, but have found all those bits at least, amazingly beautiful, and somehow restful.. A feeling of being at home.  I have often wondered if it might be some sort of racial memory at work to produce that feeling - given that apparently we all come from Africa originally.