O Arco

We pulled into Namibe - Angola's southernmost city - around five. For hours we'd crossed dry scrubland bordering on desert. With peculiar conical hills and desert scrub bushes and occasional dead-looking flowers, adapted to the terrain and the heat. The first sign of Namibe were the concentric bands of green - trees, shrubs and hedges planted by the portuguese to stop any encroachment from the desert into the town. We drove through a mile of these before we hit the outskirts and from there we reached the coast and the city.

We didn't even pull over. We just kept on right through. I was confused. I was often confused. My portuguese had definitely improved in the preceding few weeks but I could do nothing but smile and nod in the hail of banter that was thrown around on the minute-by-minute basis. Mealtimes left me concerned that there were serious rows erupting all around me before being assured that portuguese angolans are just... expressive - the Latin spirit... I don't get it.

Anyway, being tired of the long stretches in the car, I could not help but feel exasperated, knowing that we were going to stay in Namibe tonight, as to why we were now driving away from it, an hour or so before sunset. I kept schtum and watched the terrain change again to open flat desert, the ground dried and baked into rivulets.

After twenty minutes of nothing we pulled off the road into the desert. The faint tracks of previous cars the only guide as to which direction we were to follow. Another twenty minutes and the tracks led us down between walls of rock, twisting to follow the contours of the land. The car jerked from side to side over the bumps.
At the end of this rock corridor we emerged into an opening, and a rush of deep luscious green. We pulled up under a canopy of trees next to an MPLA flag. Two men emerged from the treeline in battered shorts and stained t-shirts. One man announced he was the local party representative, the other carried a long machete dangling from a sinewy arm. They said they'd keep an eye on the car.
We set off on foot, following a well worn path between the trees and the cliffwall. It wound round and round as the late sunshine reflected desert yellow off the rocks above. Small birds would flitter past and you could hear how much life there was surrounding us. The path led up to a viewpoint over the tops of the trees were we could see beyond to water and then open space. The water stretched across for half a mile to the far cliffs - covered in waterlilies and edged in reeds. On the far bank a fisherman was returning in his dinghy, the sound of the water parting for his oars carried to us. From there we were led down through a natural rock arch - O Arco - and then up again to a spectacular view of the sun setting over the water. The still waters shone and sparkled as the rocks beamed yellow warmth against the rich velvet sky. The sense of space and otherness was incredible. The waters stretched as far as the eye could see, far away into presumably some river valley tributary system. All along the edges bright vibrant greens.

As the richest colours started their slow fade to black we turned back towards the car. The sky and rocks gently subduing themselves to the darkness visibly moment by moment. A few whisps of cloud catching the last of the apricot pinks up above. We reached the car in dusk-light. The men re-emerged from their vantage points to collect their fee. The fisherman also appeared with an enormous silver catfish hanging from a hook, still flashing slivers of reflected sky. It looked delicious - but we had no need of it.

As the car pulled out of the rock corridor and back into the open flatness of the desert the ground had turned deep ochre-red and the sky - vast as it can only be in flat lands - put on a last display of brilliance. By the time we got back onto the road it was dark - only the headlights providing any guidance.

Angola in a bubble

My experience of Angola could not have been more plush. I was taken, driven, shown and fed. I was very much a backseat driver - without any of the negative connotations. The first weekend we went over to the spit of land on the opposite side of Luanda - Mussulo. Mussulo, I was told, is famous for being gorgeous sunshine paradise - where Mariana spent most weekends through her childhood. With endless sandy beaches, beachhouse comforts, glorious food (as long as you bring it yourself), and mangroves creeping out of the sea in all directions. It rained. Not just a little rain either. On the way over in the boat, my panama hat went from jauntily wind-blown to shapeless hood sodden and flopping all around my head. It never quite recovered for the rest of the trip. Mariana was distraught. "It NEVER rains!"

To make up for that we went down the coast to a beautiful stretch of beach where the ex-pats (the ones without the weekend homes on Mussulo) hang out. Sunshine! Hot whitey-toasting sunshine!

On the Monday we set off for a grand tour. Driving - being driven - from Luanda down to Benguela and Lobito. We stayed with Filipe (M's brother), Nilza and the kids. The one instance in the whole trip of a slightly unhappy tummy - which was over in a couple of hours - denied me one of the best looking meals of the trip on the grounds that I was 'sick'. Instead I got get-better-food - thin tasteless rice soup. Booh!

From there we went up into the highlands to Lubango - a name that is fun to say!

Lubango is high on the central plateau - the climate is much cooler here and wetter. On the way up we drove straight into a wall of fog/cloud that reduced visibility to a few metres. Bouncing along the potholes we caught glimpses of people shaped shadows, tree shaped outlines and goat shaped blurs.
We stayed at a 'lodge' - small neatly arranged concrete huts with thatched roofs, built to resemble something more tribal perhaps. Complete with exhibits - ostriches wandered around the grounds, a chimp was paraded through on a chain, a concrete enclosure with crocodiles, there were birds everywhere: turkeys, chickens, geese, and pigeons - prize winning fancy pigeons!
Oh and an extraordinary caged pen complete with a solitary goose. At first it looked like a joke - some elaborate holding pen for a crazed serial killer - as if Hannibal Lector had been born a goose. It behaved in much the same way. Silently sitting, occasionally turning to interrogate any onlookers with its gaze. It was at this point that I noticed all around it, in the long grass, were large powerful boas. When I pointed this out to Mariana she flipped. Not so much for herself as for her Dad.
Mariana's Dad, Toli, loves animals. He grew up out here in the fifties, surrounded by them, on the central plateau, before any of the trouble started. When Angola was a docile colony complete with thousands of white portuguese populating the highland farms. On arriving at the lodge we'd spent five minutes before we even got out of the car making turkey noises to prompt a reactive 'gobble-gobble-gobble'. For future reference the guaranteed way to do is to yell peru-velho.
Back in Cape Town, David Attenborough's Planet Earth had come on the tv - Toli was entranced; the large vistas of ten thousand cranes sucked him in. But later on, the show switched to a hunt. A herd of caribou were being hunted by a wolf. He couldn't watch - he twitched in his seat at every moment the panic-stricken calf would turn evading death for another moment. Before the grisly finale he'd got up and stormed out of the room complaining there was just no need...

Mariana was keen to excuse this goose as a kind of mistake - surely it's just too big. There's just no way those things could take it. I pointed out the goose shaped lump half way down one of the larger boas. This was no mistake. When Mariana's mum noticed she too was wary of Toli's reaction. She tackled the owner straight up, "Aren't you worried that this kind of thing is going to drive away your customers?"



"Seriously?!? ... But that's our most popular exhibit!"

Dap - Luanda style

Arriving in Luanda from Johannesburg we circled the city. From the plane you can see the bay, the docks and the gleaming centre. The airport seemed new and shiny. We were raced through immigration without incident. It was warm but not hot, with a pleasant breeze.



The first night we were due to head out for dinner with Mariana's friends. The phone rang and we went outside for our ride - saying another round of greetings to the nightguard. Natacha skipped to greet us with hugs, then a shrug of the shoulders, 'Olguita got pulled over by a cop for making a wrong turn, they're over there.' Traffic in Luanda is a problem. There's too much of it and the infrastructure of roads is poor and in constant flux as developers change one junction after another before going back and re-thinking the first one. There are also very few signs, which gives the traffic police - of which there are plenty - easy pickings. We got in, more happy greetings and hugs, then we were told to follow. The traffic cop took us to his superior and handed him Olgita's license.




'Good evening ladies'
There followed an exchange of more greetings and smiles, before business began.
'You know officer, it's unbelievable, I've had such a bad day - my asshole boyfriend walked out on me this morning and since then it's just been one thing after another ... I mean men are such bastards! Of course not you officer, no you seem like a really considerate kind of guy'
'Well, that's terrible - no ok, let's see if we can make your day a little better huh?, I'm sure all this was just a silly mistake...'

After a scrabble for notes in the dark of the backseat and a 'thank you officer - you have a good night' we were on our way. The car erupts, 'Asshole!' before Natacha laughs, 'Welcome to Angola Jonathan!'*












* I found out later that this practice was so common it had it's own local slang term - 'pentear' or to get your hair brushed... didn't make much sense to me until Mariana reminded of her nieces reaction to getting their hair - afro hair - brushed. Ouch.

Digital Obeisance

My first taste of Angolan soil was a technicality - being as it was a ten minute stroll from Baker Street. Arriving with punctual Englishness a half hour before they opened the door would, I thought, guarantee me a quick and painless way to drop off the triplicate forms I had prepared over the previous three weeks; the passport information, the photos, the letters of invitation, the bank details. At nine thirty they opened up, herded us downstairs into a dingy underground waiting area, and pointed us to a ticket machine like those used at the butchers. A digital display beams out the numbers over the room. Twenty minutes later, two members of staff deigned to open the window booths and start the procedings.
I had been warned that this might take some time, and I was prepared. I looked at my number - about ten away from the magic window - did some calculations and figured maybe two hours tops, settled into the chair and pulled out my book.
The room itself was cramped and full of Angolan families, presumably children born here and needing visas to return for Christmas. There was a heavy chatter around the room and it was clear I was missing out on certain pieces of information that were being bandied about in portuguese. No matter, the display blipped a new figure every ten or fifteen minutes.
About an hour in I noticed that the display had stopped blipping - and my number was getting no closer. This continued for the next forty five minutes or so.
There was a large woman at the counter, haranguing the girl behind the glass. It became clear that: a) the lady didn't have a ticket and b) the girl was new. The lady wanted to be walked through the forms; what to write, how to fill it in, painful step by painful step. The girl didn't have the gall to turn her away. Never mind that without the required copies of the million and one things this lady wasn't going to get anywhere, at least not today. Once the room had noticed this was the way of things they didn't waste any time in abandoning any respect for the digital display and forming a mass rabble queue - more a crowd than a queue - a crueue perhaps?
Assuming that clearly the system was in place and I could confidently wait my blip, I was slow to react. An hour later, I got up and joined the masses like everyone else.
I phoned work to let them know I wouldn't be able to teach my afternoon classes. It was, despite protestations and bickering, an easy crowd - quick to joke and smile. Any rational or irate logical comments offered from the other non-Angolan whitey in the room were met with resigned smiles and shakes of the head, occasionally laughter, 'What you expect? This is Angola.'



When I reached the window, at 2pm, I handed over my envelope. The lady took it, flicked through, mentally ticked off the boxes and handed me a receipt. It took about twenty seconds. I walked out into the sunlight.