Catumbela barragem

Anne with son Weni (age 5, left) and daughter Kadja (age 3, right)

You can barely make out women going down to the river to fill up tubs of water...

The weather in Lobito has finally cooled down a bit. In the morning and at night, it’s cool enough to where I use a jacket or long-sleeves. Of course, according to Angolans, it is absolutely freezing outside, although at its coldest I would say it is in the low 60s. I get a kick out of one of the guards that wears a down coat at night.

It makes for perfect outdoor weather, so on Saturday my French friend (former coworker) Anne and I went with her two kids to the Catumbela barragem, which was about an hour away from Lobito. It’s not much more than a dam, but it’s surrounded by some pretty mountains. It was a nice afternoon away from Lobito.

Great example: the guy in the middle is rocking a Veggie Tales t-shirt. He also gave us a chicken, which David from CDA is holding.

I’ve posted before about the used clothing trade here in Angola. Nothing much is manufactured in Angola, let alone clothes, so most Angolans buy their clothing from the used clothing stalls in the market. I did this a lot in Honduras when I was in the Peace Corps. The clothes were cheap and of decent quality, and I began to understand the Honduran rumor that American bought their clothes and would throw them away after they got dirty. (How else could such good quality used clothing be explained? Most Hondurans wear their clothes until they fall off their body because they can’t afford much else. Logically, Americans have SO much money that they can just throw clothes away, no need to wash them!)

I was a little disappointed by the used clothing options in the market here in Lobito. Maybe I just don’t have the patience to go through them like I did in Honduras. They were also more expensive- or least more expensive for me, the obviously rich foreigner- up to US$6 for a tank top. I’ll save my money and get a new tank top at Old Navy when I go home.

I love seeing ironic English-language t-shirts on people. I keep a list of the good ones. I’d love to take pictures, but I would feel awkward about that.

Here are some of my favorites:

I Survived Legislative Fitness Day (on a fat boy)

I Love Singapore

Front: STATE SUX! Back: TOP 10 REASONS WHY STATE SUX! (This was funny because it never specified what school it was for and which state they were talking about.)

It’s My Perogative! (On an elderly woman)

If I Throw a Stick Will You Runaway? (On a sweet, village elder near Cubal)

Aaron Cohen’s 1999 Bar Mitzvah: THE MILLENIUM!

I Don’t Need Therapy, I Need $MONEY$!

"How to Write About Africa"

Here is an excellent piece from Granta on how people tend to write about Africa.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

I wish I could say I'm completely immune to the suggestions in the piece, but I'm not.

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: The Granta piece is a satire. Several people have written me asking if I agree with the points. Being here now and reading that article, I understand perfectly what the author is talking about. I don't agree with everything, but I think the author is trying to make the point that Africa- the continent- is so diverse but many people approach it as if it were homogeneous and/or hopelessly tragic. The worst tends to come out of Africa in the media, but there are plenty of good things- things that us Westerners can identify with- you never hear about. Before coming to Angola, I was sure that I was stepping into a country full of land mines, war and Ebola, because that's all I could find about it before I arrived. Yes, those things are/have been problems, but there is much more that you never hear about. I think that's the point of the piece.

My New Best Friend

A little over two weeks ago, I arrived at work and found a big commotion. Three baby kittens had somehow gotten inside the office and were meowing their heads off. They were adorable and I asked one of the custodial staff what he was going to do with them. He said, "Oh, leave them alone. They'll probably die." My bleeding heart couldn't bear it, so I offered to take one.

As fate had it, that was the day I came down with typhoid, so taking little Kitty home with me wasn't really an option. When I got back to work the next week, the kitties had indeed died. I felt guilty, but mostly sad because I was really looking forward to having a cat, someone to keep my company.

I shared my woes with a friend, and last Friday he knocked at my door with this beautiful black kitten that had been hanging around his backyard. He caught his dog snapping at it, so he brought it over to me. Isn't she cute?!

Her name is Willie, after one of my favorite Willie Nelson songs ("Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain") because she has blue eyes and cries a lot. Her favorite toy is my stove/oven, because she can play with her reflection. Her favorite sleeping spot is inside the back of the fridge, because the motor is nice and warm. This makes me nervous but so far she has outsmarted all my attempts to keep her out of there.

I was nervous about getting a pet because I will have to leave it behind when I leave. However, a friend has already offered to take her when I leave, so I know she'll have a good home. In the meantime, she's made being at home so often a much more enjoyable experience.

She also likes sleeping on my neck.

Home Sweet Home

A view of the sunset from from my kitchen window.

My parents asked me to post pictures of my apartment so they could see where I live. The link is here. The apartment is the size of a small one story house, definitely a nice change from the tiny New York apartments I lived in for four years. It's very bare bones. Few decorations, apart from the bronze plaque from the former Soviet Consulate to Angola.

The most amazing thing about the apartment is the building that it is in. Apart from being across from The Most Dangerous Block in Lobito, the building is located in a prime spot. We locked in the lease for the apartment during the war, so it was dirt cheap. We are good tenants who pay all their bills on time, so it’s a good gig for the landlord. Which is why it was surprising a months ago when we received a letter letting us know that an offer had been made on the building and that if one of us tenants wanted to buy the building at the same price or higher, as residents we had that right. The buyer’s offer? $1.8 MILLION DOLLARS! Yes, American dollars! Just another sign of how elevated prices are in this country. No word yet on if the sale has been finalized and if I’ll have to move yet again.

Nothing a little Ciprofloxacin can't cure...

The scene of the crime

A few weeks ago, I noticed that the dozens of water bottles I use to store boiled, filtered drinking water were full every single say, no matter how much water was in the filter and no matter how much I had drunk the day before. I had left it up to Juliana, my maid, to boil and filter the water. When she started working for me around 8 months ago, I made it abundantly clear that this one thing she had to be very careful with. I gave her instructions, showed her hot to do it and she assured me that she knew how to do it. And she did do it, for several months. When I moved into my new apartment, I inherited sever 1.5 L water bottles. I told Juliana to continue to do the same thing for the water.

When I first noticed that the water bottles were strangely full all the time, I asked her if she had continued to boil and filter the water she was putting in them. She said she was, and she continued to leave a pot full of boiled water ready to put in the filter every day, so I had little reason to doubt her. Little reason, until two weeks ago when I noticed the brown bits of gunk accumulating at the bottom of the bottles. And then I noticed that the water tasted rather dirty. So I asked her again. “Oh no, mana, that’s water from the tap.”

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! My worst nightmare! Upon investigating, I found out she had been putting tap water straight in there for quite some time, at least a month and a half. When I asked why she had stopped, she claimed I never told her to boil and filter water. What?

Four days later, I came down with typhoid. AGAIN. This time was much worse, and I was forced to take 3 days off of work. Feeling better but not 100%.

Wild Wild Lobito, Pt. 4: The Most Dangerous Block in Restinga

I think it’s official. The triangulo, the little island in front of my house with the mini-mart and rolote, is the most dangerous spot in Lobito. Or at least Restinga.

Friday, around 7 pm, I was in the kitchen. I had the veranda doors open as usual, and suddenly heard a horrible screeching noise, followed by what sounded like a huge explosion. In reality, there was no explosion, just a four-car pile up. A car had come around the slight curve in front of the triangulo and hadn’t anticipated that there might be other cars on the road. (Other cars on one of the city's busiest roads? Imagine that!) It was coming in at around 50 mph and in the wrong lane. Miraculously, no one was injured- and no one tried to flee the scene so no gun shots were fired! The guilty party really couldn’t flee the scene though- mainly because his car was totaled, but also because within 5 seconds of the accident, approximately 200 people flooded into the street and surrounded the car.

Just another exciting night in Lobito!

Ondjiva

Typical house in Ondjiva

My trip to Kunene, one of Angola’s southernmost provinces, was a bit mixed. I was really excited to get out of Benguela and see a different part of the country. I went with my Angolan colleagues Sandra, who coordinates the HIV projects we run, and Humberto, our accountant.

We went to visit a new project we are starting with Caritas Kunene. They are a much smaller operation- they only have five employees, none of which are full-time. They don’t have much experience, although they have been in the province for over a decade. Sandra and I were to held with programming issues, such as setting an implementation calendar, and Humberto was to provide support to their accountant.

Ondjiva is the provincial capital of Kunene province. It is only 45 minutes or so from the Namibian border. It’s a small town- maybe around 75,000 people. Because of its proximity to South Africa and Namibia, South African mercenaries, which both sides used in the war, had a strong presence in the province. (Some info on this in a BBC article here and Human Rights Watch report here.) It was absolutely destroyed during the war. This is why everything in Ondjiva looks new. As it happens, Humberto was in the Angolan army and had been stationed in Ondjiva and surrounding areas for a little over a year. He could only recognize two buildings from the time of war: the church and the former “dance hall” which is now only half of a dance hall, but still standing. Everything else is new: the buildings are in good condition and the roads- the roads are BEAUTIFUL. Paved, well-maintained roads. Unbelievable. I was remarking on the difference between Lobito, a much larger, more important city (in terms of commerce, industry and politics) and Humberto said, “Well, Lobito wasn’t bombed into nothing.” True.

A kuimbo, traditional housing compound in rural Kunene

The Namibian influence can also be seen. I was surprised to see clear, visible road signs everywhere. The food products are all from Namibia, and most things are written in English. People cross the border to do their shopping in Oshikango, where things are much cheaper (including good school and medical services).

We got to work right away and realized that this project, an HIV/AIDS prevention and education project, would required a lot of hand-holding on our part. As an organization, they really have nothing: no phone, no generator to power the one computer they have. The staff, who are all wonderful people who appear to be dedicated to the organization, are “political appointees.” The head of programming is the Bishop’s nephew. The accountant is an adorable retired teacher who is wonderful, but has never turned on a computer in her life, so it will be a bit difficult for her to do the excel spreadsheets we require. (She will do them on paper and a colleague will transfer the info into electronic form.)

It was a bit disappointing to see how much work we need to do in terms of capacity building, mainly because we had a lot of high hopes for this province in terms of future projects. As the HIV prevalence rate in Kunene is so much higher than the rest of the country (15% as opposed to 6%), we had hoped to start with this pilot project and then move into more programmatic and financially intensive projects. This won’t happen any time soon. It’s understandable: the region was truly hit hard during the war. This, along with its physical isolation and lack of oil, means that it doesn’t get a lot of attention.

We had hoped to do a bit of research on an AIDS orphanage that Caritas told us existed. Orphans and vulnerable children are an institutional priority for us, so we wanted to explore project possibilities. Back in Lobito, we were assured over the phone that there was indeed an orphanage and that Caritas would arrange a visit for us. When we arrived, we found out that, in fact, there is no AIDS orphanage, but there were so many orphans that a Catholic mission has received funding from the World Bank and UNICEF to begin one. We arranged a visit to the mission, which was a long 3 hours away by car.

The mission church. This mission was one of the few that was operational during the war. It was still bombarded during combat. Bullet holes are visible inside and outside the church.

We arrived at the mission, which includes a small school and hospital. The sisters who were there looked at us in utter confusion when we asked about the orphanage they were building. Turns out they have only loose plans to build one, and not with help from UNICEF or the World Bank. But they assured us that AIDS orphans were a major problem in the area, so perhaps we would help them. I explained again that we couldn’t offer any help right away and that we were just making an “exploratory” visit, but the smart sister kept asking for money from the white lady. It turns out that there are approximately 10- only 10- AIDS orphans that they have been asked to take in. Their current “project” to help them consists of the distribution of a box of tuna fish cans they once got from the government. Even then, they just gave the tuna to the sobas, so who knows if the orphans even go the food.

Building where the mission priests live.

So the visit was a bit of a bust in terms of work. But thanks to a cancellation, Sandra and I were able to cross into Oshikango, Namibia for a few hours of shopping. I hadn’t planned on going but luckily had my passport. I exchanged $50 and set off.

Even though we were just at the border, both Sandra and I could tell the extreme difference between Namibia and Angola. There was the obvious infrastructure- as in, they have infrastructure, like sidewalks and public trash cans. But we also noticed the stares we were getting. Men were constantly cat-calling us, something that has never happened to me in Angola, and the aforementioned hair-pulling incidents. We were pleased by how far our money went in Oshikango. Granted, most of it was cheap Chinese junk, but even cheap Chinese junk is expensive in Angola! So many Angolans go to Oshikango to do their shopping that Portuguese is more common than English. Even the Chinese shopkeepers speak Portuguese. I drop $50 easily just picking up a few things at the ShopRite in Lobito. In Oshikango, I was buying just anything at the end of the trip to get rid of the Rand that I had left over. I didn’t buy anything terribly exciting: a couple of shirts, some kitchen supplies (fresh ginger included!), and grapefruit juice.

Wild Wild Lobito, Pt. 3: The Most Dangerous Block in Restinga

Nice neighborhood establishment with fun for the whole family? Or TRIANGLE OF VIOLENCE!!
The rolote is the little hut to the right. This is the view from my apartment veranda.

Yesterday I ran into a friend who asked if I had heard about the confusão at the rolote (or “sin shack” as my friend Lisa L callsthem- a great description) in front of my house. This is the same rolote whose guard shot at the car that attempted a hit and run a few months ago. This is on the same street where I heard gunfire at 5 am a few weeks ago.

The latest incident to occur in this little nexus of violence involves some drunk expat oil company employees. You see, for some reason, the vast majority of the expat oil workers love the rolote in front of my house. Most of them are skilled laborers (electricians, metalurgists) from Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, and a handful of other European countries. They come here for 3 months at a time and then leave. Why do they love this rolote so much? The service there, like every other place, is atrocious. Unlike other rolotes this one is far from the beach and any nice ocean breeze. It’s next to a playground, so there are kids running around at all hours of the day and night. My theory is that they feel at home there because there is a constant stream of horrible eurotrash techno music- the same song over and over and over and over again. These ex-pats are constantly there drinking. I see them in the morning eating breakfast, at noon eating lunch, and of course at night drinking and eating.

So on Sunday, there was a big match in the Portuguese soccer league. Porto, one of the more popular teams, won, so Angolans were going crazy. This rolote has a projection screen TV that shows most European league games. (Now that I think about it, the games, as opposed to the techno music, are the draws.)

A group of Angolans were getting a bit rowdy in front of the table of ex-pats. One Angolan guy and one English guy exchanged words, and the Angolan “challenged” the English guy to hit him. Rather than hit him, he apparently got out his Leatherman and slashed the guy’s stomach open, injuring some internal organs.

Ouch.

Apparently the English guy is in jail and awaiting trial. Not the best way for an oil company to win over the locals. The Angolan guy was in surgery for 5 hours but in the end is apparently okay.

What is it about my block? It is calm and generally safe… really! I live in what is considered the best neighborhood in Lobito. It certainly is the most expensive, and one where the majority of expats live. To me, it's perplexing that these things have happened here. Perhaps I'm just naive.

Irresistible? Or freakish?

What about this says, "Pull me!"?

Time spent in Oshikango, Namibia: 4 hours (including at border posts)
Number of times hair pulled by curious Namibian women: 4
Times I found it funny: 1
Times they found it funny: 4

And I'm not even blonde!

How Things Work Around Here: Angolan Airline Edition

Benguela Airport

This morning I got up at 5 am to get ready for my trip to Ondjiva. Check-in was at 7, but we had to pick up my colleagues and the airport is an hour away. We get to the airport at 7:15 and start to wait for the Gemini Airlines rep to come so we can begin check-in.

Around 8, the rep finally shows up. The following events took place:

Rep: I announce that as of today, the Luanda-Benguela-Ondjiva flight has been moved from 8 am to 1 pm. Come back at 11 for check-in.
Manuel Jose (my favorite driver): Why didn't you advise us of this change?!
Rep: Hey, you should have called the office to confirm the flight. That was irresponsible of you.
Manuel Jose: I DID call and confirm the flight, at 5 pm yesterday.
Rep: Oh. Um.
Manuel Jose: And you take down every passenger's name and phone number in case there are any changes, so you can call them and inform them of the changes.
Rep: That's just a formality.
Manuel Jose: This is very unprofessional.
Rep: Well, we weren't informed of these changes until 6 pm yesterday!
Manuel Jose: So you had plenty of time to call every one.
Rep: Yes.
Manuel Jose: But you didn't.
Rep: No. Of course not. You had to call and confirm the flight.

And so it goes....

Disappearing for a while...

I'm heading out into the field to visit a new project in Ondjiva, Cunene. Cunene is Angola's southernmost province, bordering Namibia. Cunene is quite different from Benguela both culturally and geographically, so it should be interesting. It's cold there! (Although I'm still not sure what Angolans mean by "cold" so we'll see if it gives me any relief from the heat and humidity of Benguela.)

The project I'll be visiting is an HIV/AIDS prevention project. This is quite new for us, because unlike Benguela province, where prevalence rates are at 5% or so, the prevalence rate in Cunene is estimated at 30% or higher. This is largely due to its proximity to Namibia, which has an official prevalence rate of 20% but is more likely to have 40%.

One "benefit" of the war in Angola was that the borders and transportation routes were effectively shut down, so while the rest of southern Africa was dealing with a horrible AIDS crisis, Angola was not. However, once the borders opened after the end of the war, all that changed. Because there is so much movement in Cunene, HIV spread rapidly there.

This will be an interesting trip.

Love your neighbor? UPDATE

This morning Francisco, our Head of Programming, comes into my office and says, "Leslie. Tell me about your Portuguese neighbors." I was obviously curious, so I asked why he wanted to know about my neighbors. He had just received a phone call from the university where they teach, requesting that we hook them up to our generator and water supply permanently. Did they offer any money? Compensation? No- they asked under the guise of being good neighbors and helping out the poor professors.

I told him the story, and then Sergey, my coworker and upstairs neighbor came in with tales of more abuse. His wife, Stella, is one of the sweetest, kindest people I have ever met, so it didn't surprise me to hear Sergey say that she would lend the maid sugar upon occasion. But when it started happening every day, Stella stopped lending, realizing that she was being taken advantage of. The crazy maid, of course, reacted by calling Stella selfish and rude.

After hearing the stories, Francisco called the university and told them that because of un-neighborly behavior on their part, we would not provide any services to them and that they should pay for services themselves. What a novel concept!

Love your neighbor?

Quotidian life in Angola can be difficult. My living conditions have improved significantly since moving out of the huge apartment building, but I still face some challenges. I still live off a generation 75% of the time and have a slight trickle of water to shower with 9 times out of 10. But a perk of ex-pat living is that I have a support staff that takes care of these things. I don’t really know how Jesús, our handyman, does things. He just moves a few wires and suddenly I have power again. Fine by me!

We have a monster generator for the two apartments we rent in our six-unit building. If I were a neighbor, I might be a bit resentful of us- it does make noise and given the quality of Lobito’s power supply, it’s on a lot. For a while, I’ve suspected that Jesús has hooked up the other apartments in the building to the generator. (My employer has leases on the two apartments for several years, so Jesús has gotten to know the neighbors and helps them out when he can.) I, for one, am not one to begrudge someone electricity. Most of the neighbors are quietly thankful, never complaining about not turning the generator on quickly enough, respecting the “only Leslie, Stella or Sergey has authorization to turn on the generator” rule. (After all, we do pay for it, albeit down the line.)

Not my next door neighbors. I live next to two Portuguese university professors. (Yes, Lobito has a university!) I’ve only seen them a handful of times, and they seem nice. Their empregada (maid), however, is a terror. Lately I’ve been noticing that someone has been telling the guards to turn on the generator, even though we have general power and water. After several days of this, I asked Doutor, the awesome young guard, who was telling him to do this. He pointed at my neighbors and said, “Rosa.” I explained to him that only the three of us can tell him to turn on the generator, and that if there were any problems to tell me. Sure enough, the next day (Saturday), I hear a ruckus downstairs. Seconds later, I hear a pounding on my door; it was Rosa, the maid from next door. She immediately starts yelling at me, telling me that I have no right to instruct the guards to ignore her requests to turn on the generator, because without the generator, they have no electricity or water, and the women next door are professors with degrees, so how dare I disrespect them!

At first I was confused- was she really angry at me for not allowing her to steal from us? And then I was even more confused because I had city-supplied electricity and water, so why didn’t she? I explained this all to her, but she was adamant. “Call that boy Jesús!” (Jesús is in his late 30s- hardly a boy- but he has polio and walked with a profound limp, so people tend to treat him differently.) I got Jesús on the phone and passed it to her. She yelled some more, then gave it back to me. Jesús’ judgment of the situation was that “essa senhora está maluca,” or “that woman is crazy.” Agreeing with him and fearing any more confrontations, I told the guard to turn on the generator.

Later we found out that their handyman had uninstalled their apartment’s pump and connected it directly to our generator. As a result, they only had water when our generator was on. We had to do a clean sweep of all other connections, and Jesús disconnected all other apartments’ connections to our generator. I personally was scared that the quietly appreciative neighbors would be angry, but they weren’t. As one of them said to Jesús as he was disconnecting her line to our generator, “Não pensam, só falam.” (They don’t think, just talk.) That neighbor is actually quite nice, and I think Jesús reconnected her to the generator a few days later. I’m all for sharing. In the meantime Rosa continues to give me dirty looks.

Laugh of the Day

In Angola, when you temporarily forget someone’s name or don’t know their name, you say, “o coiso” or “a coisa” – “the thing” with the appropriate gender article.

My name here is very difficult to say. The most common pronunciations are “Leez-lee” or “Lazy.” (Yes, Lazy.) As a result, most people simply don't learn my name or forget it very easily. (In fact, the woman who has cleaned ny house for the last 7 months still doesn't know my name, in spite of me telling her several times and casually saying things like, "The other day some one told me, 'LESLIE. It's hot, isn't it LESLIE?'")

There are three guards that watch over our apartment building. Yesterday as I was coming home from work, the guard started calling out after me, “Dona Coisa! Dona Coisa!”

Which, loosely translated, means “Ms. Thang.” Awesome.

Wild Wild Lobito, Pt. 2

Pic from US State Dept. Confiscated guns waiting to be destroyed in Luanda. www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/pix/b/71805.htm

Early Saturday morning, around 5:30 am, I awoke to the sounds of gunfire. I heard two gunshots, then lots of shouting. I went back to bed.

I left to pick up my friend Anne’s kids, as I was babysitting for her that morning. On my way out, I asked the guard what all the commotion was. Apparently, burglars attempted to break into the house catty-corner to my apartment building. The guard encountered them and started shooting. No one was hurt. But no one was caught, either.

On the one hand, I feel very safe in this city, especially on Restinga, the peninsula where I live that is like a small, sleepy town. On the other hand, I this is the second shooting tht has happened within a block of my apartment! This makes me feel better about being in bed by 10 most nights, so I'm not on the street with all the bandidos.

Awesome Structures in Angola Series: Part 3

Following the spirit of Part 2 in the series is this house. My friends Mark and Domingas live across the street from it. It is “abandoned” in the sense that the owners of the house- whoever they may be- don’t live there or do any sort of maintenance on the house. The house, however, is occupied by squatters, although they’ve been there long enough for the term to be misleading. The house is located on the bay side of Restinga, a few blocks past my old apartment. Like so many houses in this city, you can tell it was once a beautiful, elegant home, probably left during independence. I like this house because it reminds me of the banana company houses in Tela, on north coast of Honduras. (I tried finding images on Google Image, but surprisingly couldn't find any pictures of the Chiquita buildings.)

Sign in the picture says, "Careful: Monkey bites". Notice that our little friend is running free, outside the cage.

Yesterday was a holiday here in Angola- Labor Day. I went with my French friend Anne and her two adorable kids, Weni and Kadja, to Catumbela, a nearby town. Catumbela has a restaurant with the only decent ice cream I've encountered in Angola. They even had peanut ice cream, which was excellent. It's no Blue Bell ice cream, but then again, nothing but Blue Bell is...

We also stopped by the "zoo" in Catumbela. I've heard about this "zoo" before, but was dubious because when I asked what animals they had, people would say "oh just some monkeys and crocodiles." Hmm. I didn't have high hopes to begin with, but it turned out to be worse than I expected!

The fences that once sealed off the small park were torn down due to road constuction work close by. The place looks like it was just abandoned, leaving the animals there to fend for themselves. There was no sign of the crocs. Plenty of monkeys, however. Two of them somehow got out of the giant cage and were running lose. Surprisingly, they behaved themselves and kept their distance from us, except when they hopped into the bed of the truck we were driving. Still in the cage were about 5 other monkeys. The monkeys outside the cage were rummaging around the trash heaps for food. Not sure what the ones inside the cage do. Coitados.

Angolan Author Wins Prize

Saw this article on the BBC News website today. there's no bookstore in Lobito, so I haven't seen this book. Nice to see that an Angolan author gets recognition, though.

The Book of Chameleons by Angolan journalist and author Jose Eduardo Agualusa has won this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

...Boyd Tonkin, judge and literary editor of The Independent, called it "a delightful, moving and revealing novel about modern Africa".

For the kids

A while ago I posted about kuduro, the Angolan rap-esque music (can't really describe it) that is hugely popular. One of the best things about kuduru is the dancing- it reminds me of early 80s break dancing, and everyone gets into it. This video on YouTube shows that. (Mom and Dad, you can skip it, not your style!) This video shows everyone one from school kids (in the white lab cost-looking smocks) to people with physical disabilities.

One of the many things I like about Angola.