uma prova

O homem mais antigo

2008-12-08T16:42:00.001-05:00

A couple of weekends ago while we were at a mini-market around the corner we mentioned to a couple of guys having a beer that we were looking for an apartment but having a hard time finding one. One of them volunteered that he knew a few people that might know some people and that he'd ask around for us. This Sunday afternoon two men came to the door and offered to show us a house near here. We hadn't told anyone where we're staying, but the two men had no trouble finding us; they simply walked down the main road and asked where the people with the white baby that rides in the stroller stays.

I agreed to see the house and was soon meeting Beto in front of the loja where we had first met his friend. We walked around the corner to see the house. It is big and has had a fair bit of work done on it recently. There is a big yard and driveway and it has a well in the back. If we could negotiate it down to about 10% of the asking price we'd take it in a heartbeat.

On the walk back to the loja, Beto and I talked about how much Huambo has changed and how quickly. One year ago houses repaired like the one we had just seen rented for $300-400 per month instead of the $2500 such places are getting today. Now, many of the houses in town have come under repair with new facades and fresh plaster over the hundreds of bullet holes peppering the outer surfaces of each one. Even a year ago the work had yet to begin in earnest; the provincial roads hadn't yet been repaired and it was difficult to get building supplies here from the port in Luanda.

I asked Beto where he was born and where he spent the war. He told me he'd been born not far away in Bíe province and had come to Huambo as a child in 1968, that he'd stayed in Huambo through the war, and that he still lived in the same apartment in the building directly across from the loja. When we got back to his front door he pointed up the street to the left and said that the UNITA troops had a reinforced position about 15 meters away. He pointed right and said that the MPLA position was about 50 meters up the road.

I was astounded that he lived, literally, on the front line. He laughed as told me about how he used to wait for a lull in the fire to run across the street so that they could go to the river at the bottom of the hill to catch fish. He was proud as he told me that there had been 80 to 100 people stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder in his small house as people were looking for a “safe” place to bunker down and had learned it was one of the few, if not only, still occupied house in the neighborhood. And, he shook his head in amusement as told me that when the MPLA soldiers discovered a loja storeroom in a local house that the UNITA soldiers left them to eat and drink for a few hours before taking it over so that the MPLA soldiers would return the favor and they could all relax in peace for a while.

Beto told me that he had one or two neighbors that braved it out with him, but that he was "o homem mais antigo da rua" (the longest tenured resident on the street). It struck me as strange that this lively man, maybe 50 years old, had been here the longest. The Ovimbundu have been here since at least the 15th century (though they weren't the first) and the Portuguese officially founded a city here, one of their key economic engines, in 1912. The fact that Beto has, at this point, been here longer than anyone else is a striking testament to the impact of the independence and civil wars. That such a lush, rich, and desirable place was completely deserted is frightening and astounding. That Beto, however, has remained an engaging, funny, and joyful man despite all that he's seen gives me hope that Huambo, too, will, eventually, come through its tribulations.

And then there was violence

2008-11-27T04:19:00.000-05:00

Today on the way home from work, our dear friend had the car he was driving stolen at gunpoint. There were five people in the vehicle; one of the passengers was struck twice but it wasn’t serious and all escaped with their physical health. They lost cell phones, laptops, wallets, a passport, and a considerable chunk of time but all remained cool under pressure. Everything happened very quickly. They were passed by a vehicle which stopped immediately in front of them in such a way that their vehicle was blocked. Five men emerged from the car with weapons trained on the victims’ vehicle (one hand gun and the rest fully automatic military-style rifles). Everyone was ushered out of the car and ordered to hand over the contents of their pockets. The armed men piled into both vehicles and drove quickly away.

I know two things about violence and crime here in Angola. The first is that both are prevalent and that the average Angolan suffers a tremendous amount of each. Unfortunately they likely receive as much from the police as they do from criminals. Certainly the criminal activity of the police is more visible. I can remember two times in the last two weeks that I’ve actually seen bribes changing hands and have seen countless other instances where you can be sure they also did. The second thing I know, however, is that this country is far safer than your average expat or fat cat would have you believe. Companies and embassies regularly disallow their staff to walk on the streets of Luanda beyond the distance from their car to their door (frequently this distance is covered inside a compound instead of in a semi-public space anyway). The wealthy eye the average Joe on the street with haughty suspicion and/or complain about how everyone that works from them steals from them.

Having regular contact with foreigners and the well off I speak loudly and clearly about the safety of my neighborhood and the comfort I take in being well known by my neighbors. While most in my position wouldn’t set car (let alone foot) in my neighborhood I compare it to the suburbs and brag about my neighbors being the mid-level employees that actually work in this country. When people stutter with disbelief at where I walk and how much time I spend on foot not to mention how much I ride the condongueiros (mini-buses), I laugh with pride and talk about how much I’ve learned and add I’ve yet to experience personal violence and see little evidence of crime (excepting the police). I receive warm smiles and greeting from a majority of the people I pass on the street. I do not carry a target on my back and take confidence in the feeling that the average Angolan is far more likely to my aid in a moment of crisis than the average American.

Today, however, I can no longer say, "Knock on wood, we haven’t had any trouble!" Instead, when the inevitable conversation about crime comes up I have to admit that my friend who works for a non-governmental organization and has given everything he has to this place for three years had his car stolen from him and, much worse, his trust violated by an extremely small minority. I have to say that it was off the main road going through a neighborhood where he travels regularly and that it was planned and well executed by professional criminals. Worst, I have to say that I feel less secure here today than I did yesterday and that I worry that before I was being naive. This day was a terrible one for our friend and is a sad one for me.

The move that will not end

2008-11-26T08:36:00.001-05:00

It’s been sworn to me that Huambo is a mere seven hours from Luanda by truck on fancy new Chinese roads or a short, one hour plane trip on the national carrier. These figures, however, do little to explain the practical distance between here and there especially when you’d like to stay there for a few months or you’re trying to move the entire contents of your household there. Months after getting started with the process we’re still in Luanda.

We began looking for a house in Huambo in late August. Since, Rebecca has made two solo trips and we’ve made one as a family with the intention seeing, negotiating for, and signing a lease on an apartment. Each trip has gone more or less the same. A few days before we’re scheduled to arrive we begin making phone calls to tell people when we’ll be in town to see apartments. Everyone tells us that this will be simple and that there are lots of good, cheap houses in Huambo and that we should be able to see them and that we will find something quickly and without problem. We arrive in Huambo and find ourselves unable to get in touch with anyone. The lines are jammed, people’s phones are turned off or are disconnected, or the people we were supposed to speak with have just left town (usually for Luanda, from which we just arrived).

We spend a week living in a guesthouse and spend our days making dozens of phone calls and waiting for people to call us back. If we’re lucky we get some vague directions and the phone number of someone’s cousin’s father who promises us that so-and-so doesn’t work and is home and waiting there to show us the apartment. We spend an hour or more trying to find the place, standing in front of possible buildings, knocking on doors, and walking around asking all the same questions to dozens of neighbors, getting different answers from each, trying to find the right place and person. Eventually we arrive back at the first and most suspicious building to ask, one more time, if the people there are sure they don’t know so-and-so who lives on the second floor. “We were told that she would show us the apartment,” we say. “Oooooh,” comes the answer, “Yes, her. This is her apartment. She’s not home. She’s at work. She left hours ago and she’ll be home at the end of the day. No one is home.” Apparently now that we’ve spent an hour wandering around and being evaluated by everyone it’s safe to tell us that we had the right spot in the first place.

We call the person who sent us there to tell him the girl is at work. After we convince him that she’s not home and force him to admit that he hasn’t talked to her in days let alone told her that we were coming this morning, he agrees to come to show it himself and says he’ll be there in ten minutes. Twenty or thirty minutes later he arrives. He leads us past the women cooking in front of the door and the five or six children playing the front room as we try to see the apartment through the dim and dust. We try to discuss the possibility of a few repairs before we move in. He doesn’t know anything about all that; we’ll have to talk to so-and-so. “Great. We’d like to meet him. Where is he today?” “Well, he lives in Luanda.” Of course. Eventually Rebecca arranged for us a reduced rate that the guesthouse where we will live for the next couple of months. The move to Huambo can no longer be delayed simply because we have no place to live once we arrive there.

In the meantime we’ve been trying to find a home for the contents of our household. We left our other house at the end of September. It was the end of the first portion of our lease and as difficult as it was proving to find a house in Huambo it seemed it was more likely to happen if we simply went ahead and made the leap. In the end we did so because we seem unable to exhaust the patience, kindness, and generosity of Arthur and Jojanneke who have tolerated a house full of boxes as we’ve come and gone from Luanda on various trips. After learning that Luanda’s car rental offices don’t allow their cars to leave the city (even with a hired driver) and that renting space in a mini-bus on its way to Huambo is prohibitively expensive, we set about begging and borrowing space in any vehicle we heard was headed to Huambo. One set of boxes went on a truck of the company of the son of our former landlord (only after a complicated, favor-fueled twenty km trip to their shipping depot in Viana). Two other sets have gone with other kind organizations and the remainder piecemeal on various airplanes.

With lodging-of-a-sort arranged and having successfully moved most of our household goods we assumed that getting ourselves to Huambo one last time would prove relatively simple. We were wrong. We first tried to purchase plane tickets on Saturday. We arrived at 10:50 to find the office which is supposedly open until 12:00 closed. On Monday Rebecca found them open but was told that they couldn’t issue the tickets until they saw our child’s passport to verify his age. Though it seemed strange that we had been able to book travel through this agent four previous times sans passport, I took it and made the punishing trip to town with child in-tow – his nanny was out sick – and finally got our tickets.

When we arrived at the airport at the appointed time on Tuesday the check-in desk clerk simply laughed at us. The flight was cancelled. That flight is always cancelled. True, there’s an afternoon flight on the schedule, but when had it ever gone? She couldn’t remember. The agent never should have booked us on that flight. We got back into the car and headed over to the airline’s offices. After an hour of guarding my spot in “line” and a simple transaction we had new tickets for the flight early the next morning.

So, this morning we got up at 4:00 so that we could be at the airport for a 4:30 check-in and a 6:30 flight. We arrived at 4:35 to learn that this flight was also cancelled. Airline policy says that we should have called to confirm it was going before we left the house, but, of course, the offices aren’t open at such ungodly hours. Why would they be? We eschewed the growing line at the window of a small airline which serves Huambo and an opportunity offered by a man on the sidewalk who insisted he could get us on a different flight if we would just give him our money and documents, and we raced off to the airline down the street (which “conveniently” has its own terminal and departure area) to see if we could still make their daily flight. We got there in time, but it was cancelled as well.

We were back at the house by 6:00 but still unsure how and when we’ll be getting to Huambo. Having had a cancelled flight two days in a row we were pretty sure our good luck with the national carrier (a rare thing, but we’ve had no problems with them this year)has run out and are afraid of re-booking with them. Their competitors are all small and we imagine, at this point, quite full because of the other cancellations.

At 9:00 we (2 year old included) left for Maianga/ Prenda where we’ve heard tell there’s an office for one of the smaller carriers. At 11:00, after two miserable and unbelievably hot bus rides and thirty minutes of walking up and down Amilcar Cabral we decided to let the toddler, with mom in tow, retreat to the comfort of an air conditioned bakery as I continued on foot. By 11:30 I had successfully found the office and purchased their first available tickets to Huambo. We’re now scheduled to fly on Saturday.

With luck, we’ll actually board that flight and land safely at our destination. After four months of house shopping, thousands of kwanzas in phone credits, multiple trips to our destined city, a mixed caravan of vehicles, and a WEEK SPENT TRYING TO BOARD AN AIRPLANE, we’re finally headed to Huambo. On Saturday. We hope. Now we just hope that we can find an actual house to live in once we’re really there so we don’t have to live in the guesthouse. As always, fingers crossed.

Visiting and Visitors

2008-08-26T11:46:00.000-04:00

We’re a few of weeks removed from our last visa-renewal trip to Namibia, and I have to say that I’m happy to have it well behind us. It’s not that Namibia isn’t wonderful – in fact, it’s just the opposite: leaving a beautiful, clean, organized, relatively cheap Windhoek behind to return to filthy, chaotic Luanda wasn’t one of the easier things I’ve done recently. Coming at the six-month mark of our time here (half way, as we’ve recently decided), the trip was a sort of bittersweet celebration. We’re proud at how well we’ve done here in six months – how much we’ve accomplished both in terms of work and in terms of making a home – and how easy it’s seemed despite being difficult and exhausting. We’re excited that we get to return to the US in six months – to return to the comforts we enjoy there and to be closer to our family and friends. We’re sad, however, at how quickly time has passed and how little of it we have left here.

One might reasonably expect that we’ve learned a lot about Luanda in living here a half year, but after our visit to the country next door I can only say that I’m more confused than ever. How country like Namibia which is comprised largely of dessert and boasts a fraction of the wealth of (natural and fiscal) Angola be so much better off?

It’s not that Namibia doesn’t have its problems, to be sure. I feel a fairly intense vibe of racism and there are still some fairly serious problems with poverty. But, when you meet Namibians they ask for how long you’re on holiday instead of saying, “Welcome to hell” as I frequently hear around Luanda. Another difference between there and here is the presence of an educated middle class to manage and run the country. When the Portuguese left all of the knowledge about how to manage and maintain industry and infrastructure left with them. In the 30 years of civil war that followed the situation with local capacity deteriorated further. And while I’m not sure having a white, imported middle-management class, like Namibia’s, would be the best thing for Angola, having a sizable, decently educated group of people seems to make a world of difference in keeping a country functioning.

Despite its problems, though, Luanda is a far nicer place to be now than it was a mere two years ago. This fact has been highlighted by the recent arrival of a friend making her first visit to Angola. Even though she’s been studying and reading about Angola for years and is quite well traveled, she’s been awed by the conditions here in Luanda and how disgusting things are. Last week, as I was showing her around town, I spent a lot of time talking about how much has been improved recently and being surprisingly defensive about the conditions. For example, arriving here in the Bairro Popular this year I was amazed at how relatively little garbage there was in the streets. As compared to two years ago it absolutely gleams; one of our main roads is regularly swept and there’s nightly pick-up of trash that almost works.

However, based on the amount of trash remaining on the streets in our neighborhood among other things, it was pretty clear that our friend was having a hard time believing me that things are actually better today than they were a short time ago. So one day she asked a cobrador (the guy who gets people on and off the taxies and collects fares) if life here has improved. He said it’s more than improved; he said that life here today is good. His statement highlights the difficulty of describing the current situation here. The following two statements are both true: life here is far better than it was 2 year ago; life here is miserable, difficult, and unhealthy. The fact that it’s improved considerably shouldn’t be overlooked, but it also can’t be allowed to detract from the problems that still remain. More than that, given how poor the situation is we can’t afford to have satisfaction with the speed of progress.

As Angola prepares for its first elections since 1992 the ex-pat and international communities are rightfully concerned about how free and fair the elections will be especially given the situation here with government control of media. The effect, however, that the elections seem to be having on the government in terms of pressure to make improvements and pressure to demonstrate their fitness to govern are impressive. Free and fair or not, I’d say that the elections have had a positive effect on the country.

The propaganda on TV, Radio, and Billboards here brags about how little has been accomplished in the mere 6 years that have passed since the end of the war. One television ad, in particular, compares how much rebuilding has occurred here with how long it took in Europe and Japan to recover from two world wars. It’s hard to argue: a lot has changed and a lot is changing – quickly. Moving forward, though, we must hope that the government continues to compare the situation here with the situation abroad and that Angolan’s visit other places as people from other places visit here so that we continue to be reminded that no matter how far Angola has come or how fast, there remains a long way to go.

I’ll pay my electricity bill as soon as the power comes back on

2008-07-16T10:36:00.000-04:00

I will. I really will. I promise. This isn’t even a threat. In fact, I’d be happy to pay it today. I just came back from the local EDEL office where such things happen, however, and it isn’t possible because even though we have power here at the house, they don’t. Yes. One more time: I cannot pay my electricity bill because the power company doesn’t have power at their office.

The above paragraph is, of course, prerequisite. I write it in obligation to the unspoken contract between me and this continent what with it being “undeveloped” and I being a “westerner” with a blog. Just between you and me, however, I wasn’t too surprised. It makes enough sense to me that the potential irony is lost. On the way home, just to check, I told my neighbor what had just happened. He waited to make sure I didn’t have something else to add, something that would help explain why I stopped him, and to make sure I wasn’t simply taking an extended pause to try to think of a word in Portuguese, eventually shrugging his shoulders saying, “Yeah. Huh. Maybe tomorrow. Or Friday. Yeah, after the 15th maybe.” It didn’t even occur to him that what I was telling him could be the basis of a humorous anecdote. I’ve come to internalize what he did long ago: there’s no imperative connection between the office where I pay my bill and “the power company,” let alone between “the power company” and the generation and delivery of power.

I had doubts about whether I would be able to pay my bill in the first place. After all, it’s been more than two months since anyone was here to read the meter. I was really going to the office so that at least if anyone from EDEL came by to disconnect the power I could be telling the truth as I handed him his whiskey (a hopefully passable bribe) and told him I was just at the office.

I had been home from my attempt for about an hour when two EDEL men came by the house to read the meter. They were nice: a sweet older man with slurred way of speaking and a polite if somewhat serious younger man. Despite our nervousness, they were uninterested in the status of our account. They wrote down some numbers from the meter and from our paperwork, quickly drank a glass of cold water, and moved on to the neighbor’s house.

I’m going to go try to pay my EDEL bill again on Friday. Maybe the power will be on and maybe the data from today’s collection will be in the system. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll have to return next week. Maybe I’ll still have to bribe a guy to keep him from shutting off our lights. Maybe the power will go out anyway, like it was most of last week, and this will all seem really, really silly. Maybe when I’m at the office next I’ll suggest that they might want to look into getting a generator because the power from EDEL is, you know, really unreliable. And, maybe, after that, the water will come on for the first time this week.

Being Angolan, and Not

2008-05-21T06:23:00.004-04:00

While I wish my most recent trial were ending, I cannot report such good news. I write to you from the comforts of my good friend's home in Maianga where there is air conditioning and, most importantly, electricity. The power in our part of the bairro went out early Friday morning and as of this moment (Tuesday afternoon) has yet to return. Our generator has not worked since day one in the new place and our water only runs if the pump has energy to retrieve it from the tank. Fortunately, we've had good luck with the spigot out front (which we usually use to top off the water tank) and, so, with a small amount of physical labor life at home remains almost comfortable.

It's been a somewhat convenient time for this to happen, as lately I've been contemplating my Angolan-ness. Having no power and having to carry all my water (though not nearly as far as most of my neighbors) has created a nice space in which to consider how well I'm adapting to life here. There are a few Angolan-isms with which I was born and a few that I've acquired in my time here. All-in-all, I'm assimilating rather well but it remains clear that I am not and will never be Angolan. Four months into my stay here seems as good a time as any to give you the current rundown.

I make noise CONSTANTLY, or so I'm told… This may or may not be apparent to you depending on the context in which we've spent time together, but it would appear that if I'm not playing a radio or music just loudly enough to annoy my spouse I am singing, talking, clicking (yes, clicking), whistling, or, worst of all, working. To be fair, making strange noises all day is kind of my job, but I suppose that this doesn't quite justify all of the other racquet. I would kind of like to deny the charge, but have been forced into a situation of self-awareness and I cannot. The good news is that I fit in perfectly here. In fact, if anything, I've got some headroom. Since arriving I've even made some somewhat surprising complaints about life here being too loud. For example, the ladies that we employ listen to the radio all day at volumes just loud enough really wear on you throughout the day; even I'm relieved when they go home and we can turn the damn thing off.

I am a master of the overly long and complicated precursor statement and I repeat the same point ad infinitum as though the slight variation in my examples carries profound meaning… No statement here begins without a precursor. The simplest variation is “olha” (look) as a clause at the beginning of nearly sentence (or, more commonly, “olha, olha, olha…”). Other favorites are, “É como assim…” (It is like this) and “É o seguinte…” (It is the following…) which begin most declarative statements but add no meaning whatsoever. I would be tempted to claim that my lead-ins are important and that they pave the way for the coming information in an important way, but to make such claims would be a folly.

I've picked up the habit of counting money out of a drawer… In every loja here in Luanda (I'd guess Angola, but I can't say for sure) the money behind the counter is kept in a drawer. Not a drawer, however, like you'll find in a cash register, but one rather like my sock drawer. Money received is tossed in casually and change is made by digging through a heap of crumpled bills. The result is best described as dinheiro soup. Larger or well organized shops have two drawers, one for small bills and one for large, with a result that is much the same. In what I must confess was a moment of pride, I recently found myself digging through (read: making a mess of) the top drawer of my desk, where I had put all of my money at the end of the day, for a 200 kwanza note.

I recently began improvising objects out of plastic... É como assim, I've needed a laptop stand for quite some time to facilitate the use of my external keyboard and mouse, and to help cool down an already hot-running laptop in the miserable heat. I didn't bring one because I didn't have room and expected I'd be able to make one out of something. I have been using a stack of books, which took up too much space and caused problems each time I needed to use one of the volumes. After months of contemplation in a world filled with plastic (I mean FILLED; seriously, this is a whole other post), the vision for my perfect laptop stand hit me like a bolt of lightning. With one container and a razorblade I had the below in under 5 mintues. I feel like I'm living the end of the first matrix movie when the hero is able to see that the world is really made of code and he can alter it as he sees fit. I have arrived.

But for all that I may have or may be gaining in common with your average Angolan, the degree to which I am not and will never be one is ever-present. Last week, for example, a woman we know that works as an empregada got beaten by her ex-husband for going to his home to ask for money to help support their three children. She was beaten over the weekend and subsequently missed work (and pay) on Monday as she was seeking care for her mangled teeth and dealing with unresponsive police about the incident. On Tuesday when she went to work, she learned that she was losing one of her two cleaning jobs (the one with more hours, of course) because the husband in that house was sick of paying for a cleaner when “all his wife does” is study full time in university. In her remaining job she works about 15 hours per week and gets paid $120 per month. That's less than $2 per hour but it's also a slightly generous wage by local standards. How she supports her three kids, I have no idea. If she spends her entire salary on food she's got around $4 per day to make it work out. That's about 6 eggs (or 2 small pieces of meat), 2 cups of starch, an onion, and a tomato per day. Give or take. I wish I could tell you her life was unusual or particularly unfortunate, but I can't. It could be going a whole lot worse for her – it is for others. And, while there is plenty of abuse and poverty in the US, but it doesn't compare to the quantity and depth of it here.

And so, really, as amusing as it maybe now and then to marvel at my own budding Angolan-isms, I'm working hard to keep things in perspective. Unfortunately daily life here provides plenty of reminders. I was born in a rich country. I was born with access to all of the privileges afforded white men. I have experienced financial insecurity and have wanted for food because of it, but I do not know poverty or hunger. I am well educated. I have opportunity. I also have an obligation to make a positive contribution in this world. I have yet to figure out how best to do so, but I will learn. Being in Angola will help me. And, maybe, as I work to figure it out, I can pick up that beautiful Angolan ability to laugh and sing and dance, to find a way be kind, to be generous, to be joyful, and to find beauty despite the crushing misery all around.

2008-04-09T11:27:00.007-04:00

I recently had the pleasure of attending a futebol match between our “local” team, Kabuscorp, and 1º de Agosto, one of the dominant forces in Angola’s premiere league. While the quality of the futebol was questionable (even to the untrained eye) the afternoon was incredibly entertaining.

First, a little background: We live in the Bairro Popular which is in Kilamba Kiaxi (which is in Luanda) – our neighborhood area appears in the lower left hand corner of this map (for reference, Ingombota contains the bulk of the central city). The bairro next to ours, just off the map to the lower left, is Palanca. Palanca is known as a war destination for Angolans from the northern province of Zaire and a large immigrant community from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Portions of the DRC and Zaire province were formerly part of the Kindgom of Kongo which had its capital in Mbanza Kongo (the current-day capital of Zaire province) and the size of the Kongo community in Palanca is large enough that Palanca is sometimes jokingly referred to as "República Democrática do Palanca." Futebol fans in Palanca are quickly becoming known for their rabid support for the team of their local “Kabuscorp Sport Clube Palanca” which was elevated to the top tier of professional teams this year.

As a recently promoted team, Kabuscorp is more or less expected to occupy the bottom of the rankings. This doesn’t appear to put much of a damper, however, on the enthusiasm displayed by their supporters. Three weeks ago underdog Kabuscorp triumphed on the road against Benfica do Lubango, a victory which has been credited, at least locally, to the turn out and volume of their fan base. At the match I attended, cheering for Kabuscorp began a full two hours before play and continued unabated until the 86th minute when 1º de Agosto scored the game’s only, winning goal.

Highlights from the shenanigans included crowd leaders in full body paint, a sizable brass band with incredible volume and endurance, a fire breather or two (of which the police did not approve), taunts at spectators in the building behind us including warnings that their building was going to fall (no small joke in Luanda these days), and special new cheer citing the presence of Kabuscorp’s white fans as evidence of its impending victory. The cheers and songs throughout were in Lingala but a friend of Arthur and Jojanneke from work was able to translate for us. He was initially nervous about doing so as the cheers pretty vicious in their treatment of the other team and their fans, but once Arthur relayed the content of some common Dutch futebol songs our informant was comfortable sharing the gist of their taunts with us.

While normally I’d be dubious of the ability for cheering to have a large impact on the game, it seemed best not to discount the importance of the Kabuscorp support crew. I’ve never seen a team interact with a crowd as much as this one. One of the assistant coaches even came over to the stands before the game to confer with the crowd ring-leaders. Some of the loudest cheering of the game came when the head coach made his tour of the field and tipped his hat to the crowd. While he was on the field everyone in the stands made sure we realized who he was and told how him important he was – he was described to me as "chefe" (a common word here translating more-or-less to boss or chief) as well as king and hero in English. Indeed, despite terrible play by the goalie and despite 1º de Agosto being bigger, stronger, faster, and more talented at every position Kabuscorp managed to keep it tied 0-0 until the very end of the match.

Even if our attendance at the match didn't culminate in Kabuscorp victory, the fallout from our presence continues to be felt -- as recently as this weekend I was stopped in the street and asked about my support for Kabuscorp. I've also heard rumors that were clips of us on the television during the local sports coverage. The only problem with all of this is that Kabuscorp isn’t considered by everyone to be a "real" Angolan team, as many of the players have (apparently) naturalized from the DRC. There’s also the small problem that I now live on the other side of the bairro from Palanca and all of my new neighbors are 1º de Agosto supporters. I do, however, appreciate that Kabuscorp is a huge underdog and cheering in Lingala is a heck of a lot of fun -- even if I don't know what I'm yelling. I’ll have to hear out my neighbors on the case for 1º de Agosto and I’ll report back with my fan status in a few weeks.

Kabuscorp v. 1º de Agusto

p.s. Jojanneke took some excellent pictures – keep an eye on her blog for more…

Cravings, Sponges

2008-03-17T11:56:00.002-04:00

Months, if not years, before we left the US were dedicated to carefully compiling and prioritizing lists of the things we need and want to use on a daily basis. The goal of such lists was the ability, when doing our final packing, to make well-considered decisions about what to bring with us and what to leave behind. It felt a somewhat hopeless activity but one at which we felt obliged to make an honest go. The things we brought with us to Luanda are not things that we cannot get here, but rather things that are too expensive (absolutely in the case of, say, electronics or relatively in the case of, say, maple syrup) or of inferior quality to the goods we can buy at home. The calculus was somewhat more difficult than anticipated, because of the wide variety of goods we can buy here in the city. It’s possible to buy nearly anything you could want so it’s not simply a matter of deciding which thing you need or want more. Instead, you need to decide which thing is more convenient to pack given the guessed relative cost or quality of goods here. For example, say there’s a small spot left in your suitcase large enough to bring either one extra notebook or one extra package of binders. You’ve gotten a pass here in the weight category because they’re more or less similar. You still have to decide whether you think paper or binders will be: a) more easily of available – say there’s paper in the local market but you have to go to the city to buy binders, b) cheaper – both in the US and in Angola, and c) nicer – in the long run will you be happier putting nice paper into really crappy binders or really crappy paper into nice binders? I brought binders, because I knew I’d run out of paper anyway.

I have yet to discover any major oversights on our part and there are no sincere laments so far. I wish, perhaps, that we had packed more sunscreen. Given my complexion the formulation I require (read: 8,000+ SPF) is in short supply here; if it exists at all, the rarity makes it inordinately expensive. There are a few goods that we would not have packed but have been surprised not to find, namely baking soda (baking power isn’t a problem) and brown sugar (there’s also an absence of molasses, rendering useless my usual fix). There is more of something things than anticipated: water and power are far more reliable now than on past trips – a very pleasant surprise – and cell-based internet modems are here and relatively affordable so there’s better web access than anticipated. One even looks forward to the qualitative differences expected on some fronts: the soda here is made with sugar and the catsup is largely imported from Europe so tastes more like tomatoes than corn syrup.

The most interesting part of the experience, though, is the discovery of the small things that I’ve taken for granted or, more likely, that I didn’t anticipate could be substantially different. I knew, for example, that the paper I could buy here at reasonable prices is thin and ugly and generally unpleasant to write on. I did not, however, anticipate how seriously the quality of dish sponges could impact my daily experience. The picture at the top of this post is of two dish sponges (front and back). The one on the left is a “nice” one purchased locally and has had approximately two uses; the one on the left was shipped to us from the US (taking up precious, precious space in our measly mail allotment) and has had approximately two weeks of use. Now, I have to confess that I don’t do terribly many dishes here. An empragada comes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to clean, wash clothes, and do dishes, and the nanny we’ve hired for David does them during his nap on Tuesdays and Thursdays leaving only the weekends. My day, however, is monumentally better if the three cups, two pans, one fork, and 4 sippy cups that I do wash each day can be cleaned with a good, stolid, 3M lovin’, heavy duty kitchen sponge.

Kitchen sponges – who knew? Other items on the list of things to import even though they’re relatively inexpensive and plentiful here: toothbrushes, toilet paper, q-tips, and all manner of kitchen utensils. I’ll keep a running list and post an update later with other top-missed items. In the meantime, the next time you’re in the kitchen and you open one of those fresh, new, beautiful American kitchen sponges, please give a special whiff to the sickly-sweet, processed petroleum odor wafting out of the over-wrought packaging for me.

Housing Update

2008-03-02T15:32:00.003-05:00

We haven’t signed the contract quite yet and we won’t be able to move in until the end of March, but it would appear that (after a full month of looking) we’ve finally secured a new place to live. We’re having a great time living with Arthur and Jojanneke, but we’re excited to have our own place for the first time since November. The new place is absolutely gorgeous and far nicer than we expected to have. You enter though a very nice gate into a covered car port with room for two cars. Off of the small front porch there’s a living room that leads to a hallway with two bedrooms on it, ending in a dining room attached to the kitchen. Finally, there’s a small, enclosed outdoor space off the back where the laundry and such happens. The inside has been very well cared for and is very nice. The place has, if you can believe it, a generator, a reserve water tank and pump, and (wait for it…) air conditioners! These things can’t, of course, keep out all of the daily difficulties here, but should help make some things much, much easier. The water tank and pump are a huge labor savers and the generator is really nice because I expect to work from home quite a bit. The car port is handy (even though we don’t expect to get a car) because will make a nice, large play space for David.

Because there were very few apartments available in the city center in our price range we ended up in the Bairro Popular, after all (where we are staying now and where we stayed in January 2006). The upside of the location is that daily life here is much slower paced and the people are more open than in the city -- we’ll have a much better chance to get to know our neighbors and become a part of our little surrounding community. The difference between the Bairro Popular and the other neighborhood we were looking at, Vila Alice, is much akin to the difference between the suburbs and the city in the US. The benefit to living in Vila Alice would have been the in-town location for meetings. Fortunately, however, the house is on the city-side edge of the bairro making transit to and from the city easier than our current location. We’ll be a 5 minute walk from a major road and from there can be in the city with one minibus ride. We’re also glad that we’re still in the same neighborhood as Arthur and Jojanneke, so that hopefully we can continue to see them regularly.

Arriving and Food Costs

2008-02-07T17:40:00.000-05:00

Life in Luanda begins! We’ve been here for almost a week now and we’ve been productive despite the jetlag, climate change, and the usual developing country entanglements. Mobile phones are working (kind of), laundry services have been secured (temporarily), real estate agents have been contacted (but not heard back from), and the lay-of-the-land has been re-taken here in Barrio Popular (until the rains re-organize the landscape). Daily life is nice as we’ve landed in the welcoming house of generous friends with neighbors we know. The market is near, the power has been off only once with a generator filling-in after dark, and the water mostly lasts until late in the day and sometimes through the evening.

The largest orders of business have been getting the necessities organized and organizing for when we’ll have our own apartment and need our own necessities. Remembering and practicing day-to-day living habits in a somewhat different environment has gone smoothly. We’ve learned what market items are reliably available and have been able to plan somewhat better each day to reduce the number of trips to and the time spent at the market (though we still go around the corner to get something at nearly every meal). Part of the adjustment has been trying to understand what is and isn’t affordable and what will and won’t work in the budget for the year.

One US dollar is currently buying 74 kwanzas. It was 82 in January 2006 and 81 in January 2007 (down from a high of 87). Inflation has been about 15% during the last year to combine with the weak dollar for a serious impact on our purchasing power. A significant portion of our brain power in the last week has been dedicated to currency conversion. Interestingly it seems that by the time we’re done buying kwanzas with dollars and then converting kwanza prices back to dollars to know how much we’ve just spent on an item, we can generally just take the US shelf price plus 15%. It feels silly to chafe at somewhat high US prices for goods, as they should, then, be near to within our usual budget. The usual annual budget, however, doesn’t include $8500 in plane tickets, a couple grand in vaccines, medications, and visas, Portuguese tutors, and a doubling of the rent. All this for a lifestyle that we greatly enjoy but one quite below what most ex-pats would consider tolerable.

To give some idea about what costs are like here in Luanda and to make a record for myself, here’s the break down for an average, un-indulgent day of food for 2 adults and one baby – not including staples like cooking oil (600 Kwz, $8.10/500ml) and spices (200 Kwz, $2.75/jar). All meals are cooked at home with a fair bit more effort and safety consideration than the usual day in a US kitchen. Note of caution: despite 10+ years of delightful veganism, I play the food game very differently here.

Breakfast
6 eggs – 120 Kwz, $1.62
2 sm glasses juice – 120 Kwz, $1.62
2 bread – 50 Kwz, $0.68
Cheese spread portion – 100 Kwz, $1.35
Total: $5.25

Lunch
6 sm. slices of Ham – 100 Kwz, $1.35
6 sm. slices of Cheese – 100 Kwz, $1.35
2 bread - 50 Kwz, $0.68
Cheese spread portion – 100 Kwz, $1.35
Avacado – 50 Kwz, $0.68
Pineapple – 250 Kwz, $3.37
1/4 Can Green Beans – 25 Kwz, $0.34
1/4 Can Red Beans – 25 Kwz, $0.34
Total: $8.78

Dinner
2 cans beans – 200 Kwz, $2.70
Tomatoes – 50 Kwz, $0.68
Carrots - 50 Kwz, $0.68
Onions - 50 Kwz, $0.68
Green Beans - 100 Kwz, $1.35
Green Pepper - 50 Kwz, $0.68
Rice – 45 Kwz, $0.61
Bananas – 50 Kwz, $0.68
Total: $8.06

Snacks
Crackers – 120 Kwz, $1.62
1 can of soda – 60 Kwz, $0.81
Bananas - 50 Kwz, $0.68
Cheese spread portion – 100 Kwz, $1.35
Bottled Water – 120 Kwz, $1.62
Total: $6.08
Grand Total: $28.17 per day, $856 per month, $10,282.05 per year

Wow. Okay. Well. I’m a little shocked myself. I guess I won’t be buying that coffee, a weekly bar of chocolate, or that 30 Kwz peanut candy in the street after all. How does the average person here survive, then, on less than $2/day? We’re not really sure. I mean, we’re not actually sure that they do survive. We are sure that they starve. We clearly don't have $10K in the food budget, just for the record. I'll have to do some more thinking and some more math and some more buying and get back to you on all of this. Maybe I can find a Sam's Club and get some of this stuff in bulk or something. Maybe.

Wiimote Experiments

2007-12-13T14:15:00.000-05:00

In the interest of time and money I’m giving the Wiimote a spin as I think about hardware for gourdo v.3. The Wiimote has 11 buttons and a 3D accelerometer transmitted wirelessly over Bluetooth for $40 US. They’re available for a similar price nearly everywhere – I got mine at Target in Seekonk, MA. SparkFun.com sells the accelerometer in the Wii (the Memsic ADXL330) for $34.95 and a variety of Bluetooth transmitters starting at around $50 US. They also sell a package they call the WiTilt with accelerometer data over Bluetooth for $109.95. In addition to cost, I’m exploring the Wiimote in hopes of an increase in data stability over gourdo v.2. My current solution and my preferred homemade Bluetooth solutions depend on Max’s serial object – something I’ve never had great luck with. In gourdo v.2 I learned that serial communication on the PC is de-prioritized in such a way that I receive data drops under heavy processor usage (in Mac tests the data was more reliable but audio was severely sacrificed). In the past I’d considered flaws with serial object implementations a product of my own limitations, but recent conversations with Emmanuel Fléty convinced me otherwise. Emmanuel abandoned serial in Max years ago (preferring instead the imperfections of MIDI), so I feel justified in so doing. With the Wiimote, I can use third-party Max externals which see the data as a human interface device (HID).

There is currently an excess of Wiimote "hacking" information of the web. Wikipedia.com’s page on the Wiimote is a good overview of the device and there is an excellent technical specification page at Wiili.org. SparkFun.com did an excellent Wiimote deconstruction with pictures and commentary. Hackawii.com has a page dedicated to Wiimote hacks showing some popular applications of the device.

The WIili.org driver page is the best place to start for getting the Wiimote connected a computer. I’m using an Acer 8204WLMi which happens to contain a Wiimote-compatable Broadcom 2045 Bluetooth device. I’m able to connect to the Wiimote using XP’s system software and successfully view the Wiimote data in Max/MSP using the tk.wii object by Takeru Kobayashi (linked from the forums at Cycling ’74). On Mac the preferred solution appears to be the aka.wiiremote object by Masayuki Akamatsu. I’ve not yet tested the object for Mac, but in a peek at the help patch it appears that the data formatting is different such that the objects cannot be used interchangeably. To maintain cross-platform compatibility I’ll likely make the data collection patch an outside entity which sends incoming data into the primary patch. The correct data collector can then be launched on the side depending on the current platform.

Connection to the Wiimote was simple and data was immediately available in Max so I have begun to test the Wiimote’s sample resolution and rate. While the Bluetooth supports audio transmission, the Wiimote inherits any limitations inherent to the HID protocol. An article on ddj.com reports that HID implemented “mice are polled for data every 8 ms, and respond with 32 bits of data” and that “a keyboard transmits 64 bits of data over the same interval.” Because greater sensitivity is unlikely necessary for such applications these restrictions help keep power usage down, an essential feature in wireless applications. While such information about the capacity of the protocols is interesting, real-world (read: Max) performance may vary. As such, I have spent relatively little time investigating these two technologies opting instead for max-based testing with my existing gourd patches.

Data from with tk.wii object is 8-bit data reported every 5.02 milliseconds on average (with a 4.90 median and 5.86 in one test). The data is represented as a 0.0-1.0 value the tilt of the controller occupying 21% of that range – tilt values for the X-and Y-axis range from 0.396 to 0.608 with sharp accelerations using the entire range. Substituting Wiimote data in my hit-detection patch where taps of the device are reported as triggers proved successful. The data rate doesn’t appear to be high enough, however, to support directional tapping detection reliably enough. With tapping, the difference between subsequent sensor values is sufficiently large to distinguish those actions from tilting. I use a rolling buffer to hold the last 20 sensor values reported and, when a hit is detected, search for the maximum and minimum values in that set. If the maximum value is larger than the absolute value of the minimum, the hit came from the right, if not, it came from the left. Because the sample rate is too low, the peak value is not always captured. When this occurs the “recoil” value is usually recorded and is the highest value in the set, causing the incorrect direction to be reported. The data rate is more than sufficient for tilting applications.

The next step is to try the Tilt, Shift patch with the Wiimote and see if the data resolution over the tilt region is sufficient for performance with the granulator. While gourdo v.2 featured 10-bit data resolution, I believe that 8-bit data over the tilt range would be sufficient. The data from the Wiimote, however, represents the tilt range with only 56 values (the full 256 are for the entire sensor range). My next testing step will be to connect the Wiimote to the Tilt, Shift granulator to see if I’m satisfied with its performance. This will be my first opportunity to physically test the latency of the tilt and see if it’s low enough.

Short, Preliminary Dissertation Project Description

2007-12-08T21:32:00.001-05:00

A Music of Vocal Technologies and Angolan Technologies of Voice in Literature

I will spend one year in Angola, beginning December 2007, to conduct the creative research for the dissertation project required for the doctoral degree in Computer Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University. The final form of this project will be the live performance of a newly-designed electronic instrument which interfaces with a computer to play, process, manipulate, generate, and synthesize audio and video. The source material for this work will be created primarily in Angola and will feature texts by Angolan writers and the voices of Angolan writers reading their work.

This work examines themes of voice, writing, and technology in the context of cultural change. Considering oral cultural practices as technologies, the project will use voice and text to explore how Angolan writers draw from a rich set of oral traditions. The focus will be on the possibilities provided by an encounter between contemporary digital technologies and an Angolan literature successful at adapting narrative technologies to make important contributions to Lusophone and African literatures. Angola is an ideal place to explore these themes of technology, change, and adaptation: it has the fastest growing economy on the African continent, is modernizing at an historically unparalleled rate, and sustains a vibrant literary community. Of particular interest are the successes of Angolan authors in maintaining a uniquely Angolan voice through difficult periods of colonialism and civil war. I seek to trace this tradition through to the current generation of Angolan authors who maintain this voice and forge new ones in the present context of development and social change.

The portions of the project to be completed in Angola will be carried out in three stages. Stage one is focused on Portuguese study with particular attention to the language as is unique to Angola, including local vocabulary, accents, and speech rhythms. This stage includes initial contact with the literary community in Luanda facilitated by introductions from renowned writer Manuel Rui and through sponsorship by the União dos Escritores Angolanos (UEA, The Angolan Writers’ Union).

In stage two I will work with a variety of Angolan authors, their texts, and audio and video recordings of them reading their work to create short musical sketches. This composition allows writers exposure to the computer systems I have designed and allows them to evaluate their interest in further collaboration. The sketch production also allows me to tailor the system to the developing needs of the project and to change the system in response to input from the writers. These sketches will be performed for audiences in Angola as they are completed.

Stage three is dedicated to making audio and video recordings of authors reading the primary text or texts of the final project and to designing the overall compositional form of the work. Working with captured footage and with texts written or selected for the project by the collaborating authors, I will begin initial editing of the media and design of the performance system with on-going feedback from the collaborators.

The work will be finished after my return to the United States, incorporating final feedback from my academic advisors, and will receive an initial performance at Brown University. Recordings of the performance will be made available for permanent storage at the UEA, at the National Library and the National Archives in Luanda, and elsewhere as directed by the Director of the UEA and the Ministry of Culture. Every effort will be made for a performance of the final work in Angola at a subsequent date and for primary collaborators to receive invitation to and sponsorship for travel to the premiere.

The project is funded by a Dissertation Fellowship from Brown University and overseen by my dissertation committee chairman and by the Department of Music at Brown University.

So long PVD...

2007-12-08T21:29:00.000-05:00

Many, many, many moons and nearly as many changes of plan later, the show has moved on from PVD and hit the road for an extended US tour before heading abroad. For work-related reasons our international departure was slightly delayed, and because it does little or no good to arrive in Luanda during the extended holiday period (not to mention the cost of holiday flights), we decided to remain in the US until the end of January. We’re currently in Atlanta, visiting (read: taking advantage of) friends and we hope to make a swing out west before we depart. Things are still up in the air, however, and no plane tickets for other US destinations exist.

Things that have been accomplished include packing our apartment and moving it to storage in Maine, delivering the lovely if irascible Ms. Egypt to her foster cat parents in DC, and passing my preliminary examinations to become a doctoral candidate and ABD. Technology experiments and dissertation proposal writing are officially underway with positive results in the early stages. I’ll be posting soon with results from max/msp experiments and hardware testing. I’m also going to post the short dissertation description I’ve been circulating and will be blogging bits and pieces as they come.

US Operations Expand, Housing Futures Fall

2007-10-12T22:55:00.000-04:00

As our leave date looms ever nearer, we've been dealing more and more with some of the messy details of moving out of this house and into a new one in a land far, far away. Last week the big mission was storage facilities and, with logistical support from the Rocky Mountain office, we're going to be mooching off of family. The operation is now growing quickly as our international launch date approaches. In addition to the home office in Little Rhody, there are now branch offices in Colorado, South Dakota, Virginia (pet operations management), and Georgia (communications hub) with a warehouse in Maine. We really should talk to management -- everyone here deserves bigger salaries and better titles.

This week the ugly issue of housing is front and center. Things kicked-off ominously with a lovely little piece in the Financial Times entitled Rents rocket in Angola's oil boom and it's been more of the same ever since. It's hard not to be a little dejected when you know that if you're lucky and someone's feeling generous you can find a place for $5500 per month. It's reasonable to blanch after you quickly calculate the amount of cash you'll need in hand to secure said lucky find because the going trend is to pay the first year up front. (That's $66k for those of you counting along at home.)

Why are things so expensive? Well, you'll see different numbers different places, but the city of Luanda was basically built to house about 400,000 under the rule of the Portuguese "settlers". Today, Luanda is home to well over 4,000,000 with little or no new construction through 2002 outside of refugee shanty towns. Add to this a new, huge influx of foreigners because of oil and other financial interests (Angola has the fastest growing economy on the continent as measured by GDP) and you've got a royal mess. (I should mention that housing's not the only expensive thing in Luanda, but that's a post for another time.)

The good news, however, is that we've been speaking all week with the powers that be and they tell us that they're putting pressure on those that can put pressure on those that might be able to talk to the people that might be able to give us more money for our housing allotment. The actual relief comes, though, when you've been a couple times so you're sure you've got somewhere you can stay while you find a place. And, better, when you talk to the friend you've got in Bairro Popular who's been on the ground for a long while now and who knows tons of people (local and ex-pat) to enlist to help you (including Os Cheirosos!).

We're nervous and we've got a lot of other things to worry about, too, but we're confident that things will work out. The most frustrating part is simply that it's impossible to get things set up before we arrive. The friends we can lean on are wonderful and will take care of us, but that doesn't really help make a couple of control freaks feel much better.

Ah, well, I'm sure we'll get a personal email next week from an ambassador begging us to house-sit some swank digs on the Marginal for friends for the next year or so. It could happen... right?

Angolan Films and Filmed in Angola

2007-09-12T14:28:00.000-04:00

We recently embarked on a project to watch all of the Angolan or Angola-related films we could get our hands on. The project is generally motivated by simple interest but Ms. R's also been able to justify it somewhat in terms of research as it's generally useful to her work to have a handle on some of the ways that Angola and the civil war have been portrayed in media. We were able to find films in the Film, Media and Video Resources for African Studies Database at Emory University and by doing a variety of searches for "Angola" in country, description, location, etc at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) website. We were able to find copies of the films at our local, independent video rental store, through Netflix, and through interlibrary loan. Here's what we've watched so far:

Angolan Films:

O Herói (The Hero) (2004) directed by Zézé Gamboa won the Sundance Grand Jury prize for World Cinema. It follows parallel stories of a young boy and a soldier with an amputated leg trying to put their lives together in Luanda after the end of the conflict. It deftly packs in a tremendous number of the challenges facing Angolans (then and now) without interrupting the flow of the narrative. I especially admired Gomboa's ability to avoid tipping into the overly-dramatic or the unrealistically optimistic, though the resolution somewhat avoids the challenges the characters will facing going forward.

Na Cidade Vazia (Hollow City) (2004) directed by Maria João Ganga centers on the experience of a young orphan boy, N'Dala, that has run away from the mission that transported him to Luanda from the provinces for care. In stumbling through the strange new city he befriends a variety of people including another boy, a fisherman, and a criminal. By the time the end of the film arrives and the nun that's been searching for him is about to find him, N'Dala has found himself in more trouble than he realizes, despite his best efforts. This is a sad and tense film without a happy resolution but, like O Herói, has some wonderful views of the city and gives a picture of one life there.

Bad Action Flicks Set in Angola:

First, a note: these films are terrible. I mean terrible. But, there is something you can do to make them more entertaining: Follow the bad guy. These movies come at an incredibly difficult time for Hollywood; the cold war has more or less ended and the terror wars haven't yet begun. So, who, prey tell, is going to serve as the go-to bad dudes in all those B-movies? "Well, hell," Hollywood thinks to itself, "There's still a war in Angola! The Russians and Cubans are still on fighting on the opposite side from us! Let's go there!" And, well, it almost worked except for the fact that Americans had little or no idea about the Angolan civil war, and that the who's fighting whom was pretty complicated. It's hard to be a "good guy" if you're fighting with the diamond-funded rebels. So, the "good guys" and the "bad guys" in these movies are different both between films and, in most cases, within films. It's hard to keep track of, but that's OK; you'll need something to do during the show to keep yourself from gouging your eyes out.

Who knew that when, as kids, a friend and I decided that Red Scorpion (1989) staring the awe(or cringe)-inspiring Dolph Lundgren was easily be the best movie ever, that we had unwittingly committed ourselves to spending weekend after weekend after weekend watching a film set in Angola? Not us! We were just in it for Dolph's bad-assed-ness and the explosions! Well, well years later I've decided to head to Angola and discovered that Dolph is the actor to hire if you're setting a film there. Let's not mince words: this film is terrible. A specially trained Russian super-weapon (Dolph) is sent on an assassination mission and fails after which he is betrayed by his government. He escapes into the bush where he nearly dies. He's saved by a local tribe and initiated as a warrior. The tribe is subsequently massacred by the Russians. This terrible personal tragedy allows Dolph to see the beauty of the land, and so he joins the struggle of the local people (lead by the man he failed to assassinate at the beginning of the film, no less) against the intruding government(s). The Russians then attack a village and succeed in killing the local leader, sending Dolph into a fit of rage. Massive explosions ensue, Dolph kills more or less everyone. What's not to love? Special props, by the way, to the hilarious (read: terrible) portrayal of the American journalist here by M. Emmet Walsh.

If after seeing Red Scorpion and remembering back to Rocky IV you think that Dolph is one-dimensional, Russian-playing muscle-head, perhaps his performance in Sweepers (1998) will convince you of his tremendous versatility. Playing an American and the ultimate mine sweeping expert, Dolph goes on a bender after losing his son to a minefield accident. American Michelle arrives on the scene in search of a classified mine design that's gone missing. In the course of sobering up Dolph to elicit his help in finding the mine and running from various bad guys, they uncover a mine manufacturing and smuggling operation and fall in love. They bring down the illegal operation the only way Dolph knows how: blowing up everything in sight. The best part of this film is that the trailer included on the DVD shows you every important scene in the film, so you can just watch that instead and save yourself 90 minutes you'll never recover.

There's no more Dolph at this point, but there is a terrible Ernest Borgnine performance in Skeleton Coast (1987). Ernest plays an aging former soldier who heads to Angola to mount a private mission to rescue his son, a captive CIA operative, from a heavily guarded fort. His private militia includes a classic set of ass-kickers (introduced in a hilarious pan sequence) like Muscle-bound Ex-Marine Guy, Crazy Guy that Likes to 'Xlplode Stuff, Technology Specialist Gadget Guy, Ninja Martial-Arts Asian Guy, Gutsy "I don't give a damn" Black Dude, and Tough-ass Hot Blond Chick with Big Rack (shower scene included!). Along they way they drive through the desert, smuggle some diamonds, drive through the desert, get help from the rebel army, walk through the desert, steal a plane, and, oh, fly over the desert. The ending is completely confounding, but it involves imitating Cubans, the good guys win, and Ernest gets the girl (more-or-less).

SNL Season 1:

The last thing we've watched (so far!) are excerpts from the very first season of Saturday Night Live where during Weekend Update Chevy Chase tries on three separate occasions to connect with a reporter live in Luanda. The first time Chevy reaches a reporter in her American home, the second time no one except a janitor is in the office in Luanda because of the time difference, and the third time the reporter is sexually accosted (eventually willingly) by a horny mercenary during a live interview. These scenes are very brief and have little or nothing to do with Angola. We were, though, very impressed by the first season of SNL. We learned that we hate Dick Cavett and we loved the live performances by Jimmy Cliff and Bill Withers. Highly recommended!

Media Links for Angola

2007-09-11T22:52:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the amount of web-available news and information from and about Angola is exploding. When we prepped for our first trip in 2005 there was little or no information available online; recently I've been able to do things like look at satellite images of Luanda from Google Maps, listen to live, streaming radio, watch a streaming evening news cast, and even browse a budding online classifieds site. I'll be sharing more about these resources in coming posts, but I wanted to start out with some information about links to current Angola news and some of the Angola-based blogs that I've checked out.

News:

My primary method for following news from Angola is with Angola-specific RSS feeds from a variety of the usual suspects. You can view the feeds I track as a regular webpage here or you can import my current feeds into your feed reader with this file. These are the sites that I'm currently tracking:

AllAfrica.com
Topix
BBC News
Human Rights Watch
Relief Web

My favorite, though, might be watching a stream of the local evening news. By following the "Multimedia" link on Televisão Pública de Angola's (TPA) website you can watch episodes of Telejornal, TPA's evening newscast. The updates can be intermittent (the last episode posted as of today is nearly a month old), but I find it to be very interesting with or without a thorough knowledge of Portuguese.

Blogs:

First and foremost, here are the blogs of Arthur and Jojonneke, our wonderful Dutch friends living in Luanda (in Dutch but with great pics! I use Babelfish to translate them to "English").

We recently had the pleasure of meeting Bostonians Robert and Beth who were in Lubango, Angola during 2006-07; they’re both doctors and Robert was there on Fulbright funding. Their blog is here but please be fore-warned about the graphic surgery photos.

There are other blogs out there with accounts of Angola by folks we don't know. Some of them have only occasional Angola posts and/or are no longer being updated with Angola content because their author has moved on to other adventures. They're fun to read because there's usually something here which overlaps with our own experience; for example, we stayed at the DW guest house in Huambo (2006) and had a snack at Bahia with Arthur and Jo (2007) -- both are mentioned on Kate's blog:

Unstrung
Nate Down There
Kate's Travel Blog
Tony and Lotty at large in Angola

The news links are good for just that, news. The blogs are much better for some sense of what life has been like lately in Angola and for pictures. I've got more sites with pictures and the like that I'll be posting soon, but the above sties are probably the best starting points.

As Músicas de Angola

2007-09-11T13:59:00.000-04:00

I'm still trying to get a handle on the Angolan music scene and figure out what's from where, what's influenced by what, and who's who. Somewhat surprisingly the good ol' interweb and especially YouTube and Wikipedia have been tremendously helpful in getting the lay of the land. (The amount of information about Angola as well as the Angolan presence online is currently exploding -- more on this in other posts.) The best known and clearest thread in Angolan music runs from Semba to Kizomba to Kuduro, with Kuduro being the most recent incarnation. Here's where I'm at so far in figuring this all out.

Semba is commonly considered to be descendant from a Congo-Angolan dance style and has etymological roots in both Kimbundo ("pleasing, enchanting") and Kikongo ("honoring, revering"). It's highly prevalent in Angolan popular music and when spending time in Luanda folks frequently point out which songs on the radio are semba and Angolan. I've even had people clap for me the rhythm that they recognize as semba but I'll confess to not always being able to distinguish it in course of songs.

Kizomba music is generally slower than semba and also very romantic or sensual with the dance having a reputation as being quite technical. Kizomba is rooted in semba but also takes influence from Caribbean musics, specifically zouk. We've got a disc purchased on our last trip to Luanda called "Kizomba de Angola, disc 2" that's been in heavy rotation in the car this week (Big D loves it) with a nice melody turn on the lyric "Kuduro não da" (Kuduro won't do) about how semba's all right, kuduro is questionable, but kizomba -- kizomba is the way to be.

Kuduro, an aggressive rap music developed in Malange and highly influenced by Haitian rap, is the most recent pop music development. It's a relentless music with an unchanging beat and a rapid-fire lyric style. The music is somewhat grating for me but I've been listening to a fair bit of it to get to know it better. There are a fair number of YouTube videos featuring kuduro and they're my favorites because they frequently feature bairros (neighborhoods) and musseques (slums) that you don't see in the other videos and that are difficult for "tourists" to take pictures of because of concerns about the police and camera use. These videos best represent the neighborhood style in bairro popular where we stayed in 2005 with Arthur and where we've been on the streets outside of the main urban center.

I'm very much enjoying Angolan music right now. We bought 10-15 CDs on our last trip getting a variety of styles and artists. We met Alberto Teta Lando, the president of União Nacional dos Artistas e Compositores (UNAC), and he gave us a slew of recommendations as did Dª Alice and Paolo. For me the stylistic approach of Angolan music is still more recognizable than the rhythms. There's a vaguely "African" feel to the music but it's much less ornate than the prototypical West African musics. In addition to the beautiful simplicity, much of it is in minor modes and has a somewhat down atmosphere (even the quicker songs) which I really enjoy. I hear it as a somewhat serious music regardless of the lyric topic, and as mature and down to earth. Waldemar Bastos's Pretaluz was the first full album I heard by an Angolan artist and it represents well some of the things I hear (or at least it's colored my ears so much that you should check it out to know why I can't hear anything differently).

YouTube examples

http://www.canalangola.net's upload space with videos from all three genres.

Semba

Yuri da Cunha Macumba

Voto Gonçalves Esperanca do Amanhã

Kizomba

Don Kikas: Angolanamente Sensual and Miss U

Dancing Lessons! (nb: I don't think this was produced in Angola.)

Kuduro

Os Lambas: Comboio II

Buraka Som Sistema featuring Petty: Wawaba v.1.8 and Yah!

Amazing kuduro dancing examples here and here

Best links for general listening:

Ngola Radio - 87.7 FM, Luanda or paste this link into your favorite music player. Go here to download the most recent top hits on 87.7 (this is getting a lot of play here these days).

Radio do Canal Popozudos Online pasted into your favorite player or visit Mwangole.net, an Angolan online music community site (with chat rooms!).