August Weekend #1: What did you just say?

The first weekend in August was an entertaining one. It started by meeting a cheery local named Pashú at the gym on Friday night – he jumped in on a leg workout with Burch and I and after changing numbers I felt like I was getting somewhere with forming something of a local group of friends. Friday night was mostly spent in Lolita’s car while we toured the city for no apparent reason, except that Lolita had put in a dance music CD and she wanted to listen to it, entirely, before stopping. Thus we passed the better part of an hour circling the same part of town. She made an excuse that she wanted to show us exactly where a concert for which we had tickets was going to be held the following night. We got it after the first time, but by drive-by number four I think we finally convinced her we could find it on our own. (Nevermind the fact that Benguela is nearly a perfect grid and everything is walking distance anyway.)

After a leisurely morning (is there a better kind?) the next day we joined Nancy (the American expat who runs our language school) and two others for a tour of the area in her Ford truck. I was riding in the middle in the back for a few uncomforable hours, but we did get to explore some of the area, which is what central Nevada would look like if it had a coast.

Coastal Shots South of Benguela:


































At one point the lady accompanying our group and sitting to my right decided it would be a good idea to pull my armhair suddenly and without warning. I gave her a dirty look and pulled away. She managed to call me a “macaco” after that, giving me yet new reasons not to like her. These feelings changed after she told me that she was part man and part woman. I thought maybe this statement had some kind of figurative meaning in Portuguese until she proceeded to lower her shirt to expose a hairy chest between her breasts. I don’t mean a little bit hairy either – she could have given me a run for the money. I was dumbstruck. What on earth do you say in that situation? I responded with what I hoped was a respectful silence and erased my previous negative thoughts about this woman. You can’t make this stuff up.

We said goodbye to the two ladies back in Benguela and headed north to the cities of Catumbela and Lobito. Catumbela I had visited before with my host sister the previous weekend, but this time we stopped for ice cream at a popular café (the peanut flavor was the best). You get a sense of the agricultural potential of the country in this area, which has been replanted with all sorts of crops mostly along the river bed.

View of Catumbela River:


















Lobito is just a few miles farther north and was my favorite, mostly because we stopped for a pizza dinner at a quiet oceanside restaurant at sunset. After nonstop rice and beans it’s amazing how exotic pizza can seem. I actually don’t mind the rice and beans, but it’s nice to be reminded that other food forms exist.

California Dreamin' in Lobito:























Back in Benguela that night Burch and I went to a concert – Paulo Flores was the featured artist and he turned out to be a great performer. At one point I ended up dancing with a drunken male patron sitting behind me (at his request, incidentally). This turned out to be the only dancing going on for either Burch or I that night – our foray to the disco afterwards was a bust when they kept playing the local “kizumba” music. Nothing is wrong with the music, but it’s sort of for couples. More importantly it’s sort of for people who know how to do the dance. Which we don't. Thus, at the early-by-Benguela-standards hour of 3am we walked home. I wasn’t complaining…

Crazy Rock-Throwing Man

Imagine you’re cruising down the highway at 65 miles per hour and suddenly a man jumps into the middle of the road directly in your path. The man has a crazed, possessed look in his eyes and he is wielding a large stone. He is yelling uncontrollably at you and staring at you with an intense fury. You swerve to avoid hitting him, but as you pass he hurls the stone into your windshield.

This happened yesterday on the road between Benguela and Lobito. Fortunately the crazy man wasn’t such a great aim, and the stone mostly hit the sidebar on the passenger side and leaving only a minor series of windshield cracks. I didn’t get a good look at what happened to the guy after we passed, but he could have easily been killed by a less attentive driver. I have to give Nancy (whose truck we were in) credit for her cool navigation through that situation, but I think all of our hearts were beating a little faster for the rest of the night.

Forget the potholes, add angry rock-wielding crazy people to the list of roadside hazards in Angola…

Smile!

Kids love having their picture taken here, and I'm all to eager to oblige.

These are the kids in the neighborhood:

#1: The "fun with tin cans" gang in Benguela


















#2: Group photo frenzy in Baia Azul


















#3: Getting pensive at sunset in Lobito



















#4: You go girl

Benguela Photos

I finally figured out how to shrink photos so that the slow internet connection here can load them! I was proud of myself for figuring out how to do this simple task; I'm not the most technologically gifted person as many of you already know. Three cheers for baby steps.

Benguela Photo #1
The street I live on. I live in an apartment on the left side of the road from this view, right above a bakery (basically right where the blue truck is in this photo). The only thing that keeps me from spending all my money at the bakery is the constant line out the door and the fact that you have to elbow your way to the counter or you'll just never get served. I'm going to have to develop that skill later - for now I just rely on the vittles my keepers provide (no complaints there though).














Benguela Photo #2
"Downtown" Benguela, featuring one of the newer paved roads. If you look closely the billboard says "With peace, we're reconstructing the country":














Benguela Photo #3
The beach at sunset is a favorite for the Chinese workers living in this town. They're here rebuilding the main railroad which goes to the Zambian border and terminates in Benguela and the port at Lobito, just to the north of here. I haven't tried the Chinese restaurant here yet, but I hear it's pretty good. More to come on that...

Nice to meet you, Milk

It’s hard to imagine that yesterday marked only the first week since Burch and I arrived in Luanda.

Five things I miss so far:
1. Skittles
2. Water Pressure
3. Chewy Sprees
4. The ability to completely comprehend dinner table gossip
5. Sour Patch Kids

All in all, not so bad (and my dentist should be dancing a jig somewhere). The no-running-water-in-the-morning thing is a drag though. I’ve taken to setting aside a kettle of water at night to boil in the morning so I can shave. The morning cold water sponge baths don’t seem so unusual anymore, but shave with cold water I will not.

In other news I joined a gym yesterday. I think the name of it was Acadamia Corpo Total, and one of its best features is…a working shower! I think it’s probably worth the $100 a month to join just for that. About halfway through my first real workout in months a local gym rat asked to cut in on the machine I was using. When I asked his name he responded “Leite” which is the Portuguese word for milk. Now, this guy was really buff and I didn’t want to inquire further, but this seemed a bit sketchy. After asking around it turns out most Angolans have a real name and a nickname that they use more commonly. Just ask Rabbit (one of the language teachers whose real name is Pablito) or Kiss Me (an Angolan man I met in Lisbon a few weeks ago whose real name escapes me). I swear I’m not making this up. I do wonder how people get these names though. Does Leite just really like milk? Does Rabbit…have rabbit-like qualities, whatever those might be? I need to get to the bottom of this.

Benguela is for Boozers

After the first weekend in Benguela it’s apparent that I live in a house full of crazy women. Friday night Lolita (my host mom) had me out until 4:30am at a bar called Trilhos. I thought it was a bit odd they kept playing silent George Michael videos on the wall (mostly from the Wham! era) while the DJ kept switching between Buena Vista Social Club and UB40 music. In other developments my question about the Portuguese word for “seed” started a 30 minute discussion; apparently this was not an easy question to answer (the candidates were “semente” and “caroço” – asking the same question later at the language school I’m attending sparked a similar debate the next day). I had asked because I kept drinking the seeds of the caipirinha I had ordered and I was just curious; I had no idea the chaos that would ensue.

Anyway, Saturday was a lazy day involving a tour of the beach with Burch that included dead fish, dead mice, and some washed up electronic equipment. Later on, after some long gossip sessions at the house that involved making a case of Carlsberg beer disappear it was time to check out “Tchirinawa” or the local disco. You pay 2,000 kwanzas ($27) up front and get a card that becomes a sort of credit card for drinks; the cost of each drink being deducted electronically until you spend the prepaid amount and have to pay the balance in cash. The good news is that 2,000 kwanzas buys a lot of drinks, so this moment usually doesn't arrive. Around 5am Burch and I had had enough (he was trying to pick up some local girls but his efforts, in spite of some promising dancefloor antics, proved unfruitful) and decided to walk home along one of the few lit roads. Lolita and Chris called to check on me and when they heard we were walking they came to pick us up in the car (apparently we weren’t supposed to be walking at that hour). After dropping Burch at home I thought we were headed home also. Instead we made an unannounced stop at a bar in the center of town. My faint protests ignored, Lolita and company continued drinking in the parking lot with some friends that had magically appeared. I recognized a few people from the disco, including a candidate for a mythical group I like to call GOB (gays of Benguela). At some point there were hamburgers involved, but details are fuzzy since I decided to make my mental state known by falling asleep in the backseat of the parked car. The sun was up around 6am when we finally made it home, and I slept well into the afternoon on Sunday.

After my routine breakfast (lunch, in this case) of corn flakes and strong coffee I went with my host sister Erica (who works as a quality control expert at the local Coca-Cola bottling plant) to pick up a family friend at the airport. His flight was late so we ended up taking a Sunday drive around a nearby town that featured such exciting attractions as a jacaré (crocodile) in a pretty sad looking pond. It was a great day actually, with a nice ocean breeze and about 70 degrees. Our conversation turned philosophical when Erica started talking about the human condition and how life is short, nothing is guaranteed, and how we should endeavor to enjoy each moment as it comes. I wanted to tell her this was exactly the message from Ecclesiastes, my favorite book of the Bible, but I didn’t want her to think I was religious because I’m not (and I wanted to avoid the kind of questions such a statement might inspire). Anyway we talked about relationships and the balance between the desire to share your life with someone special and the stress associated with the process (dealing with jealousy, insecurities, narcissism, etc.) It felt weird to be having a conversation like this in Portuguese and I'm not sure all my points came across clearly, but it was fun to try. I wanted to come out to her, but decided to focus on building our friendship first before going there. The sooner the better though, because she keeps asking what I think about the local girls. Oy.

Angola Contact Info

I finally have a phone; feel free to call any time.

Angola is effectively 5 hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone in the US, but since Angola doesn't observe daylight savings this will change to 6 hours ahead of Eastern Time when the clocks change in the US in the fall. Think of it as the same time as London for now, and the same time as central Europe in the winter.

Number: +244 912 641 341

The first three numbers are the country code for Angola, so before that I think you have to dial 011 if calling from the states. Most of you know this already, but just in case...