Hippies on the road again

On our way to the airport, not far from our school, the road was closed off. The guy directing traffic was young and had a ponytail. He motioned for us to pull up and he asked us “You must be the actors”…apparently they were filming a movie. We looked at one another..."Umm no?" He replied “Oh, well, we still need some more hippie extras if you want?”

So apparently the three of us must have looked like we were dressed to be hippies in a movie…but actually we were just dressed as ourselves…I’ve driven down that road dozens of times and have never been asked to be an extra hippie in a movie, nor do I think that will ever happen again. We were finally on our way to Angola and were so upset we couldn’t take up the opportunity! Unreal…we couldn’t stop laughing about it on our drive to the airport.

And so it began…our journey to Benguela. We stopped in Lisbon for an entire day, toured the city as zombies, fell asleep sitting on benches a couple of times, and then headed for Luanda. We were nervous about arriving into the Luanda airport because of stories we’ve heard about going through immigration…but everything went smoothly and someone was there to pick us up. When we arrived at the project close by, flamengos were lined up along the beach to greet us and so was an old friend of ours from our school, it was good to see a familiar face.

Two days later three of us took an 8 hour bus ride to Benguela, our home for the next 6 months. We were able to see the landscape…lots of it. Dirt. A lot of dirt. Everything is dusty. We arrived safely in Benguela and have settled in. Everyone is friendly and we are excited to get to work...it seems we will be very busy here.

Angola! Where's that?

For the past year I have been telling people that I'm going to Angola. Usually, the response is "Angola!...now exactly where is that?" I don't really mind, a couple of years ago I probably wouldn't have been able to point out exactly where in Africa it was. All I knew was that it was a former Portuguese colony and that my dad romanced my mom with letters while he was stationed there with the army.

I didn't know about the over 500 year presence Portugal had and that it was a major slave port where people were taken from their homeland and brought to the Americas, especially to Brazil. I didn't know that they had a poverty rate of 70%. The average life expectancy is just over 40 years old.

I didn't know that they had suffered over 40 years of war; from 1961 to 1975 they fought for their independence from Portugal. They immediately fell into civil war from 1975 until 2002. Over 500,000 people died during the civil war, two sides fueled by the two sides of the cold war. The country was pretty much ignored once the cold war ended. Today, the remaining million or more landmines (there is really nothing close to an estimate of how many landmines there are in Angola, some estimates are as high as 15 million) continue to injure, with one of the highest per-capita incidences of landmine fatalities/injuries in the world.

The good news is Angola is rebuilding and growing. Volunteers that I've known who were there for 6 months said the difference from when they arrived to when they left was unbelievable. School and health are two of the major needs, which is why I will be working at a teacher training college. More teachers means more schools and more children educated.

I am only beginning to learn about Angola's story and expand my own. I leave this Thursday with a day long layover in Lisbon. I am fueled with just about everything possible to prevent mosquito bites...from mosquito nets to citronella incense and neem oil, bee propolis and even a deet spray just in case going natural doesn't work. Here I go!