More on Angola

I posted this from Angola, but for some reason it didn't work...So here it is now...

First, an apology. Iºve been VERY bad about writing in...an NO pictures. The pictures are a matter of tact and safety. All my research is on the CDs and if I were to loose then things would be looking very bad.

So Iºve been here about 3 weeks and I leave to return to SA on Thursday. Itºs been great, but also hard. You must have a car in Luanda. Distances are far enough that it essential to have one if you want to do a decent food shopping etc. Also, itºs not particularly safe to walk around in all areas during the day, and certainly no where at night. So unless you can convince a friend to schlep you around, then you better get pretty comfortable with a book. Iºve only been able to go to the beach once because, again, you need a car to get there.

But, complaining aside, itºs a very interesting place. There is currently a cholera outbreak in the city and itºs not hard to tell why. This morning on my way to the archive I witnessed case in point. A pipe had burst on one of the main streets so it was flooding everything. But it also must have meant that the houses around there didnºt have water...so everyone was out with buckets just collecting the water coming from the street...which is easily mixed with raw sewage. Comparatively speaking, this water is actually much cleaner than other water sources that Iºve seen people collecting from. But, hey, you canºt blame people. We all need water to live, and with bottled water going for $2.50 for a liter, it pretty much means that most people have to depend on what little there is.

Luanda is basically a big, crazy, hectic city. Iºm sad that I wasnºt able to make it out to the provinces, but that will be for the next trip. Everyone who has traveled there says that Luanda is a bubble compared to the rest of the nation. Iºll have to judge for myself, but I donºt find it hard to believe...Luanda seems like a bubble compared to the rest of the world! A strange mixture of capitalism, socialism with corruption rampant and blatant...but most people just seem happy that there is peace and relatively forgiving of the obvious corruption of the government and itºs MANY cronies.

Well, thatºs it for now. Iºm only in SA for a few days then back to good ºole Europa for a months and then HOME!