Contrasts...

Luanda is really a funny place. One the one hand, they have lovely beaches and sort of a hint of a former European-style city. On the other hand, you have unbelievable poverty and some of the largest slums in all of Africa. In a nation of 16 million people, nearly a third of them live within the limits of Luanda--a city built for about 400,000 Portuguese settlers. Thus housing is a problem for everyone, from those with millions of dollars to spare, to those who have nothing but a corrugated aluminum home built on piles and piles of trash. Indeed, in Casa Soleme, where I am staying for the month, there are business people who have been living here for a year, and who are booked through to 2008. Businesses pay for their employees to be housed in hotels, because it's too difficult to find adequate housing (with pluming etc) and what is available is outrageously over priced. Case in point, I met a woman here yesterday who is relocating to Luanda from Maputo with her husband and two small children. She's in Luanda for a month trying to find a place for them to live. Yesterday, she went to tour some of the new housing developments on the outskirts of the city that are western-style houses. They are completely sold-out and what is available costs $15,ooo a month! And it will go, quickly! What's more, the traffic from these outskirts into Luanda is nuts. People leave at 5 am to get to the office in time--it can take upwards of 3 hours to commute into the center of the city. Luanda is at the breaking point....it's an urban planners worst nightmare and it's not clear what is going to happen. There's talk of companies moving their headquarters out of the city to be closer to the nice developments that house their upper-level employees. But the main thing is the cost! I met a man last night who have been living for 2 years at the Hotel Presidente, which costs $250 a night! Nuts! There is so much money in this town and yet so much poverty. That's another aspect of this city "lixo" or trash, everywhere. With so many people packed into such a tight space and with zero infrastructure to deal with it, there is just trash everywhere! The poor areas and just teaming in trash, and people live off the left-overs of the better off.

The photos above are from the last couple of days...from left to right:

1. A praia! The beach taken this afternoon...very chic beach clubs with chairs and umbrellas to rent.

2. Women selling cloth on the beach...again, contrasts. The poor amongst all this wealth.

3. A view of Angola and some of the improvised houses. This isn't a poor neighborhood. This is just how it is. Actually, this picture was taken by a friend from the balcony of an aid-worker's home here in Luanda.