blogs i like

well...just met the BBC correspondent here...she's got a blog that's really great...and really tuned into Angola...she's been here a while: unstrung

she references another blog that seems really interesting: modal minority

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.

Beach!!! And, the bananas taste better here...

Hi all-

Well, more pics if I can upload them. I went to the beach on Saturday and Sunday. These pictures are from Sunday...a place called Cabo Ledo that is about a 2 hours drive south of Luanda. I went with a really nice Portuguese couple that I met through Casa Soleme, where I am staying. He's a mechanic and works on the trucks and bulldozers here and she has just come to stay with him for a couple of months. They are very sweetly in love--Joao told me that he loves her because she's beautiful on the outside but also because she has a good heart and is his best friend, sigh.

And, as for the bananas...they are delicious! They really taste, well, banana-y! Yum!

So here are some pics, from left and clockwise:

1. Joao and Julia.

2. The view from the car.

3. Taken from the car and is of the thatched cabanas that you can rent along the water--it's really too hot here to be outside in the sun all day.

4. Hanging out at the beach...all the umbrellas were taken so we staying in the shade of the rental cabana.

5. The beach!

Pictures...

Matt and I have a flickr account and I will try my darnedest to post pictures to it but the internet connection here is painfully sllllooooowwwww so I don't know how it will work out. These are the house parrots...they like to whistle at women...wonder where they picked-up THAT habit?!!

Picture of Angola

Angola is located in southwestern Africa just above Namibia. I'm in Luanda right now, in the northern part of the country, and will be traveling to Huambo, which is more central and south of Luanda.

In Luanda!

Well, I made it here safe and sound.  My first day consisted of struggling to stay awake after nearly 4 days of traveling.  The first thing that I noticed when I got out of the plane, besides the incredible heat, was the smell.  Angola has a sweet smell---while that might be attributable to fumes from sewage that stuck in the atmosphere, it is nonetheless a distinct smell.

I'm staying a lovely bed and breakfast call Casa Soleme that is run by two sisters.  It is by far the best place to stay in Luanda because of both it's location (with in walking distance to everything) and its familial atmosphere--everyone eats meals at communal tables.  Plus the crowd it attracts is more aid-worker-ish than some of the bigger hotels that mostly cater to big-name oil and business executives in town for a week or so.

It's so much nicer staying in a b and b than an apartment, as I did last year.  Mostly, there are people around to assist you and my general feeling is that this neighborhood is slightly nicer than the previous one I stayed in.  But mostly, I've never alone or want for people to chat with, though I can see that becoming a bit burdensome with time.

I finally found the energy to make it out of the hotel this morning and bought a local sim card for my cell phone as well as popped my head by the archive to re-introduce myself.  I start there on Monday.  I've also had this funny realization this time around.  I was so nervous and on alert the last time I was here and realized, I think, it's because last year I came from South Africa, where is it decidedly unsafe to walk around and when you do venture "a pé" you have to be TOTALLY alert of what's going on around you.  It helps to be alert here, but the level of violent crime is nothing compared to South Africa.  That said, the earning still come off, I have no bag, and my cell phone remains in my pocket...

So now I'm back in my hotel room with more hours to kill.  Fighting "time" here is futile...even though the archive is open for another 6 hours, there was no way I could start working today...just doesn't work that way.  Oh well, it's ridiculous to try and fight it, rather more productive in the long run to just go with the flow.

I'm supposed to go to Huambo in 2 weeks for 2 weeks, but I wont know until Monday the details about that leg of the trip.

Well, when there's more to write I will.  Have internet access in my room and a computer this time around.

Beijos!

Here we go again...

And they're off!

Well, I'm off...to Angola and Portugal...I'm really going to try and be better about writing in this time. This will be greatly assisted by my COMPUTER, which I'm bringing with this trip.

NY Times Article about Angola's Cholera Outbreak

This is a good article just out in today's NY Times about the cholera outbreak. It gets to the heart of the matter, but, to be fair to corrupt politicians, to whom I'm not sure I should be fair, the war did just end in 2001. According to a friend, most of the revenue from oil is tied up in loans being paid back, and other loans that were made against oil profits to improve mining/pumping infrustructure. That said, where do all their Land Rovers come from??

Angola's Heroines

Imagem 039_1
Originally uploaded by misskate123.

Finally got some pics loaded! Some descriptions included but more to come...and I just remembered that there are more pics to come as well!

In Sancerre

Well, I made it back from Luanda and through South Africa and now I'm in Sancerre. I'm off to Lisbon for one more month before returning to the good 'ole US of A. I can't say it's a tough life...it's been an amazing trip thus far and I already miss Africa. What an amazing place full of beautiful people and places and complex problems that I think remain greatly understood and under appreciated.

I'm being kicked out of the internet cafe so I can't write more...but I'm uploading my pics from Luanda now and will include a link. I still have to put up the pics from the trip with Matt in SA...those are great!

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!

Ahhhh....Angola!

Well, the first thing I can say about this place is it is not at all what I expected. I thought it would be a war torn shell of a city with few modern conveniences. Well, it´s true that the electricity goes, that the water isn´t safe to drink and that most of the time it stinks of raw sewage which sits still on the streets. But Angola is also a place of enormous wealth (primarily oil and diamonds, but other natural resources as well). Luanda is a boom town. There are buildings going up everywhere and many people are becoming VERY rich. All with the sewage and the street kids there are wealthy business people driving chauffeured Range Rovers and talking on $500 cell phones. Above all else, the people here are amazingly friendly...shockingly friendly.

On Friday night I got the biggest surprise because I went out dancing. Things donºt really get going here until midnight and they continue on well into dawn...as I quickly learned! We went to a new club called "Chill Out" and I tell you folks, I could have been in Miami. The place is lovely...and very well designed...all outside with thatched roofs to block out the sun during the day. We drank Caiparihniaºs and danced until 3am until heading to another club for the last hour of dancing, then to a restaurant on the ocean to watch the sun rise. What a night!

Itºs taken me days to recover from that one!

There is so much to say about this place that I really donºt know where to start, but Iºll have to end there because my time is almost out at the internet cafe. Until later!

Angola here I come!

The saga continues...but I'm officially going to Angola, though whoever reads this must be tired of hearing about the back and forth!

Matt just left after spending two fab weeks here with me in SA. He's going to post our HUNDREDS of photos soon. As for SA, it's been great. It's an amazing country full of extremes--rich, poor; sea, mountains; urban, rural. It may sound similar to the US and to a degree it is, but for whatever reason the extremes seem particularly "extreme" here. I'm not being terribly coherent at the moment.

The stories are too many to recount here. But it's been amazing so far, and I'll be back for a little more SA at the end of May.

As for Angola, I'll write as I can though it's totally unclear to me how I'll access internet there. This and more will become clearer once I get there.

Until then...

Matt and Kate's Travel Blog

Hello World! A quick note. I'm sorry I've been so bad about writing in! Truth is that my days aren't that interesting...just back and forth from the archive. But they are about to get much better as Matt is arriving in 2 days!! We'll be going on safari and a game reserve near the boarder of Botswana called Madikwe then we'll take a drive through the center of the country and end up in Cape Town to do some touring around and taste some wines!

The official word at this moment is that I wont be going to Angola at the end of April...it's a long story but the short of it is that it's too damn expensive and it doesn't have to be. So I'll wait to go again some time next year...but there is still a chance that I may go in May-June with a woman I met who lives in Pretoria and needs to take a trip there. So, as usual, everything is up in the air. As it stands now, I'll stay in SA and tool around to some of the other archives I haven't been able to hit.

Besides that life has been good here. I spend the weekends with friends in Jo'burg which is great. My friend runs a program for girls in one of the worst townships (called El Dorado Park, ironically). Unemployment rate is around 86 percent! And most of the girl's parents either have AIDS or have recently died from it. It's a great support group for them...a time to be children if only for a few hours. We went into El Dorado Park last week to drop off a girl and see her new baby brother. She was lucky, because she lives in a solid structure that has running water and electricity--if you can afford the pay the bill. For 5 children and a mother they had a little bit of corn and some cabbage to get them through the week. It's a real wake-up call...and a reminder to be thankful.

That's it for now...writing this from the archive and I should be doing work!!

South Africa Pictures

The girls
Originally uploaded by misskate123.

Just loaded my pics from my first few weeks here...

South Africa Update

I’m writing this from the library because I find that when I get back from the library the last thing I feel like doing is writing about my day…prefer to forget it!!

I’ve been terribly about writing into the blog, so perhaps writing it in advance will help. As in Portugal I spend much of my time in the archives, but that is even more schiphrenic here. The papers I am looking at are from the Department of Foreign Affairs and are housed in the Union Buildings in Pretoria. The are the main, beautiful, government buildings that lie on a hill overlooking the city. The building was designed by Sir Herbert Baker and built in the early 20th century. Needless to say, it’s gorgeous. It is the main seat of government, and doing research there is much like doing research in the White House. The archives are in the basement of the DFA, the same building that houses the offices of the president. It’s also the building in front of which Nelson Mandela was inaugurated. Getting into the building is a bit of an ordeal…two security check points with xrays and metal detectors (and a document I have to sign saying I don’t have a firearm—which, by the way, they don’t actually CHECK for!)

Once in the building, I’m in the most un-sexy of places—the basement! The archive is run by a lovely man who sleeps most of the time and his co-worker, that checks her email all day and plays 1960s R and B (Marvin Gay etc)—actually listening to “Sexual Healing” right now. So here I am with piles of documents in front of me, in this weird basement, listening to Marvin Gay, at a wood table with mix-matched chairs. But what is great about it is that because it’s informal, anything goes. The Union Buildings hold the documents of the DFA from 1961 to the present—with papers open until 1986 (20 year rule). My understanding is that the National Archives are much more formal, request documents, librarians etc. But since it’s just one man running the show here, I can photograph the pictures, get all the photocopies I need. It’s VERY user friendly, if a bit weird.

I’m staying at a youth hostel in a neighborhood in Pretoria called Hatfield. Much of Pretoria is like Washington DC and full of embassies and consulates—the American Embassy is a HUGH monstrosity of a building the resembles a gi-normous bunker more than a place of work. It also apparently goes 10 floors underground, something from which the South African government was left in the dark throughout the Cold War. My current backpacker, from which I will be moving next week, houses a number of internationals that are doing internships at NGOs and embassies in Pretoria but need short term housing. So it’s a funny scene. Everyone gets up early in the morning and is out by 9am. Then we all return in the evening for dinner—it’s a bit more like a commune than anything else. Everyone knows is aware of each others work and the problems at the work etc. It’s an interesting dynamic.

My next backpacker is a closer walk to the archives and a bit nicer…we’ll see what the people are like!

That’s it for now. I’ll keep killing time in the archives with these updates!!

In South Africa!

Matt and Kate's Travel Blog

Dear all-

Just a quick note to say that I made it to SA. Things are cool here and spent the weekend resting and hanging out with friends. Now back to the grind...staying in a youth hostel and trying to figure out about doing research! Yikes, I keep forgetting that is why I am here!!

More later....

Clouds

Clouds
Originally uploaded by misskate123.

More pics on Flickr...This photoset called "First two weeks in Feb--Lisbon"

Check it out!

Sunny Saturday Afternoon

Well, seems Saturdays are my day to post. It really feels like Spring here today...things starting to bloom...people out taking walks and in cafes. I spent the morning going for a run on the ocean right by the house. It's really so lovely here and so nice to be able to walk out your door and see the ocean. Everyone's reaction to Molly living out here is "Why would you EVER live in Estoril!!" But I tell you, one morning sitting in the sun by the ocean and you get it. Yeah, it's a schlep to the city every morning and it's a pain to come back tipsy at night on the train. But, it's worth it all for the amazing sea air and views!

Last night we went again to this cute restaurant/bar/performance space that is perched high above Lisbon with amazing views of the city and the water. Too much wine and not enough food later Molly and I stumbled to the train and made it home having sobered up along the way. Ahhh life!

Today is for hanging around. On my run I found this amazing little cafe that's perched above the ocean on cliffs and tucked in amongst an old fort. It's easy to miss...which makes it so great!!

My days are filled with running around. I start out in the morning with Portuguese classes and usually make it to the library by about 12:30 or 1 pm. Then home in the evening or off to meet Mols some where for um copo de vinho.

Lisbon is just amazingly beautiful...everywhere you look the buildings are like eye candy. Even in all their falling-down-ness the old splendor still comes through. It's a little bit hard to figure out where everything IS...not like Paris or New York where it's all out in front of you. But once you do find places, they are amazing and the people are fun and friendly. For example on our way to the bar last night we were walking up a HUGE hill and saw this amazing old house with an enormous courtyard. Of course I had to snoop around a little bit so I walked in. The entire courtyard was an enormous garden and the building was beautiful. As we looked around more we realized it was actually an art school and all of the huge picture windows were studios. Just amazing!

Well, that's it for now. Think we might try and take a few day trips next weekend to Sintra just outside the city.

Hope everyone is well!

Pics!

More ocean
Originally uploaded by misskate123.

Click on the photo to take you to my uploaded pics from the last few days...Look at the photoset for Lisbon 2006.