WEEKS 14 - ...

16 Jan - 12 Feb 2008

It is Tuesday afternoon, and I have just got up from the bed, with fever, to write. I can recall the marvelous last 15 minutes, when the golden white Sun of 4 o’clock still hadn’t announced the upcoming evening, and my pulsing nerves could be washed away by this huge flaming pearl, which, together with a caressing wind coming from some desert, brought me to the sands of Palestine. Cradled by the gentle touch of the breeze, my aching joints are now being restored by the maternal love of the Sun; and, once more, I am outside myself with pleasure.
In fact, any experience that is able to distract my nerves in pain is always very welcome; even a sickness can give them a comfortable excuse to have a break, to stop bleeding, and enjoy the pleasure of the relaxed – and therefore open – senses. Pain, love, wine, dangers, desire and imagination are often means of escaping from the contradiction of an ambitious heart chained in a weaker body.

But I cannot lose concentration, since another beautiful journey filled my memory with sweet images. I went, this time, to the Bié province, for an investigation week. The capital, Kuito, is a small town that lies on the vast plateau of the Angolan inland, and it is one of the most seriously wounded places of the war. The massive presence of landmines still makes victims, and the process of reconstruction is very slow, though some new buildings are redefining the skyline of an otherwise lazy town, which is made more tender and predictable by the rural kindness of very simple farmers, artisans and bakers. I stayed in a school 50 km far from Kuito, next to a village called Catabola (to reach it by motorbike, on the muddy road, has been an experience). The whole Bié province offers a very rich nature, cultivated by the abundant rains that everyday (at least in this season) clean the air and nourish the trees. Even the inhabitants of the countryside around Catabola, hidden in the houses around the roads of wet soil, look like products of the rains, like mushrooms timidly coming out from the high grass. Pretending they are not watching the unexpected white foreigner, the farmers come slowly towards the road, and fill the silence with a slow murmuring and rapid glances of fear. Only the kids, who don’t have the memory of war, cannot keep their emotions of joy and surprise, and shouting “Chinese!” ask the tourist for money.
picture 1. what used to be the main church in Kuito is now a ruin pierced by hundred bullets.
The Sun has become more yellow. From the little orange curtains swollen by the wind, the rays flood my bed with waves of gold. Evening will come.

The city of Catabola shows the traces of the Portuguese presence which is not anymore. The walls of some old villas are still partly covered with tiles or painted in yellow, pink and turquoise, washed by the Sun. What used to be the main avenue, bordered by pine trees, eucalyptus, canteens and houses, is now spoilt by the wild nature, which is covering day by day the ruins of this ghost town. Only the garden at the entrance of the town is resisting the carelessness and the heat, and the white, pink and purple flowers welcomed, among the high grass, my greedy senses. It is rare to encounter any of the inhabitants on the roads: perhaps because the thick walls of the colonial houses still offer a fresh shade inside, and thus life populates the dark of abandoned store rooms or bakeries, to which the eyes – blinded by the light of the midday Sun – need time to get used and recognize the vague shapes, once entered in the humid walls of the past.
picture 2. some houses of the surroundings of Catabola.
The journey from Luanda to Kuito, however, has been impressive: almost 1.000 kilometers stuffed in a minibus, crossing the land. Not even half an hour passed after having left Luanda, as we dived into the forests of Bengo, and very soon we were among the trees of Kwanza Norte, where the incredible humidity makes the heat unbearable, but also gives more power to the green Nature, and where the small villages lying on the side of the road break the monotony presenting their gifts: bananas, avocados, pineapples, peppers, oranges, tomatoes, bread, mandioca, apples and rice spring their exploding varieties of shapes and colours and rest the traveller’s eyes.
Back again through the high baobabs we went up to the town of Dondo, where we enjoyed a rich lunch and a good conversation (the clients of a taxi minibus get soon very close to each other – not only physically – in particular during a long trip), and then we continued to Kwanza Sul: for quite a big part of the journey, the road passes along an old railway which runs on the top of the first hills (the forest is now leaving space to a more open and sloped land), a very tender image that made me remember my desire to cross France’s inland by train, and discover the ancient secrets of beauty and taste so jealously – and, sometimes, arrogantly – protected in its silent villages.
As an ant running on the back of a sleeping dinosaur, our minibus started to climb up and down the green hills of Africa with fatigue but strong determination; and I couldn’t resist to the call of that colour, that light green – as intense and powerful as the meadows of England or Denmark in some bright winter mornings after the Atlantic rain, when the Sun wounds the frozen sky with its burning arrows and brings the grass back to life in translucent leaves; but softer, for being constantly faded by the tropical heat; and more tender, as if the grass bloomed, new, from the ground only few hours before –, that light green which I had used so many times, as a kid, to draw on a paper the colours of the World as it should be. And I let it fill my eyes, and then my heart, those colours… once again after so many years… a streaming pleasure pouring from the Past and freed by that Present vision, so powerful, to live what was lost in Time, to see my childhood spread in that green in front of me, and to cross it…
I cannot explain more, but I can probably understand the feelings of the travellers affected by the so called “Africa’s sickness”, which some people, with a very effective image, have related to the desire or even the need of returning into our mother’s womb, back to Time.
picture 3. it's already time to leave from Catabola. just a few minutes to arrange the luggage.
A pink and a yellow stripe of light are now painting the upper frame of my window as in an Egyptian temple. I cannot see the Sun anymore from my bed.

We continued climbing Angola’s round hills, up to Huambo province, from which the road to Bié is not asphalted anymore. To cover 250 km it took more than 6 hours, and we arrived in Kuito at 4 in the morning. I stayed, together with my travel mates, in the minibus parked in the main square of the city, waiting for the dawn. I was hungry, dirty and tired, and I couldn’t fall asleep on my seat, but when light came I could buy some warm bread in a bakery.
I didn’t have much time to rest, however, since I had to reach Catabola. I dealt a good price for a motorbike-taxi, and I made the last 50 km jumping on the red puddles of the road. I arrived to the school, my jeans and shoes covered with mud, before Nathalie and Heindrich, the two volunteers working there, had got up from bed.

The twilight has laid three volumes of pale yellow, lilac and indigo, one above the other, in the sky.

After more than 2 years out from Italy, I realize how small and insignificant the occurrences of my Country are, compared to the World political issues. The Italian Government has collapsed: another case of corruption broke the already trembling majority and, once more, ridicules the image of a Country which, having lost its regional cultures many years ago, is not able to get rid of provincialism and bribery at all levels of power.
But at the same I miss Italy, Rome, and what I miss is that littleness: the marguerite gardens that flourish among the Roman ruins on Palatino hill, in May’s warmth, under the shade of the solitary pine tree, some alleys in the Jewish ghetto, the perfume of the sea and the scent of summer holidays that Romans seem to wait for 9 months a year, some churches in the countryside, my family.
I somehow miss the typical Italian mothers’ apprehension: I’ve had the very wise idea to tell my mum that I got typhoid fever (a very annoying thing, by the way: dozens of times a day at the toilet, fever, headache, etc.): with tear-broken voice she said she would send me all sort of medicines by DHL in the shortest time. But I cannot say anything, since I feel so safe! When I explained her some symptoms of my disease, for example the rapid fall in my body’s temperature when having high fever, she (now with the professional, reassuring tone of the nurse) reminded me that I used to react in the same way when I was a kid. I didn’t reply, my heart received what I secretly wanted: some love!
picture 4. my friend kamal and his nice team mates spent a few days in my school before going back to europe.
The Arabian night takes places showing its first jewels and a silver nail of moon: together with the Sun, another chance to know myself, to respond to one will and be sure of my future, has slowly fallen beyond the day. Will I ever reach a sufficient knowledge? Naturally, I don’t know.

In the meantime, I enjoy the colours of the World, and I try to catch its beautiful, infinite shades of uncertainty.

WEEKS 12-13

22 Dec. 2007 - 15 Jan. 2008

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”, the Queen remarked. Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Through the looking glass.

The New Year begins, as predictable, with some memories.
I have left the fresh plateaus of Huíla, in the South of Angola, where I have spent my Christmas holidays, to come back and absorb the sunny laziness of the common days.
My first real trip to the inland of Angola has added many precious – and sometimes contradictory – perceptions to the agitated reservoir of my past; and I am still trying to put an order to the intricate and pulsating mass of images that fight in order to find a comfortable place to rest below my conscience, and that only when writing can be fully understood, thanks to the magical power of the Words. To name things is to create them.
But memories (together with desires, that so often are simply the projection of our past experiences in the future) are as deceptive as dreams, since they share with them that impression of melancholic vagueness which is caused by the absence of a material, present evidence of our perceptions, and which we can find in the state of inebriation, when our nerves get relaxed and free from the slavery of Time, and can live the sweet flow of each moment smiling to us.
Memories don’t suffer as a body: it is easy for me to recall that wonderful trip, and it is easier to forget the painful journey from Luanda to Lubango via Benguela (almost 900 km on a minibus stuffed with people, kids, animals and luggage), that lasted almost two days.

picture 1. a view of Lubango.

I passed along the coast, where I could enjoy the vision of villages of fishermen scattered by the Ocean (in particular by the long beach of Porto Amboim, where the beauty of its pearl white sand is enriched by the rusted carcass of a huge merchant ship that stands on one side, like a dead monster slowly devoured by the Nature – and thus having become for the first time part of it, transformed into a harmless shelter for a variety of invisible and prolific creatures of the sea – and that offers to the rare tourists a living example of the patient but inexorable work of Time), as well as the small settlements of brown straw flourishing on the top of the gentle hills of the inland, and where instead of castles groups of old baobabs watched their inhabitants.
But the reward of the first part of the trip had to be at its end. After nine hours of journey, the city of Lobito, just few kilometers before Benguela, showed me its beauty suddenly, as we descended a bending slope that had covered its sight: like an Arabian colony that blooms in a valley of sandy hills, this city lies in front of the desert – that appears unexpectedly in this area, just beyond the baobabs we left – and seems to be made of desert, its earthly, simple, houses (that so often only show an entrance without door and a window without glass), pressed one after the other among slopes and canyons of soil without an apparent order, and reaching the top of the highest hill where probably (I couldn’t see it) stand the authorities of this town, and where small creatures were patiently climbing its bending and rocky paths, as to walk an infernal route.
The last part of the afternoon offered a more intense frame of the town to my staring eyes, filling its walls with the orange sunset waving its powerful sadness among the dunes, and with the whispering silences of a warm wind, blowing its language, only known and kept secret by the hidden inhabitants, from the ancient sun.
Our car stopped at the side of the main road, just before entering a red canyon. Some of the travelers came out of the car and went away, to the town. After few moments, I couldn’t see them anymore.
The sun was walking its golden path beyond the dunes, leaving its place to the purple twilights, when we had to continue our trip to Benguela. Before passing the last bridge of red earth, I turned my eyes for my last salute to the past; and Lobito soon disappeared.

picture 2. after a long trip by motorbike, we take a fresh bath in the Tundavala dam.

Maybe responding to my inmost prayers, the sweet town allowed me another unexpected handful of moments to its vision, as the road, after few minutes, turned suddenly on its way back to avoid a hill; from a more distant perspective, I realized the harmonic composition of the town, a thin veil of little houses which gently descend from the top of the hill, covering its dry nudity and moving with the wind. A veil that, in addition, was starting to shine with the stars of the evening: one after the other (I could almost hear their low sound: plick, as a drop of rain, plick), the timid illumination of each house turned on their white, yellow and azure paillettes and waved my departure, this time definitive, with a long, dragging salute.
We arrived in Benguela a couple of hours later, and we crossed the dark city by motorbike to reach the round parking area of the buses to Lubango, a gipsy circus lighted by bonfires, fenced by caravans and temporary bars and grills, and filled with dogs, cries, kids running, people pissing, beer, commercial music beating, whores, little mountains of garbage, and the invisible closeness of the sea. Slipping among the insisting requests of the many rough peddlers, I and my companion Yuri wedged in the main bar, at the opposite side of the lot. I was drunk with fever and tired for the images seen from the early morning of that day; but we had to wait until 3 o’clock in the morning to get the bus. To waste time while having flu is an art that I don’t know, since every second pulses in my throat, in my forehead, in the back of my eyes, reducing me in the chains of an inescapable present. Neither memories nor expectations in those cases work as evading tricks of my nerves. Fortunately the external world helped me: inside the bar the TV, a very good anesthetic, was showing a tasteful football match between Barcelona and Real Madrid; in addition, shortly after our entrance a young but apparently very expert lady slipped from the back of the bar and started to massage my shoulders before I could say anything (“I’m only playing a little with you; don’t get nervous”. Oh, very sensitive. “Ok”); and, after the end of the football match, after my feverish shyness managed to make her, tired and disappointed, stop, an old guy – who had been standing there in the shade probably for hours, or ages – invited me at the bar, trying to explain the drunken reasons why God must be white, and embracing me, moved sincerely (if it’s true that alcohol only helps the expression of our feelings, without changing their nature) by my negative reply.
I cannot recall clearly the rest of the hours left before that hoped departure, since my nerves finally decided to leave me in peace, tired and certain about the absence of any threat to my person, and thus relieving a sweeter oblivion to my senses that drove me soon inside the bus.

picture 3. our breakfast is almost ready.

The trip from Benguela to Lubango took another 9 hours, though the distance is only about 350 km: the road used to be asphalted, but has been completely destroyed by the landmines and by the passage of the tanks during the war. Therefore, not only it is made of soil, but still presents many sharp-edged stones that the driver has to avoid constantly, in a continuous zigzag that very easily exhausts nerves and stomach.
About this part of the journey, anyway, I cannot say much; what really remains in my mind (apart from the unsatisfied desire to see the lions, that somebody told me populate this region), is the impression of emptiness: hours and hours of traveling without seeing anything but the monotony of the same green by both sides of the road (among the features of Nature, we also have to count the boring repetition of itself), and the growing feeling of disappointment for the closer arrival to the destination, when I started to realize that I was not supposed to dream anymore, that reality around me very soon would force my whole body to live, to talk, to be happy, and repress my visits to the timeless world of my own imagination (where reality is just a pretext to draw new bubbles of dreams) into the deepest layers of my conscience – without knowing when I would be able to tap into its colours again.

And so, my arrival to Lubango was, as expected, rather disappointing. The city itself is nice, quite modern, lying on a fresh valley in the middle of the mountains – that frame it by three sides – and offers beautiful sites to visit; the trees and plants that decorate the centre of the city even startled my eyes when I recognized many species that don’t belong at all to the tropical African nature: pine trees, eucalypts, cypresses, apple and orange trees, which filled public gardens and offer shade to the stone benches, and matched the old colonial villas still dominating, with their washed pink walls, the residential areas of the centre. And also the outskirts present some motives to enjoy: the poor houses made of sandy brown soil are often divided by labyrinths of narrow walls, with steep turns and unexpected openings that soon give life to new mazes, suggesting a far echo of a Northern African Kasbah.
But if those features gave me some moments of thrill, the city of Lubango represented for me only the destination of my journey – this should be an example of the personal, subjective contribution to the conception of beauty in our mind.
I lived in a poor area of the periphery called Benfica (I know at least 5 different places in Angola which are called Benfica, not to mention Portugal), hosted by my student’s family.
The mother, in particular, welcomed me very well and offered me a beer. I kindly refused, but she insisted when I told her I was sick: a pill with some alcohol, that is the best remedy, she said; unfortunately, she had run out of whisky, that would have been the ideal medicine.
We used the short time available as keen tourists, and so we visited the popular Serra da Leba, the Tundavala, and the waterfalls of Huíla. I will have good memories for next years. But it is too early to remember.

picture 4. the beautiful Serra da Leba. driving it by motorbike is quite an emotion.

Now I am back, again, to the school. Many new issues to face, starting with the old team of students – that I had never met before – ready to attempt the final exams, after their practice period, and the confused mass of accounts regarding the new year’s holidays from all the members of this isolated community. I will not talk about mine, since I was trapped in a typical middle-age people ceremony, with stupid games (like the one-after-the-other dance, what we call in Italy, with our popular way – inherited from our Mothers – of reducing everything to a tender image, “little train”; or the very intelligent idea of learning, without being drunk enough, new stimulating dances in few hours; everything, naturally, approved with a constant flow of laughs and improbable dancing couples) and the usual (and useless) fake promises for the new year.

But the New Year’s Day started with a big tasteful lunch based on fish and lobster in the wonderful beach of Cabo Ledo, by the Ocean, an unexpected gift gently offered by my chiefs, usually hidden in their offices.

Thank you, Pauline, for your help.

WEEKS 10 - 11

5-21 December 2007

When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain. Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Religion and art (1880).

The adventurous days of investigation are over, and I am alone, back to an empty school.
It is a quiet and sunny afternoon of December, and a warm breeze reminds me the last days of August in Rome, when the sun seems to come closer to us, more vivid and more yellow, but with a tone of sadness, every day stronger and inexorable, as if it wanted to share with us the melancholy of the end of summer, and to offer its last beneficial rays of joy before leaving us alone in our autumnal regrets.
Instead, it is Christmas time, and I have to force my mind – so used to connect this holiday to cold weather, to traffic jams caused by neurotic mothers unable to find the presents which perfectly match the requests of their children (these times rulers of the family more than ever), and to a general good spirit of preparation and comfortably expected surprises – to realize that this is the same period that I waited for so long when I was a child, and that I, my brother and my parents spent in our country house near Rome. How many sweet memories flow up to my mind, creating a stream of ancient images, sounds and scents, from which I try to extinguish part of my unquenchable thirst for pleasure: there stands the small emporium, where I or my brother were often sent to buy ham, bread, cheese, salt, olive oil and wine for our dinner;

picture 1. a view of Ramiro beach.

here the kitchen, a marvelous mixture of furniture, keys, drawers, a large sink, an old wood stove, the small window on top, the telephone, scraps of papers written one year before, the cold and humid perfume of shade, and in general a holy confusion that made that kitchen so human, so full of small secrets, so comfortable!; here the rosemary tree on the corner, talking to me and only asking to wait; the night sky, washing the iced stars in the stingy air of January; the big cross on top of the hill watching us, and the excursions to the beautiful hilly surroundings; the deep smell of resin and burnt grass; the dark Chinese room (so called because of the oriental-style furniture that my Grandfather had brought from Malaysia. It is only when the different places of a house start to get their nicknames that we can call it ours; the house, then, lives and shares with us every little human experience, accident or reported story which has created those names; and will die with us if nobody continues the tradition, protecting it with a secret code known only by its legitimate inhabitants. Our country house, being very old, was full of nicknames that a stranger would consider funny or stupid, but that my family still finds perfectly normal: the “house of Carrozzo”, the “garden of Zio Memmo”, the “ONU” (UN in Italian) – so called for being a tiny room with no purpose, as useless as the United Nations, at least according to my Grandfather; etc.).
But the main event around which everything else was supposed to turn, still remains for me the preparation of the presepe, the material reproduction of Christ’s Nativity, in which my father personified St. Joseph’s carpentry skills, and my brother and I his little helpers and apprentices, in setting the tables, placing the cattle shed where Jesus was born, the small statues of Mary, Joseph, the cow and the donkey, the shepherds, the houses around shining with dim coloured electric lights, the hills and the fake river: three days of work (with many, many breaks in between) to celebrate the holiness of the family, and the final result was blessed by the mystic light that, during the day, filtered through the yellow glass of that tiny room’s window (the “ONU”) and gave the whole space a soft aura of gold, as a niche of a gothic church.
Of those forests of symbols that I can see (and that I feel the hard duty to translate from my conscience) when I look back into my memory, the ones regarding Christmas are rich and often mysterious, but here in Angola almost nothing helps me to recall them: only a small tropical tree decorated with blue lights makes me taste some bits of the incoming holiday, adding to the absence of its signs the exotic contradiction of a Christmas palm tree (as high as 60 cm) placed among baobabs and bougainvillea in bloom. And, naturally, my mother called me expressing the sadness of the first year in which we will not celebrate Christmas all together; once I will be so strong to pay back (and therefore, to be free from the guilt of inadequacy) all the love that she has given to me, a love so natural, without any condition, rooted into such a divine power, to guide a woman who had never touched a computer only few months ago to learn in a week the use of internet in order to communicate with her son. Now she uses the mouse, opens and closes programs, she writes emails and comments to my diary…
Anyway. Back to my story. I have to tell something about the “investigation” made together with my students. It has been interesting and productive: as already said, the students had to lead a survey-style research about the conditions of health and nutrition, economy and employment, energy and transportation, education and culture, in some villages of the inland. Each group was composed by 8-9 elements and a teacher to help them in their research.

picture 2. interviewing the headmaster of a local school.

Its purpose was to learn or improve their investigating skills and to get an idea of the hard conditions in which the inhabitants of the villages usually live, both experiences mandatory for a future teacher of the rural areas, who will have not only to give lessons, but also to mobilize and deal with the population. Therefore, for 12 days the students went interviewing the farmers and their large families, nurses (we couldn’t find any stable doctor), teachers, truck drivers, women (not an easy task) and local authorities. As I already expected, the farmers have been the most friendly and hospitable people, always available to answer to our questions in their simple and generous manners, which are the product of a tradition of solidarity that is the feature of any poor but sane environment. In general, however, out of the three villages where I have lived, at least two presented precarious conditions of water sanitation and health. In one case I have been offered a woman to marry by the Coordenador (the representative of each village in terms of administration, while the Soba attends the cultural functions – marriage, witchcraft (fetiço in Portuguese), funerals and other ceremonies). Being mostly villages of 2000-3000 people, after the initial fears everyone opens to the visitor and in a couple of days I felt at home, walking on the sand paths among the houses and greeting the families. As predictable, I have found much more kindness and (what instead I didn’t expect) an opener attitude there than in my school, where the arrogance of the teachers and the hypocrite respect of the students have often been an obstacle for me to establish a good relationship with both.

picture 3. a little church in the village of Tanque Serra.

Again, some doubts about the value of education (or at least a certain education) rose to my mind, together with the sadness of realizing, once more, that any development is necessarily accompanied by the loss or the corruption of innocence.
But an excursion we made one morning has been worth the price of the ticket. There is a short walk, under the beating sun, from a village called Bita Tanque, which leads to what used to be the summer estate of the first President of Angola (Agostinho Neto, the national hero, dead in 1979); naturally the President, also known as a poet, had a good taste for beauty, and from the fresh veranda of that house, which lies on top of a hill, one of the most beautiful views of Africa opens to the eyes, like a postcard from the Stone Age: beyond three parallel rivers (Lwei, Bengo and Kwanza) which run to the Ocean, the Quiçama tropical forest starts with its close line of trees in the front; on the left side, the purple plateaus of the inland of Angola appear distant on the horizon; on the right side, a gentle hill, spotted with vivid green bushes and baobabs, is topped by a brown village of straw, that the sun constantly floods with a golden stream of light.
I stood, fascinated by that vision, and in particular by the secret pleasure promised (but, sadly, inaccessible) by that hill and its tender village, for an undefined time, when my students forced me to continue our walk going down the steep slope until the river Lwei. We descended the slope. It was incredibly hot, and we rested at half way, together with a silent group of cows, under the fresh shade of a baobab; there, as soon as I noticed the long lianas covering, like petrified tears, the trees around us, the same pleasure perceived before awakened in my mind, and I could only understand it superficially: the joy of being part of an ancient and pure Nature, who watches the World from a forgotten era without the need of developing her prehistoric beauty, its power lying in its firm, indefinable Age; the calm wisdom of the baobab trees that, having seen everything happening from Time to Time, tenderly smile at any little human occurrence passing by, justifying our lives and listening to the secret desperation of our minds in a respectful silence. But that is only part of the feeling I shared with myself – a feeling that I still cannot explain more deeply. And, again, I have to wait. We went on, among the high grass. Soon we reached the small river Lwei, that we crossed by a wooden canoe. On the other side of the stream we finally ate our sweet mangoes and chewed some sugar canes. A bath into the river and we returned to our base.

picture 4. a coloured morning queue for water in the village of Bita Tanque.

Naturally, apart from beautiful trips and people’s hospitality, the material conditions of the rural areas are rather hard, starting with lack of food, precarious hygiene standards, and, most of all, the water: everybody in the villages told me that the water comes directly from the river, so it is fine to drink it. I’m a half-depressed European in search for adventure, therefore I proudly accepted this statement as true, not caring of any risk for my health. Very soon, I got high fevers and a noisy belly, with the result of not being able to go anywhere for a couple of days except to the toilet, which instead became my most visited friend. Very stupidly, I hadn’t taken with me any medicine, due to the overexcitement for the trip. The return journey to the school completed the work: having finished the money (another thing I hadn’t thought about), I got some lifts to get to the coast (in Angola it’s very easy to hitchhike), and especially one ride on the back of a Toyota pick-up, which reached top speeds on the uneven roads of soil, shattered my already damaged bourgeois white ass. I thanked God when we arrived and I lifted my shaking thumb in reply to the satisfied driver. A profound pity probably moved a taxi driver to collect and deliver the remaining pieces of me to the school.

WEEK 9

27 nov. - 5 dec. 2007

Je vivot.
I am excited. Even anxious. As usual. But this time there is a concrete reason: on Wednesday (the 5th of December) I am finally taking a big group of students out for a period of two weeks. Yes, two weeks. Out of the school. I will stay in three different villages not far from Ramiro, mostly in the outskirts of Luanda. I don’t know exactly what we are going to do and how, and I don’t want to know; certainly it will be interesting and new. The students are supposed to lead an investigation in the villages about different topics, in particular the local conditions of health, nutrition, economy, education and traditions: since most of them will once become teachers of the rural areas, it is a good idea – I think – to make them used to deal with farmers, fishermen, and in general with poor people who face a different (and often very hard) life, out of this happy island of the school.
I already imagine songs at midnight, beautiful excursions in the inland (unfortunately, I was not chosen for a fishing area; that’s my only regret. But I will get my chance to go fishing in the Ocean, sooner or later), personal confidences with single students, and in general that particular solidarity of feelings and will which grows only among foreigners crossing an unknown land.
Apart from the recent future, also the recent past gives me motives of smiling: I spent almost all my last week in another school owned by the organization to which I belong, not far from the town of Caxito, in the Bengo province. Again, it’s not very far from my place (70 km more or less, but in Angola this is quite a big distance) and from Luanda.
I could spend pages and pages of my diary only to describe my arrival, last Monday, to the centre of Luanda, never seen before, a city that shows all the contradictions of the big capital of a poor country: resuming the undefined atmosphere of some Italian commercial ports of few years ago (the bay of Luanda: one of the many projects that will modernize Angola plans to take the water away from the marvelous bay of its capital, which gives the name to the most popular street of the city, the Marginal, so often seen in post cards, on internet, depicted on the 200 kwanzas notes, in order to build a new street), Luanda hosts a typical unorganized and undistributed mass of poverty and wealth: 4 star hotels with Chinese, European, and (seldom) black business men and their dressed wives facing, besides the big commercial harbour, a hill with favelas of rubbish and half naked children playing in the dust or carrying water on their heads;

picture 1. the bay of Luanda.

the vast university, cancerous land of illusions, covering a wide volume of flats of the Marginal, and followed by some Ministers which existence is only witnessed by the eternal presence of fully armed (and sleepy) guards; the Banco Nacional, which round chapel standing at its right side, and surrounded – as the whole building – by white classical columns, reminds a Casino of the Côte d’Azur rather than a central bank; the erected arrogant American Embassy, on top of a hill, a square colonial building that dominates the World, never regretting anything of the past but only looking at the future, trying to overcome the disappointment of what has been already achieved by achieving more; the supermarkets for rich people and, 20 meters beyond, two big ladies selling bananas and mangoes sitting on the side of the road; traffic everywhere; dust.
But, as already said, beauty lies in what is extremely small, in what best resumes the deep humanity of the people: a tiny stationer stuffed underneath the stairs of a flat, known by everyone of the area, invisible for anyone else (me included: it took nearly half an hour to identify it following easy instructions; while passing two, three times in front of the shop without seeing it, people started to ask me where I was going, and then where I was from, if I wanted to buy some fruit…: all proving that wherever the Man finds the space to express what naturally belongs to him, there is no place for boredom or loneliness); the narrow alleys of red soil which divide the two sides of grey bricks houses, always dusty and filled with children running without any apparent purpose, and which seem to hide many forgotten stories, or secret traditions, that will never be told.
Since I am a tidy person, I am fascinated by the mess of the others; the human confusion of Luanda reminds me the one of Naples – two cities that, even if with a very different history, somehow share their doom: the terrible explosion of violence and rubbish are the first products of the unbeatable invasion of the Modern in what used to be cities of Men.

picture 2. boats at the river dande (on the way to caxito).

I spoilt myself by having breakfast at the café Marginal, a Portuguese style bar (azulejos representing the bay of Luanda, as it must have been many years ago, pink marble on the floor, brown wooden walls, mirrors and neon lights) in the main street, where I spent one third of my weekly salary for a ham sandwich, an orange juice and an espresso. Then I went to a big supermarket with Elsebeth, a teacher in my preparatory school in Holsted, Denmark, who came to check the conditions of the volunteers in Angola (my organization, I must say, takes care of the people who are sent to Africa). I would never have imagined to meet her – as anyone else I know – in Angola and to do shopping with her in the centre of Luanda. All in one day.
Then I continued my journey to Caxito. I defer the account of what I have seen, of what I have experienced, to the day I will have digested this short trip.

picture 3. wherever you go in angola, you will always find a beauty saloon.

The duty of my conscience, however, so many times intolerant to my will of life, and instead obliging me to express perceptions and experiences (I pass my time constantly wandering between the illusion of art and the disappointment of life, without being able, once for all, to choose) in a way that can free my soul from the burden of them, only asks me to remember some of the Nature I could see in that area of the Angolan inland, much more humid, flourishing and hot than I imagined; and the frequent rains, together with the leaden sky, create the perfect contrast for the vivid colours of the flowers of magnolia, oleander, bougainvillea, flamboyant tree, and more (my knowledge of botany, unfortunately, is very limited: and I didn’t know I would find many species that I had seen in Europe. Now I realize that many plants which my habit makes me consider European, or even Italian, come from places like that one in Angola), exploding their candid white; spots of dirty and shy pink; flaming red playing with yellow among bushes of green; and violet leaves that open to disclose two small white flowers, round and standing still like dancers who rise their arms, ready to take the applause, surrounded by the purple curtain. In front of the abandoned Mexican steps of sun-washed yellow stone, framed by bushes of cactus, I stood many times to wait their Aztec stories to be revealed, before leaving the road of soil and walking the stairs, as distracted as ever, to go to my room.
There are many things I should write, I hope I will have the time. Every day, every moment of my life something new experienced by my senses adds a duty to the limited storage of my memory and to the uncertain possibilities of my writing skills: students, expectations, fears, sunsets and rains, nights and understandings, revelations that slip away, and so on.

picture 4. an old dam next to caxito.

Maybe once I will be able to translate any small truth that I perceive; maybe once I will be able to live entirely; or maybe, giving up both of these vanities, I will accept the compromise of being satisfied with what I can do.

WEEK 8

17 -26 nov. 2007

Nature is a temple where living columns let slip from time to time uncertain words; Man finds his way through forests of symbols which regard him with familiar gazes.
Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867), The Flowers of Evil.

It’s Monday, just after lunch, and the fresh wind fills the immobility of the hot afternoon with the scent of the sand, and brings the memories of the Ocean to our quiet rest.
I smell that air that strokes my neck and my hair from the silence of the teachers’ room. I can close my eyes and let these gentle waves wash my thoughts, and my head with the same pleasure that I attribute to a fish when transported by the currents of the sea without opposing any resistance. The day is hot, but the shade is fresh and beautiful. I can see few students passing time under the big tree, without moving or talking, only enjoying the breeze.
My nerves, instead, hardly rest, but work constantly under my skin to register and to make any little perception rise to my conscience.

picture 1. a cobra has just been killed by some brave students.

As for a bleeding wound that can only be anaesthetized but not healed, my sensitiveness can be calmed by distraction (imagination, many times, is a trick that the nerves create as a protection against pain); sometimes, however, my nervous system reaches a peak of such over-excitement, that it has to relieve the stress suddenly and without warning: in those welcomed moments my heart becomes finally free, and I am open to receive, as if naked, the love that I had in vain desired so intensely, and which impossibility to gain for a long time produces, at last, a quiet resignation. I don’t desire anymore, freed from the slavery of Time (what should I do next?), and I listen in silence to what is around me; I understand life, without pretending to understand, let the time flow and enjoy every second that passes through me. I can fully appreciate the vision of Otilia slowly cooking funge, with a precision that is driven by her instinctual sense of duty: not a bit of energy is wasted in preparing food, every single act is natural and seems to flow from an age longed tradition, singing some motives with no attention, her eyes tired from the work but focused on her colleagues and vigilant, as those of a lioness who rests under a tree after having milked her cubs, and lets them play on her, but ready to protect them from any threat.
picture 2. the village of Buraco.

These visions (that I could call revelations, since beauty reveals as a religious truth, previously secret) come to me quite frequently, not only here in Africa, even though every change in my life – new people, a new place to live, or even a little occurrence such a particular light of the day, or a smell, or the memory of them when it suddenly reaches the surface of my consciousness, recalled by similar ones – opens my senses to be impressed; but I always have the feeling that they chase me, wanting to say something, to tell me a truth that I had kept somewhere in my mind; and I can only understand that I’m running after myself, and that everywhere is one place: few days ago, I brought some students to a village by the sea for a school trip. It’s quite far from the school, and we had to walk several kilometers to reach it; we passed through the lagoon and then we crossed the vast land of Africa. I felt like an explorer when walking with a fellowship of 10 excited people (who couldn’t believe they escaped a boring day of studies) through the high grass, a backpack with food and water, under the burning sun of the early morning, from which some palm trees offer a good repair and an excuse for a short rest. When we reached the path to the village, I stopped many times to enjoy the colours of the sea weed that covers the sand: the washed green alternated by round spots – scattered on the ground as following a mysterious patchwork created to please the Sun – of yellow, red and purple. But the vision of the far imbondeiro trees that rise on the top of gentle hills of green reminded me the big olive farms of Greece, or of Southern Italy, and for a moment, again, I was there, wondering what had I left of myself in the beauty of those sunny lands, when, as a child, I ran after my parents or my older friends in some lost summer vacations. Perhaps we only see what is already ours, in particular what recalls our forgotten (and sometimes unsolved) past. If so, this is why I can still find myself on the surface of a whitewash wall, that quietly cries the warm sadness of the afternoon sun; or in the shade of a tool room, which damp perfume of wood is everywhere the same: insignificant places that bring a magical meaning to me, and still ask me to wait, to be part of their truth that, unfortunately, I can only perceive but not understand.
The village is called Buraco, and the long walk was rewarded by a very good hospitality offered by its inhabitants – mostly fishermen: I promised to myself to go fishing with them, once, if possible –, and by their availability to answer our questions (the school trip had the purpose of investigating the life of a village of the surroundings). We asked about their lifestyle, habits, traditions, and their knowledge about diseases: this area, as many in Angola, is afflicted by cholera, a disease that comes together with rubbish; Angola is full with it; the massive presence of rubbish is the sign, wherever it is, of the invasion of the modern world – consumerism – into a traditional or primitive world. The idea of “respect for the Nature” belongs to the rich societies which have already tamed it and have the privilege of considering it a “friend”, while for an ancient or primitive society Nature is still an enemy to fight. The wealthy countries first introduce, with the typical blind aggressiveness of Capitalism, a constant and massive quantity of goods in the “developing” countries (all have to develop), then teach how to respect Nature; all resulting in a complete destruction of the delicate balances and rules of the old villages. Another disease that, I believe, affects this area, is HIV: many people had heard about it, but only a blood analysis can find out the presence of a virus which symptoms are not easily identified and often confused with the ones of commoner diseases.

picture 3. mama is talking...

Together with the presence of many social taboos, this is the reason why it is always difficult to draw the percentage of its spread. We also had the honour of being received by the daughter of the Soba, the chief of the village: an old woman (sadly I couldn’t see many elderly people since I arrived here), with a respected social status, who answered to our questions with the smiling face of a person that has passed a very hard life and is very keen to satisfy the naive curiosity of a group of boy-scouts. Naturally, I couldn’t take my eyes away from her, impressed by the calmness of her majesty, and I couldn’t say anything for the first part of the interview; but I managed to conclude it (only because asked. Too nervous, otherwise) by expressing our gratitude and my personal appreciation. …Obrigado, mama’. Big smile. De nada.

picture 4. ...and we take notes.

We completed our task by buying some fish to vary the school’s menu and to please the other teachers (in particular professor Lucas, with whom I’m starting to have a troubled relationship), who weren’t so glad to let the students go.
Anyway, first the duty, then the pleasure: a long refreshing bath into the Ocean (this time very calm) waved the end of a beautiful day.

WEEK 7

7-16 nov. 2007

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down […]
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972), Cantos (LXXXI).

Sometimes the rain drops are tiny, so tiny that fall as slowly as snow.
It happened only twice. Twice, in the early morning. Both times the air was made of white mist. Nothing moved. The lagoon, the buildings, were suspending somewhere, and smiling, like Sunday mornings. The trees were standing still, respecting the silence. Rare.

picture 1. a tropical tree. i think i've already seen one like this; in the gardens of Kew, in london, or maybe in copenhagen. or... Ah, sweet memories!

Prepare for the Holy Mass. What a warm fog, I can hide. Smooth, no anxiety today; there’s no school. mam and dad are with you all day. The bell, we go now. When I’ll grow older, I will be strong and happy. After the Mass, lunch all together.
Nothing much to say, this week. After the exams I restarted my English lessons, where I try – apart from teaching grammar, that I realized it’s not very suitable for the students, or I am boring – to create debates, to involve them to speak, to express an opinion (someone – I don’t remember who: how I miss my books! – said: “you only think when you are talking”). This week we have talked about politics, and we managed to spend two hours efficiently discussing about the Government of Angola, which is accused of corruption by many.

picture 2. with its wisdom, our big and old imbondeiro tree protects us from the dangers.

By the way: I was very surprised when, walking back home from the village of Ramiro last Friday together with Marcus, one of the guards of the school, I passed the whole time (it takes 40 minutes to walk one way from or to Ramiro: 4 km in 40 minutes; it means 6 km per hour, that’s my average speed on foot. When you travel alone, in the absence of Sudoku, your brain finds many small games to kill time) listening to his opinion about a golpe which seemed likely to happen in Luanda, and which should be led by a General who has already gathered his own army, ready to take over the corrupted regime of the President Dos Santos. Marcus didn’t show any particular fear or even worry while describing this dangerous threat: perhaps such an occurrence here is considered quite normal, especially by one who has already experienced the war; perhaps he knows that, whatever happens in the (palazzo di governo), very little is going to change in his life. I’m sure he is right. Bah. My passport is still in the Angolan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, waiting for the Visa extension. We will see.

picture 2. finishing to build a cell for the internet connection (still to come)

The debates, here at the school, are easy to start and to last very long. Angolan people, students, teachers, workers, enjoy talking – especially about the Government; and often take part in passionate speeches to praise or to blame that party, that opinion, that way of living. Hours and hours spent to complain about the situation in this Country. Most of the students, although lacking in basic education, have great speaking abilities, thanks to this developed custom. But when it comes to do, only few seem to be interested. It’s the same with the teachers. I listen to their excited discussions at lunch and dinner, and right after they go to take a nap. It’s as if they satisfy their own sense of duty by speaking. Doing doesn’t belong to them. It wouldn’t be a surprise to me, since I have seen this attitude in Italy many times, and honestly I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, in general; those are the cultural differences I am thirsty of. But I suspect that – if, as it should be, a Government is an expression of its people – the same happens at the highest levels of the State; I imagine a burning session at the Parliament, where politicians express their proud remarks about the good of Angola, and still the real power is in the hands of few foreign oil companies.
Chega.

The heat never leaves us alone. The midday Sun is harsh, burns our heads, the roofs, the dry soil, and the rare flowers that grow around the buildings try to keep their delicate white, purple and yellow out of its violence by shutting their petals during the hottest parts of the day – a system that works, since their colours are incredibly vivid in the aridity of the whole. Sometimes the ground is so filled with heat that it has to give it back upwards, and it seems that there is another Sun pulsating in the underground hollows of the Earth.

picture 4. the main (sic!) street of benfica.

But a cloudy day can be unbearable, because of the humidity. This is why, probably, the rains are welcomed only in the early mornings or in the evenings. In the daylight, they only add the invisible steam of evaporation to the heat, making it more infernal than the burning sun.

WEEK 6

29 Oct. - 6 Nov. 2007

Some dreams. The oral exams.

Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD), Moral Letters to Lucilium.

The rains of the coastal side of Angola are, as it was natural to expect, typically Atlantic. Sometimes they wake me up during the night, asking me to wait. Choosing the perfect time to knock at my room, they start to come just before the dawn, so I am not in the complete dark (but the dawn still allows my dreams to wander), and I don’t have the regret for not getting up to watch the sunrise. I don’t waste time: I pull my red cover up to my chin, turn aside and listen for some minutes to this warm waterfall of notes which, brought by the gloomy clouds of the Ocean, but now pouring from everywhere – from the air, from the soil, from under my bed, like a maternal cure of love – stroke my ears, my forehead, washing and isolating the walls outside, and gently cast me to that far, furious sea, where I float safely together with the whole room; I sail among the dark waves from the inside of my little boat, where I have at my hand a number of drawers filled with anything I need (food, drinks, books, screens, binoculars and navigation instruments); enjoying this new adventure as the main character and only spectator, I discover islands, watch the passage of submarine creatures from the window, and let the waves cradle me until I fall asleep again, as a cat resting on the owner’s lap while outside the living room a winter storm rages.

picture 1. hidden among the bush, the swallow observatory ("casa dos passaros") offers a wonderful shelter by the sea.

The day before yesterday, instead, the rain came in the evening, just before dinner. I was sitting in the teacher’s room, waiting for the sino (the bell that announces every meal or activity is made of an old iron wheel hanging from a tree. Very typical). I’m not a good talker, but I’m a good listener of my imagination, and the dim yellow light of the bulb, the pale white walls and the wooden ceiling of the room, together with the complete silence and chillness of the air (as to prepare to the storm), were already suggesting a new dream; when the rain started to pour I couldn’t help being transported into the coast of Normandy, where I found myself sitting inside a humid inn of a port (was it Cherbourg?); a cup of brown coffee; a creaking entrance door; silent fishermen waiting for their meals, their eyes towards the sea outside; the young waitress (la Marie du port) at the bar serving ales and pernod. I stayed there only for few moments, the time of a lost image revealing, and when I opened my eyes I smiled warmly, comforted at the sight of prof. Augusto and prof. D.P. in the room, in the same position they had before. I wanted to hug them, to express my gratitude for being my fathers, for protecting me during that moment of peace.

picture 2. cooking spaghetti.

A Poet once said: I met a kid, he was sitting before a World map and, pointing a finger to a place with his eyes closed, stated: “Now I’m here”, and then, pointing to another place: “Now I’m here”, and so on. Some years later he grew adult, stupid, and really wanted to travel.
The wisdom of this vision of life impressed me, when I was younger (and many times justified my idleness). And I still let the stream of my imagination flow in a boring or a bad moment; but also I believe in the beauty of Memory, which can fully function only if it’s fed with real experiences.
Therefore I think that visiting the World is always worthy. At least for a future remembrance.

The oral session of the exams, here at the school, has just ended, and I have learnt and seen much: first of all, I improved my Portuguese and my general knowledge (how many things I have learnt about History, and in particular History of Africa these days!) by being everyday at the teachers’ desk, listening to the students’ defesas (presentations) and asking them questions (that’s what I need to do – everyday!); secondly, I felt useful, respected and appreciated for the care and accuracy that I put in my interventions and explanations. I must say that a wave of pride filled me when I talked with passion about Nelson Mandela and his powerful message of forgiveness to the students, sitting beside prof. Eduardo: for the first time I have felt the joy of being different, I, a white European telling to students and teachers of Africa the importance of a black man that fought against racial discrimination; insisting, trying to make them understand. A very strange kind of spiritual satisfaction, something I would call a taste of Enlightenment, most welcomed. I’m proud of you, Alessandro.When you will be able to leave vanity behind, perhaps you will be happy. Yes father.

picture 3. three girls presenting their work at the exams.

By attending the exams, I have also learnt something about elegance. And my idea is: as wisdom is the acceptance of one’s own personality, elegance is the capacity of recognizing one’s own most suitable dress. I have seen, this week, girls transformed into jewels of Persian beauty, unaware of their charm, wearing the traditional trajes with modesty; an expression of their own culture that made them shine as precious stones of all colours of Nature. How sad is to see the same girls everyday lift the thumb, or walk arrogantly, imitating a malice that doesn’t belong to them, when only one day before I fell in love with the purity of their smiles!

In Italy a primary school teacher made his fortune by publishing the essays of his pupils, showing how poetic and incredibly funny kids can be. “My” students are grown-ups, but their creativity seems to be still flourishing, if, during the exams, asked about the economy of Japan, Maria Fineza candidly answered that cars and porn movies are its main products; or, when asked about the differences between Catholic and Protestant dogmas, Madalena (by chance, daughter of a Protestant pastor) ended up talking about the menstrual cycle of the Virgin Mary.

picture 4. the teachers listen carefully to the students' presentations.

That’s it. We have to learn from everything.
I’m looking forward to being enlightened again.