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.