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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
