Angola

The roads in Angola are strenuous. As we planned our itinerary for the fifteen day tourist visa we had purchased in DRC, we could never have expected that the trip would be so difficult. After the first few days of driving at 10 kilometers an hour, we realized that we had to continue driving across the country during each hour of daylight available. We heard reports from other travelers about pot holes, corrupt police and landmines. Fifteen days seemed like too short of a time to cross the country. Angola is huge. We counted the kilometers between the northern border post and the southern entry point into Namibia… 1800. The thirteen days we ended up spending in Angola were like an endless race against time. I was in a constant state of exhaustion. We were constantly shocked by the deterioration of the roads, which became horrendous condition in the middle of the country. If we didn't drive all day, every day, we would have overstayed our visa in the country. And the officials at the two Angloan embassies in Gabon and DRC that we had visited made us fear the bureaucratic nightmare of a visa extension.

So each morning, we were compelled to wake up at dawn. We would wake up in our tents in different villages each day. Sleeping in villages was our best option for making it through the country in the least amount of time possible. We figured that bush camping was out of the question in Angolabecause of the instability of the country and the danger of landmines. Besides, we couldn't have planned to stay in certain cities because we could never have calculated the time that it would take to get there. The road kept throwing us curveballs that way. We had no idea how long each stretch of road would take us. Sometimes, we would drive only 100 kilometers a day. But thankfully, each village we stopped in showed us great hospitality by allowing us to set up our tents under the watchful eye of the chief. Each day that we woke up, someone would cook breakfast while the others packed the car, or fetched the water, or did the dishes. We would take a photo with the chief and get on the road.

A few kilometers outside of the village, we would stop to use the bathroom. The villages we visited often didn't have facilities, so we would always opt for doing our business in the bush. But in Angola, where hundreds of people are killed every year by landmines, we often couldn't wander very far from the road. It is really very embarrassing to be surprised by villagers walking to their fields... After this morning ritual was finished, we would begin the drive. We took turns and switched off driving two or three times a day. Three or four hours of driving these roads and we would start to experience vertigo and exhaustion.

The roads were poorly maintained due to the forty year civil war that has made this country suffer more than any we have visited. Any new roads created during armistices had been destroyed by tanks during the new spurts of fighting. Even today, there are few passenger vehicles on the road because of their condition. The potholes in Angola are the worst we have seen, the sharp edges of the gaps in the asphalt punished our tires, tearing them to shreds. Being the rainy season, rivers had formed down the middle of the road, creating canyons that had the potential to break our axle with the slightest miscalculation. Driving the sides of the road was risky because if we slipped off, we could accidentally slip into a mine field.

Personally, I began to dread driving. The roads were too punishing. Parts of the car fell off, twisted and caved in each day. The floor was pushed up by giant rocks in the road. I began to fear that it would be on my watch that the car finally broke down and quit.

The villages we passed were poor. Supplies were hard to come by, markets scarce. The towns we drove through were like ghost towns. Businesses had folded. Buildings had collapsed. Houses shelled. Bullet holes in every government or administrative building. Bullet holes in houses. People living in half collapsed apartment buildings. But with the war over now for three years, the most hopeful residents had began to caulk and paint over these scars of the war. We passed many minefields along the way, some marked with signs and placards, others just with white flags. One time, we passed a sign that announced the site of a mass murder. The sign pronounced it the site of a genocide. Countless times, we passed destroyed hulls of tanks. Each sign and flag and tank was a grim reminder of the country’s past.

Angolahas a dark past. The people have been forced to be resilient. They are survivors. Imagine forty years of civil war. This is one of the only places in the world where the cold war got hot, and stayed that way until the cold war became irrelavant. Imagine Cuban, American and South African forces fighting over ideology on your soil. Communism, capitalism, apartheid and expansionism. Imagine trying to choose a side. Imagine weapons pouring in to encourage the murder of your countrymen. Imagine children picking them up. Imagine walking through a field while farming and having your leg blown off. The civil war ended with the death of the rebel leader Jonas Sabimbi. He had once been very good friends with Ronald Reagan, who had funded his movement against the establishment of a communist state. He became a very sick man with a lust for power so great that he prolonged the peace process in Angola for another fifteen years after the cold war ended.

Taking all this in was straining. But apart from the difficult setting, we felt very welcomed by the people that we encountered. Each night as darkness fell, we would prepare to camp. We chose our villages by size, the smallest being the most preferable, as kids can often create mobs with their curiosity. Nate would approach the village chief to see if he understood Spanish. None of us speak Portuguese very well, so even the simple communication of requesting to camp was sometimes challenging. Nevertheless, we were always welcomed with a warmth and hospitality that has been unsurpassed on this trip. As we settled into cooking and the night’s chores, we would speak with the men and women of the villages in French, Spanish, hand gestures or a mixture of all. We would offer the chief a plate of food. We would listen to the chattering of the villagers, who made us feel welcome by keeping us company around us. Finally, we would settle into our tents to sleep. The next morning, we were up at dawn again to repeat the same routine.

Even though Angola was difficult to travel as a tourist, it is home to many hopeful people. Not one person complained to us of their poverty, few begged us for money and assistance. On the contrary, Angolans are citizens of a brand new land that will hopefully find the lasting peace they have earned through countless years of struggle against slavery, colonial oppression and ideological warfare. The name of one village that we stayed in captures this hope vividly with its name: Terra Nueva (New Land).