Already in Frankfurt

We've made it! Must say that I was a bit on the extra prayer side of teh story, as we were on board of an Air Bus and thanks be to our good God, nothing happened and it was a very uneventful flight.

This time, here in Frankfurt, we are not able to see Carlota. I didn't quite understand why we could do it when we went to Angola and now we can't, but never mind, the animal center here in Frankfurt is well known for being a very good one. We've received a message that she is fine, walking about in the space given to her, so life is beautiful for her too or so I want to convince myself, ha ha ha.

No plans as of yet for what to do once my life is settled in Panama City. I feel sorry that we left Africa before I had a chance to go up to Mombassa, Kenya and visit the orphanage that Alice and David are so involved with. I know, the world has become a small pea, so I'll have a future chance (soon I hope).

Two months later...

'Here we're... Joel and I, sitting in the lounge at the airport in Luanda, heading to Panama City! My heart... yes, my heart, I surely know I have one... worked hard today and it's now 8:35 PM and the day is almost over, which is good.

Today was a day of mixed feelings and a couple of tears. Of course, I'm completely happy to be moving to Panama City, really happy, I mean VERY happy. At the same time, I have this "lump" in my throat about leaving Angola! My tears were shed for them, for this people who love their country dearly, who are so proud of it... but wow, what a very difficult time a foreigner can have here. Wow, I repeat, life here is very difficult.

During these two months, I had quite a few touching moments, but 3 of them were stronger than others. The other day, Junior, the driver, was talking to me about his old Angola, the one before the war and all of a sudden, he turns his head back and tells me "oh Senhora Odila, this place was beautiful before the war" and it was like a 1000W bulb was being lit. How proud he was of his place that has been completely devastated during the war. Indeed, this very confused life one has here in Luanda, is surely the very best they can offer at the moment, it clearly can not be any better, when you take all elements into consideration.

Some Angolans are very aware life here is far, far away from ideal... I remember when I went to the Agriculture Ministry to have a document for Carlota's departure issued. When I got there, I was welcomed by this big African lady, wearing her vibrant outfit and pointing me to the right person for me to talk to, Senhora Marina. I then sat in front of Senhora Marina and calmly explain what I was needing. She listened carefully all I had to say and with a gentle smile on her face, she said: "You know you have a problem in your left eye, don't you? What is it, stress from Angola?" Oh my Lord, please help me here was all I could think. Yes, of course it was stress from this life in Luanda, but how could I tell it to her? She was being so sweet... how could I tell her so? I decided to smile back at her, hold both her hands that were laying on the table and said: "no, not at all, I have only met sweet and kind people over here, like you"... and on I went talking about Carlota's paper.

Today, Joel, Carlota and I were starting our pre-check-in when the local official vet came along to check her papers. He then asked: "going for good" and Joel replied: "yes yes" and he continued: "had enough of Angola?" Difficult moments these were... there is no need to hurt these people they have been hurt enough, but on the other hand, yes it's a relief to be leaving this place. God bless them!!

We also had the chance to meet some people who have already become part of the big Braga family. From day one, when we had the chaotic arrival, they have made sure we had a family in Luanda for all times. Again, a big and warm thank you to you who made us feel like old time friends!

Panama here we come, with a whole lot of enthusiasm to be moving there and as for me, COMPLETELY excited to be near, next door to my college days goal, post graduation in Pre-Colombian History!

An immense thank you goes to mom, dad and Mrs. Braga, Alice and David, Darling girl friends spread all over the world and gorgeous HK friends for being there for us throughout these 2 months. You were perfect and seriously kept us moving and breathing! Love and hugs to you.

Winds of change

Life is indeed fantastic! When you totally least expect, voila a big surprise knocks on your door. That is exactly what Joel and I are living at the moment, right here in Luanda... oh My God Almighty, please hold my heart beating steady, because I truly have the feeling it will "destrambelhar" at any minute (for those who don't understand Portuguese, a poor translation would be, "beat fast, then slow, then normal and immediately fast again and back to very slow and so on".

Joel was invited by an European Steel Trading company to be based in Panama City, overlooking the Latin America market. Although he was enjoying being back in the production side of steel, he is very happy to go back to trading.

When I first heard that the job offer was to be based in Panama, I was a bit scared on what concerns life in a totally unknown (to us) Country, Panama. However, after some days researching about life, facilities, housing and comfort in Panama, we were VERY well impressed. Such a big positive surprise, not to mention the loveliness of the Panamanian people, living round the corner from one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Canal and the easiness of going from beaches on the Pacific to the Caribbean ones in a matter of 2 hours! Our eyes will surely be in terrestrial heaven! Amen amen!

Last Friday was a major day on this new transition (as if we had already finished transitioning from HK to Angola) to Panama. We had to order a stop on our containers that arrived in Namibia on Friday and were due to be re-loaded on a ship here to Angola. For those of you reading here and whose business is not into Ports, you might not know that the port of Luanda has nothing less than a congestion of in average one freaking month to unload and or to load. That means that if our containers did get on that ship to Luanda, they would have to wait for about four weeks to be unloaded here, clear customs, after paying import tax paid, sit and wait somewhere (oops, not so good) and weeks later, clear customs again and be re-loaded onto a ship, eventually reaching Panama City.

Our moving company in HK was not succeeding in getting this stop done... so we had to speak to darling friends in Dubai, R & S T and ask them a big help. He, R, works for a big shipping company and voila, with a Midas touch from the Boss, life was good again and our containers are now in Walvis Bay, Namibia, awaiting for re-routing. Time zone does not help in these circumstances as well as local culture. Friday is the day off in Muslim Countries and Dubai is such a place (of course, it had to be this way, hey?) but dearest R realized our desperate situation and acted as if it were not his day off! Oh man, not enough words in any language to thank you!

I have already started the paper work for Carlota and the good news is that she will be able to enjoy home quarantine in Panama City, big relief!

Africa through lenses in Angola

Last Sunday, Joel and I went for a Photo Safari. This meant 6 hours driving all the way from our hotel to almost as far as Cape Ledo and back. Yes, yes, exhausting, specially for Joel, who was doing the driving, but totally worth it! We came back really happy with the shots. Carlota was on the back seat, sometimes scaring people who approached the car and saw her "smiling" with her canine tooth sticking out and sometimes sleeping. We also stopped a couple of times, so that madam could stretch her legs and empty her bladder. Great day indeed!

Would you say he is worried with the world crisis?

Bridge over the River Cuanza. According to History, this was the landmark the Gov. guaranteed the residents of Luanda some sort of safety during the war.

Going from where to where?

A fish stand on the road.

The Atlantic ocean seen from the "Moon Lookout"

Villages

Clothes, always very colorful!

Women take their houses on their heads!! Increadible!!

Some fun is good, after all it was a Sunday!

Are they both (top and bottom girls) just too GORGEOUS for words?

So sweet and so diligent, going somewhere.

P.S.

P.S. from my last entry: my Darling mother read it and reminded me of the real end to the that story I told you of the gorgeous perfect woman on the beach. Thank you mom, how could I have forgotten the very end to that story!?! Here we go.

So, just situating you again,... we were at Leblon's beach, together with the whole 11 million residents of Rio. If Bin Laden had decided to strike any other place of the city on that day, it would have been a total failure, because we were all there at the beach.

Then, that perfect human being, walks by or may be I should say, levitates by, and causes sensation to everybody who sees her, specially a man next to us, who says "as for me I don’t care for religion, skin color, height or political choices, all I care for are the emotions!"

Then.... a few minutes later, a person is seriously drowning out in the sea and life guards in helicopters are called. Again, we have a scene. The helicopter goes out to the sea and when it reaches the person, a basket and a life-guard are taken down by a cable, the drowning person is put into the basket and the life-guard "plugs" him/herself onto the cable and up they come in the air and brought to the sand of the already populated beach, where more life guards and paramedics were ready for action. So, whether or not the person in the basket is your best friend, your worse enemy or just unknown to you, you do stop whatever you are doing to watch it unravel before your eyes.

As the operation is getting to its end, the entire beach is now clapping the life guards and it became a big party and the talk of the moment.

Then, at this very point, what does my neighbour man say?

"Didn't I tell you? It's the emotions that count"!

So, from an anonymous man at the beach in Rio to you,

LIVE YOUR EMOTIONS THOROUGHLY!!!!

Following what is around me, that's cool!

For the past 12 years I've been living abroad - the longest stretch ever in my life away from every day life in Brazil. Other foreign posts were at the most 3 years long. Another way to say this would be: "For the past 12 years I've been part of a minority", which is ok, which is fine, but… after a while, it does get you tired. Here in Angola, I am still a minority, and like in Hong Kong, an obvious one, even before I opened my mouth and words came out in English with an accent. The accent bit also happens here in Angola but I’m experiencing a feeling I didn’t know I was missing.

I can now mingle with the crowd, I can now understand everything that is going on around me… wow, that is awesome!!

In South Africa I was never an enthusiast to learn the Afrikaans, as the language is kind of a dying one, spoken in multi lingual South Africa and Namibia. Then in HK I had 9 years of a constant dilemma. If I learned the very totally hard Cantonese, the language spoken in that part of China, I could only practice it in HK, Shenzhen and Guangzhou (and in most Chinese restaurants around the world, for that matter) and nowhere else. The obvious solution to this would be learning Mandarin, which is what MANY westerns are doing now. They move to Beijing and immerse themselves in learning the language, which is a bit easier than Cantonese, but still a freaking difficult language. Learning Mandarin would be ok when going into China, Singapore, Taiwan, parts of Malaysia, but not in HK as of yet, so there you have… a dilemma I lived for the past 9 years and because of it, I ended up never learning Cantonese or Mandarin.

In terms of getting around and making myself understood in HK, I had no problems at all, as HK, until “recently” a former British colony, is almost completely bilingual, English and Cantonese. However, in fact I did loose a lot, really a lot, not following stories that were happening around me on the streets, busses, trams, wet markets and so on. In South Africa it was the same, the geographical areas where Afrikaans is spoken, I never understood what was being said.

Having said all that, I must add that the fact that Joel, the girls and myself, had this very helpful “shield” called “speaking a language few people spoke in those places”, was good and helpful, I must confess. Here in Angola, Joel and I are having to practice extra care in what we say, because here people DO understand us, LOL!

Of course, along these years, we were caught in big surprises, like the time when the girls had a Cultural Evening at their school, Island School in HK. Joel and I were sitting chatting away just before it started, thank goodness thoroughly behaving in our comments, when this 100% Chinese looking lady, sitting in front of us, turns around and in the most perfect Portuguese asks smiling: “Are you Brazilians too?”

So, back to Luanda…, yesterday at lunch time, I had so much fun, “participating” in the conversation of two Brazilians, sitting next to my table. One of them had this really soft round accent, a typical intellectual accent from Rio. As they were not gossiping, I could follow it. They were talking about their passion for reading books, of how they “dive” into the pages of the books, of how they prefer the books to their versions on screens, of how you become close friends of the character and then… how they like to “save” the last pages of great books, so that they take longer to finish reading it and stay closer to their friends for longer. That is exactly how I feel when a book is good, I read 1 or 2 pages at a time, just to make sure “my friends” stay around for longer, LOL!

I remember another time when I had a good time listening to what was going on next to me. It was a Sunday, a very hot summer Sunday in Rio and we had gone to the beach. We were not the only ones who had chosen to go to the beach that Sunday, I think the 11 million residents of Rio were at the beach in Leblon that Sunday. Next to us, were 2 men and 1 lady and suddenly, out of the blue, this absolutely gorgeous woman, those that resembles a guitar way more than a guitar resembles a guitar, gorgeous soft skin, spectacular skin color of a mixed race lady and as we were in a beach, she was wearing a bikini only. She knew she was gorgeous, actually way more than gorgeous, she was perfect! So, this woman walks pasts us and one of the man next to us, stops talking and just looks at the goddess, his jaws dropped, he didn’t blink… I guess, he probably thought he was in some sort of terrestrial paradise… at this drooling point, the woman accompanying him says:
- “hey Pedro, respect me, I am here, right next to you”.
To which he replies, still drooling in the most soft voice ever,
- “as for me I don’t care for religion, skin color, height or political choices, all I care for are the emotions!"

So here you go, don’t do like I did. Do your best to learn the local language of where your living home is, making your experience in that place so much richer. I believe that learning and living the little details of a society, understanding street life makes life much more thrilling!

A weekend meeting new people and going to new places, oba!!

This weekend was again, a long one here in Angola, which for us meant Joel not working and a break in our routine. Oba!!

On Sunday, we were invited for lunch by Bere, one of our new friends. She is one of the dear people who offered us her place on that confused very first day we arrived. It was a beautiful sunny day and she suggested us to take swimming stuff to spend sometime in the pool and so it was. So, off we went and had a great day. We also met 5 other friends she also invited and the chat was fun and full of good info for our new life here in Luanda.

As we are in Africa and as she in a complex of houses only, one could see some animals that chill out in the complex as true embellishments… such a novelty for me, I must add, and I loved the idea of using local resources for decoration rather than imported resources… how cool is that?

Again, a language story… in Brazilian Portuguese. this chicken is called “Galinha de Angola” or Angolan chicken, but here, in Angola, it’s called “Galinha do Mato” or bush chicken!

That reminded me of the time we visited gorgeous and fabulous Vietnam. There I learned that the war we refer to as “The Vietnam War” in Vietnam it’s called “The American War”! I love when in life, I bump into these situations of a very different point of view about the same thing.

Anyway, coming back to our wonderful weekend in Luanda. Early Monday morning saw us heading to beautiful Cape Ledo, situated about 2 hours South of Luanda. We were invited to go by 3 dear people, Bernardo a friend from Hong Kong who is visiting his sister and brother in law who live here in Luanda. The weather was again gorgeous, the chat was also good and it was specially awesome to hear fresh news from HK.

Carlota, a surfer dog??

It was Carlota’s first time ever at a beach. She has already been to a swimming pool, a dam and streams, but never to beaches. She loved it, reeeeaaally loved it and barked when one of us disappeared in the waves… may be worried she was missing one on her pack? So cute, I must confess. She was totally exhausted on Tuesday, oba, it gave me a break in keeping her not bored, LOL!!

And last but not least at all... guess what is Joana's hobby? Scrapbooking, of course! I could not believe when she told us how she loves to print and make albums ... wow, her words were to my soul like Beethoven is to my ears!!

Remember I mentioned this area is really windy?