My first impressions

My first impressions from Angola comes from the moment I was informed about my OFECOMES destination. I was at a picnic in a mountain in Northern Cyprus when I got the news from my friend Manolo. After a few quizes and jokes he finally told me I had been given the city of Luanda. I got shocked! as I was expecting going to Sao Paulo. Luanda was far from my choices and as far as I knew from other people it was a very expensive country for expatriates with a not very good reputation in between Becarios Icex world.

I never though about quitting and It took me just one day to convince myself that Luanda was my destiny. It was a perfect place to me who always had wondered about living in Africa for a year; for me that I was interested in cooperation and development, for me that I wanted to learn a new language like Portuguese. I was interested in the culture. I just had my doubts about the professional interest of Angola as economic market but, as I know now, Angola is a fast developing country still to grow and to be reconstructed thanks to the budget that petrol reserves provide. Therefore Luanda was my destiny.

Since I got the great new till my departure date I spent a very happy summer (thanks people! Obrigado by the way) and people was even surprise when I told them I was happy about coming to Angola. After two months here, I can say I continue happy. I am not alone here, we are two of us plus the people we already met. I am leaving this experience with my colleague, and now friend Borja (well… he still has to play hard to be my friend, nao é?). I am conscious that this fact and the way we get on with each other makes everything easier once you arrive to a new country and especially so far.

But lets pass to the first Angolan in situ Impression: it started the 5ht of October in the way from the 4 de Fevreiro airport to the Villa de Cooperación Española, where we live. I prefer not to talk about the two hours we had to wait to pass the passports queue to get to the baggage area. Even though we have an especial passport, we were almost the last ones and we were lucky and glad to find our baggage still there. Once we got out, many Angolans were awaiting to get money from foreigners by bringing your suitcases 30 meters. There are no taxis in Luanda, but there is always someone arranged waiting for you (in our case a car from the Office driven by Nilton). Otherwise you have no chance to move. Back to that 4x4 car lift from the airport to our current home…I realised I was finally in Africa. When you see women carrying any kind of object (from food, to a suitcase) above their heads you notice you are not anymore in your glass world. When you see children running in between chickens, car tyres and dirtiness just on their barefoot, you realise something has changed from what you left 12 hours ago back in Europe. Not everything is like this image in Luanda (first because almost everybody wears at least sandals) but in some cases even more (like those parts of the city we still have not walked by).

That’s the first impact, second one can be one hour later when we get to a crazy shopping centre where everything is much more expensive than in Spain but were everybody seems to have more than enough to buy there. Then you see something misses in between those two images. “TIA”, This Is AFRICA where “the everything” and “the nothing” seems to be closer than nowhere else.