Reminiscing...

With two weeks to go before we leave Luanda, I've been thinking about my three years here - experiences, regrets, people we've met along the way, etc.

Awesome things about living in Angola:

• Great weather
• Great beaches & marine life
• Great seafood
• Beautiful unspoilt landscape
• Travel around southern Africa (i.e. Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Tanzania)

What I learned from the Angolan experience:

• To appreciate the simple pleasures in life
• To re-evaluate my immediate reaction is about what is 'normal'
• (A little) Portuguese
• Greater appreciation/insight into African culture (have you ever watched any Nollywood, i.e. Nigerian dramas?)

Regrets:

• Could've made more of an effort to socialise
• Should've travelled around Angola more - didn't make it to Namibe
• Wish we had discovered the Viking Club sooner - they organise really good field trips
• Doing more volunteer/charity work
• Should've learnt past/future tense in Portuguese

Memorable events:

• Hearing what felt like the whole of Luanda roaring when the football team qualified for the World Cup in 2005...every car was honking through the streets and people were throwing plastic chairs in the middle of the road.
• Spending a weekend in Rio Longa, a few hours south of Luanda. In the middle of the night, we watched turtles coming in from the sea to lay and bury their eggs.
• Road trip into eastern Angola with a group of friends in 2008. Interesting scenery along the way. Visited the Pedras Negras ('Black Rocks') and the Kalandula falls.
• Going to Kissama Park only to find the jeep had broken down. It finally got started the morning we were due to leave and broke down three times during the game drive in the middle of the bush.
• Spending the weekend at the Kimbo chalets at Mussulo. After a 30-minute boat trip from the boat club, we spent the afternoon swimming and collecting cockles. Had BBQ fish and chicken for dinner and just chilled. Late Sunday afternoon, back home, we boiled the cockles and made kuey teow goreng kerang and froze the rest for later.
• I had a friend who was car-jacked because she honked at a car in front of her in a traffic jam on the Ilha. The passengers got out with their AK-47s, pulled her out of her car and drove away. She got the car back a while later - the seats had bullet holes. She thinks the police shot at whoever was in the car to retrieve it. This friend also accidentally ran over a neighbour's little dog one morning on her way to work. (For some reason they kept this dog in the basement parking area). Although she apologised profusely, she had to live with a lot of weird vibes from her neighbours for a year.

My personal take on Angola:

Living in Africa has changed me, although I still struggle to put into words exactly how. For me the biggest challenges of being in Angola were having to rely so much on the internet for work and being dependent on other people to get around.

Otherwise, I didn't mind that there wasn't much to do after a while, or that you couldn't get everything. Our apartment had a big balcony and a good view of the sea because we were on the seventh floor. Even during the summer, there was a nice cool breeze.

I will miss the party atmosphere during the weekends (and weekdays) ... because of the sunshine, music, smell of seafood on the BBQ, the beach clothes that people wear - even to work. Open a window and you'll hear Kizomba music, which I love because it has a feel-good quality and makes me want to dance.

2005-2008 was certainly an interesting time to be in Angola - it was a few years after the war had ended and at a time when there was so much international attention on Africa (maybe that was because I became more aware of it). With each passing year in Luanda, we saw so many changes because of the economic boom.