Road Tripping - Is Home Where The Hearth Or Heart Is? - Angola Part 6

Our heads have turned, and it’s time to head back to Luanda, where we’ll collect our updated passports. Once we've done our paperwork, stocked up on groceries and filled our tanks with very affordable Angolan fuel, we'll head out to conduct our final investigation in Angola, one of the top 10 countries we've explored.

The series of photographs I’ll show you (in no particular order) in this blog post will highlight the roads we travelled on and the scenes I found interesting along the way.

Although I might be a voyeur on this journey, I have discovered that we are living our lives and not existing in others’.

A few things came to mind while I was editing and sorting through my photographs, and one of them is my point of view and an answer to one of the readers of my previous blog’s statement. He said they find it interesting to note that I am always optimistic about Africa and the places we’ve seen.

Yes, I am positive; you see, I am a passionate African, particularly about our people. In a world where poverty is often frowned upon and poor people are frequently criticised for their inability to improve their circumstances, I see the richness of their culture, people’s determination, courage, and strength of character. I envy their joy, their acceptance and the sense of community, loyalty to family and friends—the respect they have for their elders, peers, and leaders (tribal and community leaders).

Of course, at its heart, there are contradictions, and it would be naive, unfair, and brutal to brush them aside; however, this does not allow us to minimise the value of innocent lives well lived.

Children in Mozambique cry while watching a 1980s soap opera; they wail when their hero falls on hard times, and they cheer when the heroine gets married. The grandiose houses, stretch motorcars and haute couture costumes are all part of the fluff; what they see are the human stories, and they are deeply touched by it. Ultimately, our humanity is all the same.

Happiness, contentment, love, friendship, family, security, community, health, illness, birth, and death are all universal experiences that everyone shares, regardless of class, status, stature, education, or wealth.

Butch and I endeavour to see things with our hearts and then, what we experience is pure gold.

But we must acknowledge our privilege by comprehending precisely what it entails in the context of being impoverished, marginalised, and disadvantaged. If we cannot, or choose not to do so, we shall remain ignorant, unsympathetic, and insufferable.

Trevor Noah made an insightful observation, and the gist of it is that when we gave up on community spirit, family, and intergenerational care, we started paying for it, e.g., now we pay for housekeepers, au pairs, homes for the aged, step-down clinics, healthcare professionals, and teachers of family and community histories, stories and traditions.

 

I could imagine all these highly skilled “professions” still taking place in the rural villages and homesteads we passed on our journey. In less advantaged communities and rural areas in Africa and India, these most essential roles are still carried out by the community. 

These are just observations. I am neither a politician nor an economist, nor a wise one. But I know in my marrow that every life has value, is valued and is valid.

We wonder what the NGO’s get up to and achieve besides driving around in the latest and greatest Land Cruisers, probably swanning away at cocktail parties and Embassy dos while the marginalised, poor majority figure out the next meal or wait patiently in a queue at a rural clinic with a very sick child strapped to the mother’s back while politicians and the world’s wealthiest are in a hissy fit, schoolyard scuffle.

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The road we travelled on was a mixed bag of good, bad and horrible. Sometimes tarred, but mostly gravel, or somewhat earthy, and we could imagine that in the rainy season, these roads would be horrific mud and clay slippery slides to negotiate.

Potholes are our nemesis, and we avoid them like the plague. One crater in the road was particularly special, and thankfully, we missed it—a hole with a lid.

After 10 days away, we spotted the Maersk truck with its back wheels still in a deep ditch; I’m sure it will be there for the foreseeable future. I wonder what’s happened to the cargo.

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The landscape, so familiar, yet so magnificently different, the trees, the forests, the thick duvet of clouds cover the sun yet we are hot and clammy in the tropical heat, where the sun only highlights its position in a lemon glow.

We returned to our previous campsite along the beach for the night. Another good sunset, and in the morning, we set off in the hope of reaching Luanda within a day.

The route we’re taking is the same one going up to the Congo River. We pass through villages, towns, and districts such as Noqui, Luvo, Mbanza Congo, Kiende, Quiximba, Tomboco, Kinzau, Nzeto, Musserra, Ambriz, Tabi, Barra Do Dande, Caxito, Funda, N’Gola Kilwanji, and Luanda.

My view from the other side of the road, remembering that we drive on the right in Angola, makes all the difference to my perspective, and at times it’s hard to believe I’ve been here before, and what’s more, not too long ago at that: different views, different perspectives.

Most towns have a market alongside the road, and when it’s time for tea, we stop for something to eat. The staple seems to be a small, fried doughnut rolled in coconut, and we find them to be just the right size and perfectly bite-sized.

In these tropical climates, fruits and vegetables are available all year round, with produce such as avocados, bananas, pineapples, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, root vegetables, and cabbage being multiseasonal crops.

Butch had read about a coastal spot called Musserra, and we decided to go and investigate. When we needed it most, the Tyre Pressure Monitor went AWOL.

Initially, the road was in good condition, but it soon deteriorated and became an overgrown trail. At one point, we had to straddle a donga, a meter deep, with thin paths on either side. The task was mine to show the way, and it took us a good hour to make it down to the beach.

The only person around was a naval guy on guard duty at this maritime post. He was delighted to have us for a few minutes, then let us off the hook, and off we went to stretch our legs along the coastline.

We could see the attraction of this spectacular stretch of sand, and should we ever make it back there, I could spend a night or three wild camping at a spot near the water’s edge.

At 16h30, we clocked in at the Clube Naval in Luanda, just in time for tea and biscuits or Pasteis de Nata.

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I have just finished reading “Poor” by Katriona O’Sullivan, and in her biography, she says, “ Being poor controls how you see yourself, how you trust and speak, how you see the world and how you dream.”

Poor can be an attitude, a state of mind, a deliberate lack of insight, empathy, an apathy of heart, thought, and, most importantly, spirit. We found an abundance of acceptance, joy, peace, gratitude, and generosity in the most unlikely places and situations. I can't walk away from our experiences unchanged.

Whenever we met a local person on our travels, we’d be asked where our family home was located. When we said we didn’t have a family home, we were gawked at and seemed to lose credibility when we added that the Honey badger was our home. Ridiculous, their body language said loud and clear.

This elicited the same response every time, regardless of our location. “No. You must have a family home. Where will your children go home to?” we would be asked.

While we travelled, I had no desire to be anywhere else, and the Honey Badger filled all my nesting instincts and yearnings. Now that I am “home”, I concur that I have a deep desire to have a family home again. This swallow needs her nest, I need my tribe seated around my dining table.

All the Adobe homes, whether made of brick and mortar, mud, wood, iron sheeting, or grass, are family homes, and when a child, family member, or grandparent needs to come home, no matter where in the world they live, what their status is or financial situation, one of these dwellings is home and home is where the heart and hearth is.

I haven’t read “The Salt Path”, but I believe Raynor Winn finds the load of their dire circumstances lifted and lightened as they walk, hike, and discover themselves, nature, and those around them.

If we hadn’t done this, there’d always have been things we wouldn’t have known, a part of ourselves we wouldn’t have found, resilience we didn’t know we had.”

― Raynor Winn,  The Salt Path.

(I have just read an interesting article published by the BBC about the very charismatic 37-year-old Capt Ibrahim Traore: "Why Burkino Faso's junta leader has captured hearts and minds around the world."  These are the men and women that Africans look up to for peace, stability, and a better future.  Marianne Thamm says, " When I engage with young black Africans in Cape Town, be they born in Limpopo with mothers from the Eastern Cape, whether they are from Zimbabwe or Zambia... this man is pulling together a vision... Have USAID, NGO's, and Missionaries, with all their resources, empty promises, knowledge, hindsight and good intentions, failed Africa?)

Until we meet again.