Reading Ahead

So That's How It's Done!

I never knew: how do you get a hooker when you're in town on business? Now I know. If you're a short, stocky, well-heeled middle-aged businessman, visiting the former colony on business and staying at the most expensive hotel in town, you have your lawyer do it. He's a local guy after all, knows the terrain. He'll find the best. Clean, that's the ticket.

This lawyer seems especially well-suited to the job. He's expensively dressed, his shining bald head reflects the lights in the ceiling. He has a thin goatee; his voice is loud. Before anyone in the party arrives he talks loudly on the cell phone, apparently intent on convincing the person on the other end through sheer volume that this man, this lawyer, this master of the universe is well connected, powerful; the pillars of the halls of justice quake as he passes. He gives his client, when he arrives, an effusive yet masculine greeting, ushers him to the table. They make small talk until the women arrive.

Five minutes later, two tall women, one with very dark skin and the other with a lighter, velvety brown complexion, sweep in on a dense cloud of perfume. They are lovely, even though everything,tasteful enough, is still just a little bit overdone: long hair (straight, shiny black; curly dark blonde), makeup, clothing. The pants are tight; the blouses are loose.

The lawyer looks around, snaps his fingers and says to the forty-something headwaiter, "Boy! Oh, boy! Why don't you come and take these lovely ladies' orders?" Charming. Really. The first woman, the leader, orders something. Our friend the lawyer again, playing his part to hilt: "Oh come, sweetie, why don't you order champagne?" The second woman does so; the first leans over to the waiter and, shyly, says "Would you please cancel my order? I think I will have the champagne after all."

The next stage in this little drama, playing out less than ten feet from my own table, is to establish bona fides: the conversation moves on to places we have all traveled, how much more we like Germany than England, Lisbon nice this time of year, so forth. They do the whole tour in a few condensed minutes. I think the unspoken message is, from the men: We're pretty rich and important, men of the world really, and so we're expecting, if not actually entitled to, something special tonight." From the women: "You see, we fit in here. We are special. You've done well to pay so much. Show us a little respect; keep up appearances. We're on a double date and in a little while we'll go upstairs." 

They are not, of course, equals in this transaction; the parties know this, too. This has been going this way pretty much since our ancestors left the African savannah and fanned out across the globe. The roles are clear enough.

My beef isn't with the women in this little drama. They're just trying to make it, I suspect, in a very hard place. If you haven't gone to school, aren't connected, there are many fewer choices here.

It's the men. Especially it's that lawyer. I mean "Boy"? What rock has this reptile been living under all these years?

Let Them Eat Cake

Went to the beach today. Spent $60 on the car, $25 on a tiny hamburger with fries--this is not a health-conscious culture, which requires a) a modicum of wealth and b) someone who gives a damn. Watching the descendants of the former colonists smoke at every opportunity, the local people are probably not going to get any inspiration from that source. Anyway, after that expensive lunch--could have been worse, there was an $85 buffet next door--went out onto the sand, got burned, got wet, got whacked in the ankle by a stone carried in the surprisingly strong surf; generally, had a good and somewhat "recreating" time.

I guess I don't have to feel guilty, and maybe I am looking harder than necessary for something to whine about but....

It had been nagging at me all afternoon, because at this beach club (a polite term for a place that limits who gets in and has guards to watch your stuff and shoo off the urchins and assorted vendors) the contrast between the haves and have-nots is pretty marked.

As you look around under the awnings, the beach umbrellas or the four-poster bedsteads draped with chiffon curtains, you see the wealthy and the outsiders, splayed in the sun, chatting about whatever, smoking cigarettes or cigars, and generally being themselves. There are Africans, including some from places other than Angola; Arabs; Europeans of various stripes, with a majority of Portuguese, and, well, me. I, too, have come there to enjoy the scenery, relax, eat a little (a very little, at these prices!) and toast in the hot winter sun. We are all going about our business, focused on our own little world; it seems so important, so real.

Around us circles a small but very present population of the rest of Angola: the vendors and hawkers, with everything from brass sculpture to VW models made from shiny wire to peanuts and bananas. There are a lot of dark-skinned kids, a little farther south along the beach, and they are having a blast.

There has to be a little bit of denial in all this. If it were a movie, sometime after the first forty minutes, a group of freedom fighters would crash the gate and take us all hostage. You wonder whether the beast of their civil war is really dead, or whether it is just sleeping, recovering; these folks must be tired, after all, after thirty years of bloodshed. But will the vast majority be tranquil forever?

What I'm struggling to grasp, articulate for myself, is compounded of two things.

First, on the way out in the car we passed a huge poster. Looking down upon us in silent benediction was the great leader, a kindly grandfatherly face. The message on the billboard read something like "Doing our best for one another and for the country is how we show that we are true Angolans." Now, everyone knows this fellow owns huge chunks of Brazil, both its land and its economy, so this is pretty rich. Everyone knows that he lives inside his compound, to all appearances becoming gradually more paranoid--his people have created a cordon of empty ground a certain distance from all the walls. Lots of people suspect is rise to power was, well, surrounded with unknowns. Who's kidding whom? And for how long?

The second was an odd juxtaposition that happened while I was waiting in the entrance for my driver. A group of women came through, on their way to the beach, and the one in the lead, a pretty, elegant Angolan, probably a very nice mother of two, looked as if she would be right at home on Michigan Avenue. The peanut vendor, however, a slight, tired-looking woman with a flowered sarong wrapped around her and her head covered by a knotted handkerchief--the basic Gone with the Wind field-worker costume--would most definitely have been out of place on the Miracle Mile. These two passed, with who knows what thoughts, conscious or not, about their different destinies--perhaps so accustomed to their roles that neither really even thinks about it much--and I just stood and watched and wondered.

Glimpses of the Streets

A BIG black Toyota Land Cruiser, racing by; there are a lot more of them than last time. 

Young boy wearing only a pair of black shorts; no shoes, no food; picking his way down a rocky path.

A tall woman, beautiful, her skin a deep shining black, her long straight hair pulled back and tied with a string; almond eyes and a smile the Mona Lisa would understand.

A man of indeterminate age, wearing old grey slacks and a shirt that must once have been white, now stained with rain and urine and dust and dirt and the shreds of all his meals; his hair is so matted with dirt and the scabs of old scars that it is almost a helmet; his beard straggles down as he glides by, surprisingly graceful, on his bare, calloused feet.

Dust, dust everywhere, clouds raised by the street sweepers who are never going to get ahead of their task; dust in my nose, my eyes; coughing; fumbling out a handkerchief.

Black dog, skinny, shifty-looking, limps along, one leg stiffly held up beneath him.

People: all sizes, shapes, colors. I find their faces are written in a language I don't really understand. When they smile, does it mean they feel the same inside as I do when I smile? When they stare, flat-eyed and still, what are they seeing, what are their thoughts? It is foolish to assume that the messages I think I see are accurate. So much to know, to learn.

A stewardess from some airline, lovely, a little overweight, her uniform pristine and impeccable, a colorful scarf around her lovely neck; which of us is more out of place on this dusty sidewalk?

I Could Have Done Without the Piglets

When you travel, you expect, and even look forward to, new experiences. New foods are an important part of that. So I should probably be more welcoming of this but I'm struggling.

There seem to be a lot of buffets in Luanda. They're not cut rate affairs, at least in the areas I'm visiting on this trip--this isn't Old Country Buffet. And they're pretty expensive: the lunch place, at the discounted price they give the National Bank, is $25 plus drinks; at the hotel, an altogether more lavish spread, it's $70 plus drinks.

(I'm still trying to get used to the financial scale of things in this poor, oil-rich country: the doorman at the bank hit me up for a handout--$25! Whatever happened to 'Hey buddy can you spare a dime'?)

So I went up to the bar the first day and pushed back the roll-top on the salver (I think it's called something like that) and there inside were three large fish, each just under two feet long, with herbs and greens as a garnish, great wide gashes in their sides and big round eyes, looking out at me with what appeared to be surprise. The top clattered a bit as I put it right back down and moved on to the next, which I had reason to believe might contain something from the vegetable kingdom. It did.

Two days later, I did the same thing; flat learning curve, I guess. I mean, I could probably have handled more shocked, roasted fish. This time, though, the curving silver top revealed two little suckling pigs.

They were arranged so their little faces looked out at the room, and, just now, at me. Their tiny ears were perked up, their round black eyes were open and excited, and if they hadn't been already partly eaten, they looked as if they might have up and trotted out on their tiny little feet.

I'm sorry: I ain't with that.

Angola again!

It sort of came out of the blue. The conversations and negotiations started way back in January, I think it was, and now here I am: writing at 2:48 in the morning, Luanda time.

It is SO different this time around. I don't mean the city is different, though it is--lots of construction, noise and dust almost around the clock it seems--but the experience is different.

Last time, four years ago, the time was spent with, and working for, smallholder farmers. I got to go out into the field, into some pretty funky places, and get a sense of what people were going through as they put their lives back together after the long civil war. I stayed in a pension with other people on missions like my own. I got to hunt mosquitoes every night before bedding down in a netted sarcophagus, feeling like I was hiding from a monster just outside the zippered opening. It was a much sportier existence: bad light, a cataract in one eye that screwed up my depth perception and made me so useless as a bug hunter you could almost hear the little bastards laughing through their pointy little needle-noses.

This time round, on the other hand, I'm in a luxury hotel--me and a few hundred business people and oil executives. Every time I get in the elevator it smells of a different kind of cologne. No mosquitoes...well, all right, that part's pretty nice. Room service. Rolls and butter for $8 in the restaurant. Cold lobster salad. Car and driver to pick me up in the morning and drop me off at night.

I work each day, have done for the last four days now, with a group of capable people at the national bank, We're trying to come up with an information campaign that might encourage people to open bank accounts. It's a problem, really, and not just for the tax authorities.

But my point is that the hard realities of life here rarely intrude. I don't go out on my own because the city is, it hardly seems possible, even less safe. I'm insulated, cosseted, overcharged for stuff. There is, though, the occasional reminder. One reason more people don't have bank accounts is they have no identity papers; the government is just getting around, after the long, hard years, of issuing these things. To get papers in the past, you had to have a birth certificate; but if you weren't born in the hospital you weren't registered, and many if not most people are NOT born in hospitals; or if the town center where you lived was blown up during the war, there are no records anyway.

The other problem is, nobody knows who owns the land. Waves of fighting surged over this land time and time again, from all directions, and each wave left the driftwood of displaced people scattered across the landscape. If there was once title vested in someone--which, after the colonists left, was rare enough since they didn't permit much ownership by black Africans--chances are it was a man, and chances are he was killed.

The old soap factory, home to a humming community of the dispossessed and the violent in their thousands, cooking inside the roofless walls and breeding God knows what future problems, has been closed. The president says it's because his mansion isn't secure, so everyone inside a wide perimeter has had to move out. One imagines this was not a compassionate change. And it's curious: the soap factory anchors one end of the great corniche that arches around the bay, just yards from the shining blue water and only a few blocks west from new luxury condo buildings; and there are cranes being assembled over the ruinous site. Security?