In case you’re wondering, N’Gola is the name of a beer brewed and sold in Angola. Angola holds the distinction on our trip of being the most difficult country to get into – with only a 5-day Transit visa; and to leave – extend the visa to have time to get out. We sang custom lyrics to “Hotel California” each time the truck broke down: twice for a blown radiator and once for a seized engine due to overheating. Each time we were able to make repairs well enough to move on.
Angola holds another distinction – the country with the most abandoned military vehicles: tanks, a helicopter, personnel carriers, and anti-aircraft guns. The Chinese are building roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. The old Marxist party, MLPA (Movement of the People’s Liberation of Angola), the losers in the civil war, must have been well provided for in the ceasefire because their campaign headquarters in each city are well-maintained, painted, and give away swag: t-shirts, scarves, hats, umbrellas, flags, and cloth to make your own clothes from. In some small villages, the MLPA building is the most prominent structure.
The major cities we passed through: the capital, Luanda, and Lubango were very modern – almost Western, but the mixture of absolute poverty, garbage heap piled slums along side skyscrapers, marked them as recent constructions. Angola was the first African country where I saw a 120 km/hr speed limit sign. Angola is a country that solidified my final prescription on “How to Fix Africa?” Don’t do anything – Africa will fix itself. No Western powers can enforce their standards, morals, ethics, and ideals on these people – any that have tried are run out with their tails between their legs.
Mud-brick, grass-thatched huts, surrounded by wood palisades of stripped tree branches planted in the soil one against the other, lined the country roads. The country is so crowded it was sometimes difficult to find a campsite, and even when we did, there were always curious locals. During 10 days in Angola, we only stopped at one river for bathing because all the other ones were either heavily polluted or crowded with locals, and only a few of us would bath there. However, squeaky clean modern gas stations with clean running water were prevalent, and we could use the porcelain furnished bathrooms in the large supermarkets.
Five members of our group showed signs of hysteria from the long stress: broken down vehicle, no bathing, running out of food, obvious past militancy including land mines, shell casings, bullet holes in buildings, and worried anticipation of future events. Two members left the tour when the truck was stranded for the second time; another began storing large amounts of water; one person became viciously rude, another paranoid, and two others fell very ill and quit participating in group activities. These symptoms mostly disappeared as we crossed the border into Namibia.
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