To Taca

Two weeks ago we finally started with some more field work. We contracted a local NGO to help us do a Participative Rural Diagnostic in the areas where we are going to implement the project. Last week we worked in Taca, in the south west of Gambos municipality. Taca is ratgher isolated. For those who would like to go there too, here are the directions: Travel to the end of the world. When you get there, continue on due east. Turn south at the first baobab you see and then ask the people you meet for directions. Alternatively, use Google earth and zoom in on the coordinates 13°34‘ East and 17°57“ South.

Taca village consists of an unmanned healthpost, a police station in a derelict house left by the Portuguese, a borehole and a very small store that only sells cheap booze. We set up camp next to the health post. From Taca village, we went to visit the remoter parts of the community of Taca. The people we met live mostly from livestock. They occasionally exchange a cow, goat or chicken for salt, cereals and soap. Since we did not bring salt, cereals or soap, we had some difficultulties buying chickens or goats for our meals. The first two days we ate tinned fish and salted fish. The third day we met a traveling salesman from Lubango who had traded salt and soap for chickens and we bought chickens from him.

The traveling salesmen that visit the area are both a blessing and a curse. They bring much needed cereals, etc, but since there is a great demand for meat in cities like Lubango and Luanda, salesmen offer high prices for cattle. This increasing demand has promoted cattle raiding in the area. Raiding cattle was always part of rural life in Taca, but it used to be nephews stealing a few head of cattle from their uncle to pay the bride price and start of their own herd. Since the nephews would inherit those animals anyway, and since they used to visit their uncle a few days later to offer gifts, this was viewed as an advance of the inheritage rather than theft. But nowadays, some youngsters steal the cattle from whoever they can and sell them to the travelling salesmen for money or booze. Some even go as far as Chibia to sell the stolen animals and buy food, luxury items and booze.

The few thiefs that have been caught and sent to the police, are usually back within a few days because the law regarding cattle theft is based on the old customs and therfore views cattle raiding as an internal family issue and not as theft. Frustrated cattle owners are now threathening to take the law in their own hands and the punishments they intend to meet out are very harsh (gouging out eyes or cutting off a foot). For the time being things will probably not get that far, and we are looking at ways to help change this situation. One solution suggested by the people themselves was to set up a local trade post that would buy cattle. That way, people can control who is selling what.

Water and pasture are the main focus of our project and the lack of water was usually mentioned as the main problem (just before cattle raiding). We have identifed several activities we can develop in the near future to help improve this situation. There is an old dam, built in 1968 that can easily be repaired with relatively little means. Furthermore, a concrete 1 million litre water storage was built, but that also leaks and can also be repaired with relatively little means. Not only are the repairs fairly cheap, they are also simple, so we can involve the communities in the work and hopefully train them to do future repairs themselves.

For those who do not know me: The guy with the chunky black wrist watch is me.

Living Comfortably

Somewhere in the first weeks I mentioned that my flat was rather empty. I rented it unfurnished and did not bring any furniture. All I had in the beginning were a bed, a few pots and pans and a chair borrowed from the neighbour. That has changed now. I am now the proud owner of a table with four chairs, three shelves, a gas stove (with a bottle of gas) and a stainless steel sink. The latter was attached to the drains by means of new pipes because the old ones are blocked.

Not straight away because the owner of the building company was away and the foreman had no money or inclination to do anything about it. Judging from the increase in cockroaches in my house, the old pipes were mostly blocked with live cockroaches. Not my favorite pets, cockroaches, and they are not very interesting company either. They seem to be mostly interested in drains and their contents, a topic that does not interest me very much. In the end I decided to use a bit of insecticide to sort the problem out until the drain was properly blocked.

The shelves are not so sturdy Chinese bolt-them-together-yourself items. However, the People’s Republic of China did suprise me: all nuts and bolts were present. As were assorted dents and scratches. Not to worry, the shelves are good enough to store a few books (in the living room), pots and pans (in the kitchen) and clothing (in the bedroom).

The stainless steel sink was needed to replace the marble one. Marble is very beautiful, but also rather soft and therefore not very suitable for a sink. The one in the house was cracked, chipped and had deep gauges in it. The least damaged part was polished and turned into a coffee table. That looks quite good. Now I needa a comfortable chair to sit in and I am all right.

Apart from the obvious ones, the increase in furniture has another advantage: the house does not echo so much when I am talking on the phone or playing some music. All I need to make my domestic bliss complete is a small fridge for some milk and beer.

PS: I mentioned the gas bottle because that item was actually more expensive than the stove. Gas bottles are scarce and can only be found on the black market, where the standard 11 kg butagas bottle is sold for about 300 US.

Intermezzo in Namibia

Last week I had to spend a few days in Namibia. I had laready extended my ordinary visa twice, so now I hadf to leave Angola to get a new ordinary visa. This new ordinary visa can also be extended two times but I do hope to get my work visa before I have to yet another ordinary visa.

According to one source getting a visa in Windhoek was not at all easy becasue officially you have to apply in your country of residence. According to others it was a piece of cake and you could get your visa in is little as 20 minutes. This last estimate seemed somewhat optimistic to me, why would it take three weeks in Holland if it could be done in 20 minutes in Windhoek.

So last Sunday I went to the airport. Without a ticket, becasue the flight was fully booked, but accompanied by the sister in law of one of the employees of TAAG (Angolan Airline). That went very smoothly. After an introduction and a short discussion with his collegues, an empty seat was found and I got myself a ticket to Windhoek. And no, I did not have to sit on the lap of the pilot.

Windhoek on a Sunday afternoon is almost lethally boring. It must be even quieter than the smallest bible-belt town in the US, or anywhere else. The streets are deserted and very quiet. Not a shop is open and most restaurants were closing or about to close. I only just got myself a meal.

On Monday I submitted my application for a visa and was assured that I would receive it the next day, or Wednesday at the latest. So I bought a ticket to Lubango for Thursday and then had to keep myself amused for another three days. Not easy because I am a fairly efficeint shopper. Buying the clothes I needed, took about an hour. I bought most clothes in a shop giving large discounts because they were closing down. Spending the money I saved there on books took another two hours and that was about that.

For those who know Nelspruit, Windhoek will present no difficulties or surprises. All restautrants spoil perfect meat by smothering it in a creamy sauce and half of the shoppers speak Portuguese. Because Windhoek is a lot cheaper than Angola, many Angolans do their shopping in Windhoek. This was also fairly obvious at the airport: some passengers needed three luggage trolleys to transport their bags to the check-in counter.

By the way, Windhoek is not much more exiting on weekdays than it is on Sundays. I experienced only two moments that were not excruciatingly dull: Once when I was almost hit by a car because I forgot that they drive on the wrong side of the road in Namibia. The next day I surprised myself (and quite a few bystanders) by nearly hitting a pickpocket. Unfortunately he retired just too quick and I only managed to tell him to go forth and multiply (but not in those words). Anyway, the b*&%$erd left emptyhanded.

The second field visit

Last week we came back from a two day visit to Bibala, in Nambibe Province. Also to make some preparations for the DRP. But where conflicts about land are the main problem in Gambos, In Bibala access to water appears to be the biggest problem. All rivers are temporary and most chimpacas (dams) have silted up.

Bibala is somewhat more developed than Gambos too. Whuile Gambos is a forgotten municipality of Huila Province, Bibala appears to be one of teh more important municipalities in Namibe Province. Bibala village is already covered by the cell phone network and has a bank with an ATM and a teacher’s college. On the down side, there was no cold beer to be had at all.

In Bibala you also see students in western style clothing mingling with youths dressed traditionally. As sson as you leave the village, almost everybody is dressed the traditional way. Bibala is inhabited by communities with different cultures and as these are intermarrying, they are mixing and exchanging cultures. Polygamy is common, even more so than in Gambos, most of the men have two wives.

But the ‘rules of inheritance‘ are slightly different. If a man inherits five cows from his uncle from others‘ side, the sons of his sister will inherit five cowes from him, as in a matrilinear society. But if the man has managed to increase the herd during his life,the extra cows are inherited by his own sons, as in a patrilinear society.

Another interesting tidbit of knowledge is that ownership of cattle is not restricted to men. We have heard that at least some widows own cattle. Not that these women advertise this, so far it is tolerated rather than accepted.

Finally, people who herd cattle are not necessarily the owners. Most cattle owners have distributed part of their animals to several herders probably to spread the risks/hedge their bets. In return for their herding services, the herders get the manure, the milk and can use the animals for ploughing. Some also receive one calf per year for their work, allowing them to start building their own herd.

Bibala appears to be an interesting example of cultures in flux. Increased contacts with different cultures, possibly due to the civil war, may have caused these changes. I know that traditions are not set in concrete, but it is interesting to see this happening here.

The first field visit

Last week I stayed in the field for a bit longer than just half a day to say hello to important people. We (my colleague and I) spent two days in Os Gambos to prepare the Participatory Rural Diagnostic. For those who d not know what that is: It is a collection of methods to obtain a lot of qualitative information about an area. We discuss lots of issues with the people who live there, such as who does what and where, who is importnat and why who is rich and who is poor and how do you know, we talk about the past and together we draw a map of the area that indicates which natural resources are where. And of course we talk about the problems, let people prioritize the problems and talk about the cause of those problems. We talk to women and men separately.

To get some information beforehand, we talked to a biased sample f the inhabitants: those people who were trained as community based animal health workers by NGO’s. Although biased, talking to them does give you a good idea of what is happening and how large the gap between statistics and reality is.

In one case, the gap is unfortunately very small. Allmost everybody has many children, often more than 5 sometimes up to 10. And that suggests that some of the statistics are correct. And thos statistics show that over 50% of the populatio is younger than 14 years, about 10% is 15-20 years old and the remaining 40% is evenly spread over the ages 21-80. You do not need to be a mathematical genius to realise that the child mortality is frighteningly high.

The most probable cause is the lack of safe drinking water. In large parts of Os Gambos, rivers and manmade shallow dams are the only sources of water. Both are used by people as well as livestock and not just for drinking. So hygiene is awful and diarrhoea probably is a big problem and likely to be an important cause of child mortality.

The society is matrilineal and polygamy is accepted. Matrilineal means (in this case?) that the inheritance goes to the sons of the sister of the deceased. When she marries, a woman will move into the house of the man. Polygamy is not unusual, about 25% of the men have two wives and a few have three or even four wives

Many pepole, especially women, still dress in traditional clothes. That means a cloth around the waist and bits of string with beads and bones around the upper body. Women also cover their hair with a thick cake of yellow clay. I have not yet dared to make portraits yet, maybe later, when I know peopple better.

How to get a work visa

First, get yourself a contract with a company. The company will then write a letter of invitation in which they invite you to work in Angola and promise the Angolan Government that they will pay for your return flight. If you work in the development business, that will not be enough, you will also need an invitation from the ministry that is involved. Make sure that your company has an official stamp to stamp over the signature. Paper with just the company letterhead is not official enough, Angola loves stamps.

This sounds easy, but that is because I have not told you everything yet. The company invitation has to be authorized by the Angolan Ministry of Administration. And the Ministry of Administration only authorizes the invitation of the company after it has been notarized. Angolan notaries only notarize when you present the letter together with a copy of the registration of the company in Angola, mentioning the person signing the letter as director or partner. If the company is not registered in Angola, the letter has to be recognized by the Angolan embassy in the country where the company is registered. And that means a translation, see below.

In case you get an invitation from a ministry, be aware that the invitation has to be authorized by the Director of Human Resources before it can be authorized by the ministry of Administration. In the case of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Director of human resources only takes orders from the secretary general. So your contact in the ministry has to humbly request the secretary general to authorize the authorization of your invitation so that it can be authorized by the ministry of Administration (are you still with me?).

These invitations have to be submitted to the Angolan Embassy in your country, together with other documents such as your CV, your contract, a declaration of good conduct and a declaration that you are healthy and more specifically do not suffer from any contagious diseases. All these documents have to be translated in Portuguese, the official language of Angola, by a registered translator. The translations have to be notarized by the district court where the translator is registered, the notarization of the district court has to be recognized by the Ministry of justice of your country and the recognition of the Ministry of Justice has to be authorized by the ministry of Foreign Affairs of your country. Most of these institutions are open to the public from 9 to 12 and are at least three hours travel from each other, so count at least a day for each step.

Now, if you are have already visited Angola, even if only for a week, perhaps to get those invitations for example, you might be very unlucky. Because the Angolan Embassy in your country might insist on a declaration of good conduct from the Angolan Ministry of Justice, which you probably forgot to get while you were busy getting the authorization to get your invitation authorized for authorization.

When you got all the documents, managed to persuade the embassy not to insist on the declaration of good conduct from the Angolan ministry of Justice and have parted with a fairly substantial amount of money, you will receive a sealed envelope that you have to hand in to the Ministry of Strangers and Migration In Luanda. The embassy will stress several times that you are not allowed to open the letter. It is very important that the letter arrives sealed in Luanda.

When you arrive in Luanda, you go to the ministry of strangers and migration, to container 6 to be precise. You see, the building where the migration services were housed is being repaired they are working temporarily for a fairly long time in containers. The envelope will be ripped open and the civil servant will then hand it back to you telling you to make three photocopies of the official letter by the embassy that politely requests the minister to process your application and come back. Once you have done that, you receive the original back with a stamp and the assurance that your work visa will be ready in eight days. Don’t hold your breath, I am now waiting for over thirty days and the average seems to be 90 days.

The Elections

Just over a week ago, elections were held in Angola. The last elections, in 1992 had resulted in a return to civil war. So although eerybody was telling everybody else that this would not happen this time, there was some nervousness in the air. We (foreigneers) were told to stay away from large gatherings and such, because you never know when a clash between MPLA and UNITA supporters might happen.

In the end, the election campaigns went rather smoothly and there have been very few incidents, as far as I know. On election day, all was quiet. I live right infront of a voting station so I can tell you first hand that there were, at least there, no problems whatsoever. That is to say, I suppose that the people manning the voting stations found battling boredom quite a challenge in the second part of the afternoon. In the early morning, there was quite a queue, but by mid-morning anyone wanting to vote could do so withi 5 minutes and in the afternoon no-one turned up.

The results are already out and there was really no contest: MPLA won more than 80% of the vote. The one thing we will never know, though is which percentage of teh people went voting. No-one knows how many people live in Angola, with estimates from 14 to 20 million inhabitants and therefore it is hard to say whether 4 million votes is good or disappointing. Assuming that there are about 16 million people of whom about half are eligible to vote, I suppose 50% is not a bad show.

Which leads to the question why so many people voted for the MPLA. Because there is enough rumour and talk about corruption, Luanda is not exactly safe and there is a lot of poverty. Quite enough reason to expect a somewhat closer result than the one we got. But the other side is that life in Angola has become a lot better in the last four years. The government no longer has to spend vast amounts of money on the armed conflict and the oil price has been sky high for the last four years. So there is a lot of money around to spend on infrastructure, health and education. And even if there are doubts about the transparency of the system, the fact is that at least thousands of miles of road have been repaired, schools and health posts are being built, new affordable housing is constructed and new wells and boreholes are sunk. So perhaps people just voted for the devil they knew.

Living in Lubango

I live in Lubango, the capital of Huila Province. And living in Lubango is mostly dusty and expensive. I am nowing paying more rent for a two-bedroom apartment than we paid for a three bedroom house on the waterfront in Inhambane, or for an apartment in the better parts of Maputo. My apartment is on the first floor and the soccer pitch for amateur clubs is right in front of my house. Unfortunately it is about to be repaired (well, rebuild is probably a better description), so there are no official matches being played at the moment. The apartment is not very far from our future office and Ludger, who also works for GFA lives just around the corner. The bakery is 50 m up the road and around the corner there is a small shop with very irregular opening hours that sells daily needs (canned tuna, bottled water, soap and beer). So most necessities are available most of the time.

The neighbours are friendly, and love their music, one of the sons is a DJ and another is engaged in the sale of bootleg CDs (orders, anyone?). But they usually do not play their music very loud and when they do, usually not for very long. It is not half as bad as the continuous TV-noise we had to endure from our neighbours Santiago.

Otherwise, Lubango is a standard provincial town with a climate that is similar to that of Johannesburg or Harare. The city is situated at 1700 m above sea level and on three sides surrounded by an escarpment that rises to over 2000 m.and annual rainfall is about 700 mm. So it does not get too hot and there are few problems with malaria. On the other hand, it does cool down at night, especially in the austral winter (June – August).

On one end of the escarpment surrounding the city, the Portuguese built a miniature of famous Cristo Rei of Rio de Janeiro in concrete. Even the miniature is still impressively large, but that is about all that can be said for it. In my opinion it does not have any artistic merit. The expression on the face is rather wooden, something which, I suppose, could be considered quite an achievement if you are working concrete, but the result is still not very appealing. Luckily the statue is rather far away.

Lubango is, as I said, dusty. Very dusty. I am not sure where it all comes from, but every surface is always covered in a film of dust. You could polish your shoes (or have them polished) every morning. Indeed, shoe polishing seems to be a major source of income on the informal street market, shoe polishers are everywhere.

Introduction

In December last year, the GFA-Consulting Group approached me. They were preparing a proposal for an EC-tender and wanted to know whether I was available for a two year contract in Angola as technicval expert. I was and then the GFA-led consortium won the tender so here I am, in Angola.

The project aims to improve the access to water and pasture for seminomadic livestock keepers, officially known as transhumance livestock keepers. Transhumance is a sensible and in principle sustainable way to take advantage of natural resources in arid places, where there is not enough rainfall for agriculture. Practicioners of transhumance lead their cattle along established routes to known grazing areas. During the rainy season they travel to the drier areas to take advantage of the grass that grows during the rainy season. During the dry season, they travel to areas with higher rainfall and river valleys, wher water is available, but grazing is of lower quality.

Although transhumance is a sensible and sustainable approach to dryland situations, the mobility of its practicioners and the common use of land fit badly with the more common government structures. Most governments like their citizens to live in a fixed abode so they can deliver services like education and water (and demand fees and taxes for those services) and like land to be properly registered in name of a natural person or a legal entity.

I was the first team member to arrive for a permanent stay. The team leader visited for a month, discoverd that he had to apply for his work visa from his country of residence and is now back in the UK to do just that. The administrator and the other technical expert arrived about ten days after I did and the three of us are trying to get as much done as we can while the team leader is applying for his visa.