2/10/2005 - Vou Para Angola

I am now sitting in the living room of my friend Eve's fourth-floor walk-up upper Manhattan flat, biding the few remaing hours unitll I reunite with my friends at JFK International Airport to begin our journey to Angola. The last six months of have passed in fleeting rapidity and now the moment has arrived.

I will arrive in Luanda, the Capital of Angola at 4:30 in the morning on Saturday, at which point I, allong with my good friend and coworker Tyler, will embark upon another 15 hours of overland travel to the Province of Huambo where we will be spending the next six months. We will be living and working 10 kilometers outside the provincial capital of Huambo in the community of Quisala. There we will be spending our time in two projects.

The first is the Escola Para Professores do Futuro, a Teacher's Training College in which we will be working with rural primary school teachers in an effeort to create accescible, effective, and universal primary education for the children of Angola. The second project is the Children's Town. This project is home to more than 65 children who were orphaned as a result of the civil war or as a result of their parents dying of AIDS. The shcool also serves more 750 children from the surrounding communities whom participate in the educaitonal, recreational, and social outreach programs the Children's Town offers. The facility is a place where the children and the community at alrge an come to learn, teach, dance, sing, organize and play with an overall mission of facilitating the sustainable and posative reintigration of these children into the larger community. Upon arrival I will be working with these communities to help decide how my energy can be most effectively spent in addressing the most pressing needs of the community.

After my time in Angola I will be heading to Durban, South Africa where I will reunite with some of my fellow volunteers and begin compiling the photdocumentary that will be a progressive project throughout my time in Africa. Then it is off to Zambia where I will be working in a Total Water Program project in rural communities of the Southern Process. The aim of this project is to help create sustainable supplies to water for both drinking and domestic/agricultural needs. The last month of my time will be spent in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and possibly Tanzania, traveling to and workking in different projects. Granted, as of now the last two months are more of an initial sketch than a definite ininterary but I will keep you posted.

Part of my vision is to allow as many people as possible to learn and participate in my experience. I will be sending email updates as often as a can.

Blessings, Peace, and Love
tyson neukirch

Bom Dia a Todos,

To family and friends, Tyler and I are here safe in Huambo. I have already attempted to send one email and my attempt failed and in the process erased all I had written so I am now playing it safe and writing in first in word and then attaching it to an email. I will try to convey as many of my impressions as possible of my time here thus far but know that I must limit myself of I would be here all day and I cannot afford such an event in either time or Kwanzas.

We arrived in Luanda the capital in Saturday’s still dark morning. The British Airways once weekly flight from London to Luanda was filled with some native Angolans but primarily with foreign prospectors- Russian, Brazilian, American, European- they were on their way to profit in some way from Angola’s oil wealth. There were a handful of humanitarian workers as well, but we were without doubt the minority.
The commercial saturation of the oil economy in Angola is highly evident. The hired taxis waiting in the airport with signs that spell out not the names of dignitaries, humanitarian agencies or government officials, but rather the trademarked emblems of Oil Companies. As I waited in line at immigration I could chose from any number of full colour advertisements for oil mining equipment, offering the best in the world to those who mined the liquid wealth responsible for the vast majority of Angola´s GDP and Corruption. The advertisements of course were in English.

I was held up briefly by a doubting immigration official, accustomed to oil workers and diamond merchants whom did not speak Portuguese he said not a word to me as he thumbed little circles over my passport, suspect that my entry visa contained the appropriate consolatory stamp. He passed my passport onto two other officials who also massaged my visa with little thumb circles until the third finally discovered the brail like remnants of the consulate’s stamp.

We were welcomed by our first surprise upon leaving the airport, our friend Adrianna was there to meet us and to inform us of our second surprise, that we were to spend the weekend together at the Teacher’s Training College Project in Ramiro, about 30 kms outside of Luanda proper. We then made our way. I had expected but was not able to prepare for what I saw in my brief moments passing through the streets of Luanda – refuse and detritus, shelled out cars and landmine victims with home-fashioned crutches, children playing and women laughing,- all understandably surreal. Soon we were headed south along the sea to Ramiro and it was hard not to loose oneself in the deep green beauty of the roadsides and the stunted thickness of the baobabs.

We arrived at the school, met by Karen, a Danish woman working with ADPP (the Portuguese acronym for Humana People to People here in Angola) who speaks little Portuguese. After unloading my things and eating breakfast I spent the morning working with the students instead of resting, I was too tired to sleep. I partook in a football match in which I became painfully aware of how out of shape and skill I am and then spent the evening dancing, talking and laughing with the students. We spent the rest of the weekend trying to absorb as much information as we could about the country, our projects, the inter-workings and politics of ADPP and trying to recuperate after two days of travel though six time zones.

Tyler and I left in the still dark morning of Monday, Dia de Sao Valentine, back to Launda, this time to the frenzy of the national airport where we were to find passage to Huambo. We were aided by our friend Vasco, who has been working with ADPP in Angola for nearly 10 years, though he was nervous at the prospect of negotiating our fares in the human circus that was the Luanda National Airport at 5 am on a Monday.

After some high velocity negotiating, in which my passport changed hands more times than I would have cared to witness, we were granted passage. Two hours later we were landing in the lush greenness of Huambo which is situated in Angola’s central highlands.

I have never been in a place where the vestiges of colonialism and civil war are so pervasively tangible as here in Huambo. This impression started upon are landing at the airport, much of which is still a bombed out skeleton, and has grown in the last two days as I have had the opportunity to see more of the city. Here the faded pastels of the Portuguese villas, the dominating structures of the 60s era modernist high rises, and the 19th century European stylings of the government buildings are pockmarked by the shell holes of AK 47s and Kalashnikovs and the star-bursts of artillery shells. Yesterday I saw, in the crumbling remnants of what was once a colonial era residence sat parked an equally decayed lorry, its vestige almost hidden in the overgrowth. And on top of its rusted flatbed were too small children, one boy, one girl, passing a found flower between them. Perhaps this is the best representation I can provide. In the aching skeleton of what was once supposed to be, lies the vividly beating heart of what is and the beauty of what is made today, and what may come tomorrow. For tomorrow brings us all one day farther from the war.

Our projects lie about 10 kms outside of town, on the grounds of an old plantation called Quissala. It is hard not to be taken away by the beauty of this place and these people. I cannot speak highly of the state of the projects that Tyler and I are entering, but I can speak in lengthy accolades of the people who constitute them. Both Tyler and I are spending this first week doing as much as we can to get to know our projects -investigating what is and trying to gleam from as many people as possible what they want it to be and how we can work together to realize that potential.

We are working in real time here, the school now has so little money that it must negotiate daily to acquire enough food to feed the students. We are entering a construction period this upcoming week and yet we have no materials with which to build. I do not know if I could be happier anywhere else in the world in this moment. We have so much to do, so much to learn, to teach, so much love, hardship and perseverance to share. Yes, I note my own idealism and I feel that it is grounded in reality for I expect to cry as much as I expect to laugh.

I must go now, we are to meet Tina, my project leader at the office of Imigration to sign some papers. I hope you are all well.

Blessings, peace, and love,
tyson

ps you can expect to hear from me once every 1-2 weeks. Don’t worry mom, I will write as often as I can afford.

Boa tarde a todos, I have little time to create this afternoon as I only have a few hundred Kwanza and still need to research a class I will be giving on Friday regarding the UN. All I can leave you with are the broken reflections of a journal entry from last weekend.

Quinta- Feira, o 17 de Fevereiro,2005

OUR FIRST DEATH. Tyler and I have just returned from a bonfire to honor the death of a boy from Cidadela(one of the projects we are working in) whose name we dont even know. He was bitten by a rabid dog in the weeks before our arrival and had been in the Huambo hospital since, receiving the rare gift of post-exposure rabies vaccine, yet his body, in the end, could not sustain the disease. Tomorrow their will be two funerals, one for the boy and pne for the EPF student’s fathers.In a country where half of the inhabitants don’t make it till the age of 40 and one in four children die before the age of five, perhaps death , from a cultural standpoint, differs in its response……..

Sabado. 19 de Feveriro, 2005

Sunset like an atom bomb’s crepuscular glow; rainstorm brought with it syncopated tin roof rhythms and flooding floors. The morning was political discussion – rather diatribe with one of the new EPF teachers; Yoga permutations and sunlit dirt red Bom Dia Walk to San Pedro market – black earth of charcoal vendors offset by bleach white of rice for sale. More trash, less noise than Xela (Guatemala) markets, sweet bread, wash basins, candles and avocados; Now here by candlelight reading, writing, laughing, as students enjoy the worst of American pop music blaring from a stereo in the cafeteria.

Yesterday confusion – program cancelled due to funeral. I was last to know because the announcement was made over the radio and I was not listening. Morning, afternoon waiting for departure, finally we go, I in the back of the rapidly deteriorating truck with twenty or so children from Cidadlea and Escola Primaria. Last one it. The smallest of the children offering me his hand to assure that I would not fall out. My other arm taken by a boy so that he could sturdy himself. What remained of his left arm-shoulder to elbow wrapped with my right. Smiling. No rain for funeral day. Turn into cemetery behind the tall wheeled faded yellow Huambo Transport truck, flatbed containing Cidadela children, wailing women, and Tyler; We turn into tall pine’s shade of cemetery; Luis turning around to retrieve the remaining EPF students unable to make the first trip. Tall cool thin pines, wailing song dance cry earth. Few words, simple beautiful wood coffin, simple beautiful red brown mound of earth, we simple years, vast and searching eyes, Tyler finding strength in tree. Soon dirt on coffin, not only symbolic, cross-planted, job finished. Three cars to Citadela faded yellow transport back to Huambo, I wet eyed and so angry, ride back with wind and red dirt eroding eyes. Food served in Cidadela for all. See for first time the state of things there, the beauty of the rough-hewn brotherhood, the lack of resources to sustain it. After all is over the Cidadela children are summoned o hear once and for all the story of their brother’s death and how all was done to save him but it was all lack of medical infrastructure – plenty of tetanus vaccine, none for rabies – that complicated things. Tomorrow will be a day of reflection, tonight we drink gasosas.

Leaving I returned to house and took to work to try to subside the anger and disquietude raging within; soon interrupted by Honario, we talk, dusk draws neigh, my emotions settle with the evenings dust. Night sat with Tyler and friends outside sharing a little of our music and then gifted with hours of church songs, Semba and EPF and MPLA (government) hymns, played with metallic percussiveness by Izekil on the guitar – the rotating chorus so happy to sing songs of praise – there is pride in what they do, and in themselves for doing it. Come back to nossa casa and talk with Tyler on stoop for hours about everything and nothing – development and Danish women…

So long for now. Life here for me is always a quiet whirlwind. We also discovered yesterday that according to HALO trust the road between quissala and huambo is sill, according to them a yellow area, which means they have not cleared it for mines, only the government has. So according to the UN it is unfit for travel. No worries, they are clearing it now and don't expect to find any problems. That is life
here, there was little drama attached with the news. Till next time.

Boa Tarde a Todos,
It is always hard to find a place to begin. I promised myself that I would get in the habit of making a draft of my correspondences before making our weekly jaunt to the internet café but there is something about the spontaneity of writing to you all that I cannot recreate in the candlelit quietude of our humble little cement walled corrugated tin roofed house. I suppose that that is the longwinded way of saying that I am still after all these years trying to outrun my innate ability to procrastinate.

This week’s lessons have been softer than those of last, but equally as powerful. The mornings have been filled with slow red dirt tasks of Manas Practicas, projects that could have taken a day take four and the amount of work done depends on the students moods which in turn depends on the temperature, the goings on of the day previous, and a selected few other tides which I have yet to discern. As of last week we officially started a period of construction here, which, supposedly is to run all day every day save Sunday for a month but our school is painfully short of resources, tools and materials and as a result have instead been working for the last two weeks in the morning doing practical tasks, a process which I have been facilitating.

I have also started teaching English, which for me is always a difficult thing to do, but the students want to learn and when I ask them what there motivation is they only say because they are interested. A response I would find fault in if I did not spend so much of my own time learning apparently superfluous things merely because they piqued my fancy. Yet I am excited about this time with the students because it gives me the opportunity to present different pedagogical methods, the value of this, I hope to be greater than the increase in their English vocabulary.

Next week we will begin the fourth period in which the students will be traveling to local community schools to give lessons in the mornings and then return to EPF in the afternoons to continue with their studies and plan the next day's lessons. I am excited for this as it will allow me to travel to the various communities and work not only with the students in the classrooms but also work with community leaders and other teachers to discover if there are any community initiatives that the students could help facilitate. We shall see.

Tyler and I had our first glimpse of Huambo city at night this past weekend as we made our way into town to make our way to what would turn out to be our official introduction to Huambo ex-pat ~^ NGO culture. Huambo, the second largest city in Angola is dark at night, save the sporadic electricity produced by diesel-powered generators. In many ways night calms the city, for light only comes to those areas and businesses that can afford a generator so you are presented with a caricature of the city- the lighted European style bistro, the occasional restaurant bar, the delicious pasteleria- casting their shadows into the already deeply shadowed bombed out apartment buildings and shambled Portuguese villas. We wandered around the city for a couple of hours before meandering to our final destination, a party thrown by the Halo Trust-a British NGO that is the foremost force in landmine removal and disposal in the worlds post conflict zones. As Angola is on the top of that list they have a strong presence here, about 850 people all tolled, though only a fraction of that in Huambo. It was not as horrifying venture as I had prepared myself for and the guests were representative of the current movement in the realm of Angolan NGOs and that is localization and over half of the guests were Angolans. The rest, a motley crew of Eritirans, Somalis (all of whom work for Halo), Portuguese, Brazilians, French, Scottish, English, and as I came to discover, only two fellow US citizens in the entire province, save Tyler and myself. The Festa was somewhat like a grown up frat party, complete with a dingy bar whose stools where made out of hollowed out ordinance (bombs), the tops of which had fussed into a chair while the bottoms retained their daunting original form. The DJ mixed the worst of Angolan ~, Brazilian, and American Pop (I never thought that I would see 200 international ngo workers chanting the words to Red Red Wine in tumultuous chorus), and Eritrean dance music which sounds like Japanese karaoke music'- or rather what I would imagine Japanese karaoke music to sound like. In this atmosphere I talked with an Angolan who had personally, by hand removed over 600 landmines, one of which exploded in his face. He was one of the most jubilant dancers in the group. Upon reflecting on the night it always interests me the facsimiles we create to comfort ourselves when faced with solitude and isolation or our own creation. I would imagine that many in attendance that night would have been disdained with such a party in their home country but here it was all they allowed themselves to think that they had.

The sunsets have been softer here recently, more blue grey than stratified cloudburst spectrums. I spend a lot of time questioning while listening to Tyler ruminate thought the undulating rhythms of his beautiful guitar. Tears come often, brought on by a thousand processes, both internal and external, joyous and melancholy, they are not always allowed to float to the surface. I am still trying to find my place here, and I imagine I will be doing the same for many months after my time here is over. I am trying to divine in what way I can best direct my passion, sweat and tears. It is a process that Tyler and I are sharing in some ways, comforting to know that we can find strength in the profundity of our friendship. It is a process that I want to expedite, but perhaps it must happen according to Angolan time.

Hello to all,

Tyler and I have just passed the last four hours trying to facilitate the process of renewing our entry Visas at the Gabinete de Migração e Estranjeros. We had made most of the 10 kilometer walk to town on foot, taking the opportunity to witness the intricacies of daily life perpetuated by the people of Huambo and its surrounding municipalities. We arrived at the office at 9 at which point we waited for forty five minutes, using the time to revel in the city’s soft and slow moving vitality, and eating just baked sweet bread. Angelino, one of our project leaders finally arrived and we moved with him into the office of one of the migration officials who informed us that to renew the visas for thirty more days would require 50USD and 600kw each, apparently Angelino was unaware of this technicality. After attempting a few frantic calls to Tina, our other project director, he, in a moment of sheer hilarity, asked Tyler and I if we could temporarily cover the cost of the visas, though to date we have been paid but a small fraction or our stipend, the amount need more than my sum toll net worth at this particular moment in my life. We then waited another two and a half hours for Angelino to go and return from the bank with the necessary money. Tyler and I sat in the shifting shade of one of Huambo’s deteriorated, broad, Portuguese-style streets, watching children saunter on their way too and from school, those who were fortunate carrying the chairs they had to bring from home if they wished to sit anywhere else but on the floor during their crowded lessons. Those most fortunate carried vibrantly colored plastic patio chairs, others small rustically carved stools covered with animal hide, but most carried no chair at all. Finally Angelino returned and we reentered the office, only to discover that we were missing a necessary document and that we would have to return tomorrow. So after a 10 km walk, a four hour wait, and 100 dollar bill, we left the office without our passports, a somewhat risky venture in Angola, and headed here to make our weekly correspondence.

Life here is found in the vibrancy that fills the void between skeleton and ash, the hope for a better tomorrow and the sense to guard such wistfulness and ground it in the reality of today. I find this reflected in both the individual and the collective here- in the face of a man-child from citadela, the faded pastel of a pock marked Portuguese villa next to the shiny fresh painted Sonagol station. It exists within the physical reality of our home in Quisalla. I spent time this week during my work exploring more of this place, buildings that were once community centers, vocational schools

I did my first bit of substantial traveling today after a three day war of attrition in the Office if Migraiton and Foreigners after which I finally got my passport back, jumped into a halo trust land rover (the UK agency that does all the landmine removal in the worlds craziest places) and set out onto the rolling rain wet red ribbon road through the vast and undulating plan alto. Amazing. I am now in kuito a city also hit hard by the war. I am staying in an apartment building in which the other half is still shelled out from mortar blasts and is very sketchy in terms of structural integrety. On our way around town this evening we passed by the destroyed remnants of the city's once largest church where 4000 women and children were killed in one night in 1998. That said, it is the happies place I have been in my time here. I cant even begin.

Wallale All,

I cannot remember how much has passed since i last wrote, as so much of what I move through comes in streams both eternal and instantaneous and it is hard to find ones mooring in their confluence. As such I
have learned that there is no perfect place to begin, no all encompassing metaphore to spin because whether i attempt to recount chronologicaly, cyclicaly or emotionaly i always loose whatever it was
i thought i had in the telling. Anyways, all that is left is to begin, giving little heed to where the journey will deliver us. here the rains have come to an end ,the dawns and twilights cool and dew ladden but otherwise dry. I miss the rough hewn and brooding cloudscapes , cacophonous tin roof symphonies and the warm comfort of lying your weary head on the shoulder of the earth and having it honor your tears with its own. but it is another multitide of beaties and wonders as the world enacts its quiet and
profound changes upon itself. Now the sky offers only enough clouds to create a new and intricate permutation of difuse and changing light at sun's set and sun's wake. Though our horizons are shortned by
the rolling hills of eucalyptus, millio and capin, that rise up to meet the sky above and some kilometers beyond rise up even farther into flowing live green mountains, the sky and its presence are as intrepid and vast as any i have chanced to be enraptured by before. The red dirt and elusive mauve of the capin precede the clouds as their spectrums are played upon by the light and for these sacred moments all else disipates and you are left there to worship and be humbled by the beauty.

I have robbed these passages from emails written to friends in recent weeks to make a humble attempt to provide some more of a physical description what and where I am. I have been discovering more and more of this place in the weeks since i last wrote, and filling in the rough sketches of those places i has already chanced upon. I have traveled for hours along roads lined with mines, dusty little villges
flying a worn and weary MPLA banner where the sunflowers and milio (corn) hide the mud brick homes in cool shade, slightly larger but still dusty towns filled with the vibrant life of markets with now
vacant adobe brick churches worshiping the skies above and the fields behind, skeletons of soviet made tanks, lories, land rovers still and silent testements to the not so long gone reality of war and children run and laugh and play eating suger cane and fighting as they pass without noticing the group of Halo Trust workers sweating along the side of the road, using garden tools and brushes to carefuly
remove a red flaged mine from their community, a site for them which has become part of the unconscious background. Finding myself in quito, a town devestated by the war where the centerpiece of the towns architecture is the shatered shell of the once wedding cake white catholic church where one night in 1998 4000 women and children were masacred thinking that they would be safe in the house of the lord.

The people were the friendliest and least guarded i have met in my time here, walkinf thorgh the still shatered streets in the evenings that are slowly being rebuild by diamond money, both illegitimate and
legitimate, talking , playing cards, observing the passings in candligt while talking over the everpresent quite hum of the disel generators that provide the cities only light. I have also traveled hours in the opposite direction, in dusty and erroding taxis that implode slowly due to the rough reality of angolan
roads, too much for thier delicate and mass produced japanese frames to the municipios of caala, longonjo, and Ukuma, beging to understand the vastness of this county in which nearly a third of the population lives in the capital of luanda and the rest are scarcly dispersed in the vast and rolling highlands twice the size of texas. You must change cars between caala and longonjo because the only bridge over
the river is now peniseyed at an angle that even the seemingly fearless yassir drivers are sensible enough not to attempt any longer. The road is commerce and you see men and children pushing ancient bicyles used as lorries for their 50 or 150 kilo seed sacks filled with charcoal or corn or soy placed in dusty shadows as soviet era lorries whose wheels alone dwarf the passers by and smaller newer flatbeds racing back and forth between cities with material and human capital stacked precariously high behind.

Yet for all of the travels outwards, it is the jouneys inwards that are more vast, exhausting and troubling. I will wirte more of these soon, but now it is time to send this off, before once againg my words
get errased by the computer which has happened with unsettling frequency here. Know that I am well, learning, teaching, laughing, crying and struglging every day. Tyler is an inspiration, growing strong and tan as he sows the land and harvests unknowingly the fruits of his labors have already provided.

Wo'salla Tudos,
The dry season has brought with it its dust and wind, making soft changes in the landscape and the movements of the people who walk it.

Though the eternal permutations of the wandering and forceful cloudscapes have left with the rains, the suns set and the moon’s rise are now accentuated by the dusty haze raised by the mottled dust clouds raised by the passing winds. The harvests moons rise low and red on the horizon. It has been a long time in between and for that I am sorry. I hope that you are all well and walking your paths with strength.
I find the greatest peace in movement, searching for it when the frustrations and shortfalls and not knowing what’s rise like a tide within. On the eve of my birthday, Tyler and I meet our friend Lois in the market and after he assured us the bicycles in front of us were the best we could buy, as mais resistentes, as he put it, we in an awkward quick and speculative way looked over what were to become, for better or worse, our new steeds, still mostly covered in cardboard and plastic wrap from their rough road venture from the ports of lobito to the dusty market and softly boisterous sao pedro market on the outskirts of Huambo. They were shiny black and chrome with fenders and superfluous parts shiny and substantial and a motorcycle style kickstand that lifts the back tire of the ground and a broad wrought iron rack behind the springy coiled seat to carry whatever burden you chose to tie down with straps of black rubber bought three for 100kz.

We handed over, doubtingly, a seemingly immense amount of kwanzas, 9800 to be exact, about 115 usd, and started peeling of the cardboard and plastic wrap and pumping the tires. Moving through the small crowd that had gathered to watch us in our novelty we moved throughout the narrow corridors of the market and into the open sun vendors lining the main road. I realized that my handlebars were missing the bell that Tyler’s had and that the little black rubber pouch behind was missing the wrenches that his had. Running back through the market I acquired the missing items and it is good that I noticed their absence, I would be, and continue to be in need of their services.

By we made our circles through the city and returned back though the red dirt road to our home the cycles were in need of repair, perhaps dismantling is more appropriate drawing the hands of a troopful of boys and men to lay their hands on the now warm steel of the machines.

But time and patience and a complete dismantling and reassembly and spare parts have brought the machine closer to my heart. The pile of parts that I removed lies in the cool shade under my wooden bed. The best time to ride is at dawn, the ultimate at dusk. on a cool and fog laden morning, as I was moving along the still dew damp road towards the sunrise accompanied by the barefooted market traffic, I dodging between ox carts and motorcycles and children and mothers and farmers saw two white faces bearing backpacks walking down the hill that runs through the barrio of Sao Pedro. I now show much of the same wonder and exhibit some of the same unguarded staring when I see another white face as many people show towards me being-the presence of a white person still much of an anomaly here. Thinking at first that perhaps one of the international ngos has sent a team to work in one of the nearby rural community I did not realize until I had nearly passed them that they were in fact Arlene and Stacey, two dear friends of ours whom are working in Beguela and had come 24 hours by dusty and dangerous taxi to visit us. It was a site to be had, a white guy in a cowboy hat jumping of his bicycle to hug and scream at two white women who had arrived in the early morning still waking bairro. As normal we drew a crowd.

It was both beautiful and strange, the four of us being together again. we worked to together with the students to organize some malaria and HIV/aids campaigns which we then presented in surrounding rural communities but for the most part we talked and reminisced for the two weeks they were here until we walked out of huambo on the dusty roads towards benguela where we sat in the shifting shade of a mango tree of a police checkpoint until they managed to hitch a ride in the back of a semi roaring towards their home.

As for 'work' I don’t know what to say. I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop this week presented by concern, an international no based out of Dublin that has been working in Angola for about ten years. They are planning to start a new ''sustainable livelihoods program" in Huambo and bie provinces and called together a group of government representatives, civil society entities, local and national no coordinators and a few international ngos to help initiate the planning process. As per usual, the government representatives did not appear and in the cool informal conference room we talked about the particularities of poverty in huambo and brainstormed possible programs that could be implemented through a cooperation of no, government, civil society and community actors to alleviate and eventually eradicate the burdens of poverty as they exist in their unique permutations in this province. I felt completely illegitimate, having spent three months working in a very unique and small artificial community, to propound anything but was content to listen and add my very humble opinions when I could not hold my tongue any longer. it was interesting that now of the concern representatives could speak Portuguese well enough to facilitate the conference themselves, so they sat in one corner with their translator and observed, offering comments sparingly, leaving the facilitating to be done by Bert, a Belgium who has spent decades working for ngos in Africa, and the last two years in Angola. It was clear that ideological differences existed between Bert and the group of concern ex pats there to observe. There was a lot of ''developmentese'' thrown around: sustainability, livelihood systems, local actors, civil society, mainstreaming, etc and when some of the jargon couldn’t be translated directly to Portuguese it made me wonder how effective any end result could be when the space that existed between the cognitive concept of concern could not be communicated directly. It also made me aware of how ignorant and uncooperative the local and national ngos tend to be, knowing very little of the programs, objectives, and resources of the other. Though I felt that my space would have been better taken by nearly any person who actually lives in the poverty we were trying so coolly to direct between coffee breaks and catered lunches but was happy to witness such a process.

Well friends, I started writing this letter a couple days ago and as always I never finish but since then an infelicidade has come my way that I feel I should share with you all. I am writing this now as an illegal resident in Angola. For some reason my work visa application was not processed in time and my last tourist visa ran out days ago, and the emergency extension yesterday. I will find out within the next few hours what my situation is, whether I can continue here or if I must leave the country. I cannot imagine the reality of leaving -though I continue in the assumption that I must as to not be overtly shocked in the event that it is necessary. I will let you know as soon as I can, hopefully from a computer here in Angola and not somewhere else. For those of you who know the rest of us here, no worries, and the other 13 DI s received their work visas, I guess they just didn’t like my passport photo. I hope all are well.

blessings peace and love
Tyson