Since I'm only content in the US for a month or so at a time, when I was asked to take a last-minute trip to Angola to do a rapid needs assessment to supplement a major proposal my organization was working on I said yes right away. I believe what they may have said to me was, "Can you go to Angola tomorrow?" Unfortunately, the embassy of Angola had other plans and helpfully gave me a whole extra week and half to get ready while they processed my visa. When it finally came, I was on a flight the next night. The only reason I didn't leave that night was there wasn't enough time to get to the airport. Seriously. They tried.
Here are the important things about flying to Angola you should know: the flight is full of oil company employees and when you land in the capital, Luanda, you can see all the oil rigs lit up off the coast.
Also, don't fly SN Brussels. When Sabena went under, it was only partially reincarnated as SN Brussels. All I have to say is: my blanket had a cigarette burn in it.
Anyway, I spent a phenomenally boring Friday in the office of another organization we are going to partner with and then a phenomenally boring Saturday morning at the hotel in the suburbs. After a midday meeting, I suggested something along the lines of that I was going to die of boredom if I had to spend any more time in the hotel please please please take me somewhere. Wish granted.
We went to eat dinner on the Ilha de Luanda, a long narrow strip of beach curving out around Luanda's harbor.
I don't know what I ate, but it came out of the ocean and it was delicious.
I left early the next morning for the 12-hour drive to the town of Huambo. I couldn't fly because the "runway is broken" at the airport (no further details forthcoming despite many questions). An interesting thing about Angola: it has some of the worst road safety statistics in the world. I have never, anywhere, seen a road with so many flipped over, crumpled vehicles, left to rot away. Unsurprisingly, fatality rates are high--high speeds, narrow roads, long distances to hospitals, old cars, low safety belt use, giant trucks coming to/from the port laden with goods and without any kind of lights (yes, all the time). Add in the rusting remains of tanks and other war detritus, and it's just another charming drive through the countryside. Fortunately, we only saw one just-happened accident.
Then I fell asleep and I honestly couldn't tell you anything about anything between Luanda and Huambo except that the suburbs were ugly and went on a long way and there was a truck accident and then I was in Huambo. Except that I needed to pee really, really bad about 8 hours in and I could not make my exclusively Portuguese-speaking driver understand that for another 2 hours or so after that. As Anthony pointed out, I really should have invested in that English-Portuguese phrase book. Next time....
Huambo is a pleasant enough town, the capital of Huambo Province, largely rebuilt after the bloody civil war that ended in 2002 but still with its share of scars.
Huambo is where we would be based if we were awarded the proposal, working with the Provincial and District Ministries of Health and the health facilities across the province. I spent most of my time in three facilities, a maternal and child health clinic and an HIV/AIDS clinic in Huambo town and a district hospital further out.
I asked a lot of questions and got some information, although not nearly as much as the number of questions I asked might suggest I would get. But I always like going into clinics and talking to people and hearing their experiences and want they would like to see happen and watch how things happen.
36 hours after arriving in Huambo, I headed back to Luanda. This time I managed to stay awake, and it was quite beautiful.
I arrived in Luanda to discover that while I was gone, the two other members of my group, a VP and a consultant who were doing information gathering at the national Ministry of Health and other organizations in Luanda, had gotten fed-up with the hotel in the suburbs and moved us to a hotel downtown where they could get to their meetings in less than 2-3 traffic-jammed hours. Did I mention how bad traffic is?
Luanda is prettier from above the traffic, kinda.
Luanda is out of control expensive, thanks to all of the oil money flowing in, begging the question, how exactly do local people manage to get by in a land of $8 Diet Cokes (yes, it was delicious, no, I didn't know it was $8 until it was too late, yes, I had a small heart attack). I have no idea. But my next day's trip to a health facility in Luanda with a child malnutrition referral facility suggested that maybe there's a fair number who aren't.
This particular health facility also had one of the nicest maternity wards I've seen in a really long time in a public hospital in Africa as well as a pretty nice lab (the lab tech is looking for malaria in these blood smear slides--the facility was out of the rapid tests that are now standard many places).
And that's it. I left that night, exactly 7 days after arriving. What can I say? I put the rapid in rapid needs assessment. Besides, I had a reunion to get to...
Here are the important things about flying to Angola you should know: the flight is full of oil company employees and when you land in the capital, Luanda, you can see all the oil rigs lit up off the coast.
Also, don't fly SN Brussels. When Sabena went under, it was only partially reincarnated as SN Brussels. All I have to say is: my blanket had a cigarette burn in it.
Anyway, I spent a phenomenally boring Friday in the office of another organization we are going to partner with and then a phenomenally boring Saturday morning at the hotel in the suburbs. After a midday meeting, I suggested something along the lines of that I was going to die of boredom if I had to spend any more time in the hotel please please please take me somewhere. Wish granted.
We went to eat dinner on the Ilha de Luanda, a long narrow strip of beach curving out around Luanda's harbor.
I don't know what I ate, but it came out of the ocean and it was delicious.
I left early the next morning for the 12-hour drive to the town of Huambo. I couldn't fly because the "runway is broken" at the airport (no further details forthcoming despite many questions). An interesting thing about Angola: it has some of the worst road safety statistics in the world. I have never, anywhere, seen a road with so many flipped over, crumpled vehicles, left to rot away. Unsurprisingly, fatality rates are high--high speeds, narrow roads, long distances to hospitals, old cars, low safety belt use, giant trucks coming to/from the port laden with goods and without any kind of lights (yes, all the time). Add in the rusting remains of tanks and other war detritus, and it's just another charming drive through the countryside. Fortunately, we only saw one just-happened accident.
Then I fell asleep and I honestly couldn't tell you anything about anything between Luanda and Huambo except that the suburbs were ugly and went on a long way and there was a truck accident and then I was in Huambo. Except that I needed to pee really, really bad about 8 hours in and I could not make my exclusively Portuguese-speaking driver understand that for another 2 hours or so after that. As Anthony pointed out, I really should have invested in that English-Portuguese phrase book. Next time....
Huambo is a pleasant enough town, the capital of Huambo Province, largely rebuilt after the bloody civil war that ended in 2002 but still with its share of scars.
Huambo is where we would be based if we were awarded the proposal, working with the Provincial and District Ministries of Health and the health facilities across the province. I spent most of my time in three facilities, a maternal and child health clinic and an HIV/AIDS clinic in Huambo town and a district hospital further out.
I asked a lot of questions and got some information, although not nearly as much as the number of questions I asked might suggest I would get. But I always like going into clinics and talking to people and hearing their experiences and want they would like to see happen and watch how things happen.
36 hours after arriving in Huambo, I headed back to Luanda. This time I managed to stay awake, and it was quite beautiful.
I arrived in Luanda to discover that while I was gone, the two other members of my group, a VP and a consultant who were doing information gathering at the national Ministry of Health and other organizations in Luanda, had gotten fed-up with the hotel in the suburbs and moved us to a hotel downtown where they could get to their meetings in less than 2-3 traffic-jammed hours. Did I mention how bad traffic is?
Luanda is prettier from above the traffic, kinda.
Luanda is out of control expensive, thanks to all of the oil money flowing in, begging the question, how exactly do local people manage to get by in a land of $8 Diet Cokes (yes, it was delicious, no, I didn't know it was $8 until it was too late, yes, I had a small heart attack). I have no idea. But my next day's trip to a health facility in Luanda with a child malnutrition referral facility suggested that maybe there's a fair number who aren't.
This particular health facility also had one of the nicest maternity wards I've seen in a really long time in a public hospital in Africa as well as a pretty nice lab (the lab tech is looking for malaria in these blood smear slides--the facility was out of the rapid tests that are now standard many places).
And that's it. I left that night, exactly 7 days after arriving. What can I say? I put the rapid in rapid needs assessment. Besides, I had a reunion to get to...
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