When I first went to Luanda in 1998 the street kids were sleeping in shop doorways off the marginal and the shops were empty, and on hot summer nights kids up in Miramar would play basketball in the street - all together, rich kids in nikes and fancy t-shirts and poor kids in bare feet and rags, cars topped and people joined in and cheered. That was when the only electric was generators.

By 2003 the shops were selling s-class mercedes and lexus and the streetkids were living in holes in the road. They don't play basketball in the street, the rich kids live behind steel gates and razor wire, and the private security guards don't like crowds outside the big villas. It got richer for the very few, it got poorer for the most, and all the time I hoped and tried and worked and bled and cried.

I loved the poor people - the ladies selling tomatoes on the street corner, the old guy who cleans the cars next door, the guys from barrio marques or flaviofunde. I hated the smooth internationalista elites, (most of the people I worked with). And I understood why the fishermen on Mussulo became so angry and so resentful.

I never want to go back there - which is a betrayal of my Angolan friends. I am sorry for that, but I cannot stand the roller-coaster to hell.

But I do like your website, and news that Sable are there is just great.

Many thanks, Bjorn.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bjørn H. Holte
Sendt: 17. june 2005 08:15
To: henry
Subject: SV: Takk!

Henry,

Thank you for you mail. It is really a great source of inspiration for further work on my website to hear from people like you. I am also very happy to hear people express their viewpoints on Angola and to be able to discuss these.

I would also like to say that I agree with you in your viewpoints, Angola has been developing negatively in a sense, although positively in statistics. The way things currently are, Angola in no way fulfills the dream of heaven on earth, something the country easily would if things were different. Think about it, spending the evenings on bars on Mussolo, the mornings in national parks and the days on the beaches, eating and drinking world class food produced locally, yes, Angola could have offered a perfect life. I admit it, I often dream of being Angolan in a free and peaceful Angola. It is my hope, along with many other people, that Angola will develop into a paradise and that Luanda will sometime become "the paradise city, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty" as Guns N' Roses sang. Perhaps the 2006 elections are the beginning of this change?

Also, positive news, such as about the Palanca Negra, give the world in general and Angola in particular new hope and hope is needed for development.

We should remember that Africa was the cradle of humankind and we should care for this continent. Not only can Africa lead us back to our earliest ancestors, it probably also can help us in the search for the future. How this is best done, I am not the right man to say, but I do have my views.

After all, thank you for visiting my site, Henry, and thank you for sending me this mail. I hope that my website help you remember Angola and what Angola has given you. I also hope that you will be able to return to an Angola that is going the right way and relive those special moments, after all, that is what Africa is to me and that is why I long back to Africa, the dark continent.

Bjørn Hallstein

-----Original Message-----
From: henry
Sendt: 17. june 2005 20:25
To: Bjørn H. Holte
Emne: Re: SV: Takk!

Dear Bjorn,

Thanks for a very considered reply to my rather offhand though heartfelt comment on your website.

Actually I would love to go back to Luanda - and most of all to Huambo and over into Cuando Cubango, Moxico and into Zambia and down into Zimbabwe. I would love to visit my friends and laugh and listen to the african night, to smell that red earth breathing out after the rain. Africa bites you, and once bitten you don't escape. A large part of me just belongs there - and there's nothing I can do about it. 

I now work in Yemen - which I adore, and yet, when the birds sing at first light, they remind me of Africa - in some ways Yemen is just a substitute.

Above all the rich world needs more people like you - people who love Africa, who can see it for what it is - and yet who will work to support it. More power to you!

With great respect,

Henry