First Impression

Holy cow! I’m going to live in Africa!....That about sums up my thoughts as our plane touched down in Angola.  After exiting the plane, we made our way into a mass of people waiting to clear customs.  Waiting is the key word.  We waited for about 2 hours.  My patience is going to be severely tested here.  Traffic is terrible and it takes a long time to get anything done.  I arrived at my living establishment after a relatively short ride.  I live in a four story apartment building close to the airport (see picture).  The apartment complex consists of about four similar buildings.  The buildings aren’t exactly beautiful, but they are nice for the area.  The living conditions are pretty much what I expected.  I live in a small three bedroom apartment with tile floors.  The conditions outside are a little chaotic.  There is lots of trash, dirt, and dirty water everywhere.  After taking a stroll down the street through trash and some sewage, we darted across the street into a market.  The market is similar to markets I visited in Nicaragua and Benin.  It is open air and they have everything from lettuce and tomatoes to fish and pork.  And everything is just sitting out there in the open air.  It’s quite a contrast from Bi-Lo or Whole Foods.  After we finished shopping at the market, we went to a local grocery store to buy the necessities like milk and juice.  I also bought a Coke and some Fruit Loops to quell the shock of my first day in Africa. That Coke was pretty damn good.

There isn’t anything here that I didn’t expect, but it was a whole different ballgame when I went to bed with the realization that I would be living here for 15 months, not just visiting for a week or two like Nicaragua or Benin.  As I went to sleep in a noisy room (the highway sounds like it is about two and a half inches from my windows) under a mosquito net, I couldn’t help but think, “What am I doing here?”