Water

Angola is rich in water. There are plenty of rivers across the country and mountains high enough to bear clean pure freshwater. There are actually a couple of companies that bottle local mineral water.

Nevertheless every family needs to go fetch water for the house, for bathing, cooking, washing clothes, drinking. Water canalization is almost non existent and if there is something that reminds canalization it’s severely damaged and old.

In Ganda the big novelty is a water truck that goes to get water from the river nearby and makes its round of all the streets once a week (or whenever the driver feels like working). When you hear the truck arriving you better run to grab everything that can contain water you have at home, and hit the street. The truck stops wherever people shout the loudest on each street and then the driver opens reluctantly a tap on the side of the truck. Everyone gathers around and tries to get as many containers filled with the precious liquid. Everything happens in between shouting and pushing and surprisingly loads of laughter. Today the laughter was even louder when I made my appearance at the truck, equipped with an orange bucket. While I was carrying it back to the house huffing and puffing, I felt quite bad, comparing myself to the women and children around me (no man does the job of carrying water, ever) carrying much much bigger containers on their heads with smiling ease…

Perfect

There are moments everything is absolutely perfect. The air is exactly the right temperature, just before sunset, and everything is drenched in a red-golden light. You sit on red earth, waiting for the darkness to fall and a million stars to appear.

The view is breathtaking: black, shiny monoliths in the distance, a low intensely green forest lies before them, and in the middle a red road runs right through the green and looks as if it would lead straight into the sky, beyond the horizon. And while you sit in silence, contemplating, it’s difficult to hold back the tears for this beautiful, cursed country that hides its scars underneath scenes of divine splendour.

Independant ? woman

I think in Africa you really learn what it means to be dependant. Take today: after an (extended) Saturday lunch I was lazily reading a book until it got dark (it does get dark pretty soon, just before 6pm). Time to switch on the electricity generator. Our house does have a small gasoline generator in the backyard. Antonio, the night-guard, starts the engine (I still haven’t learned how the thing needs to be switched on, but from Antonio’s manoeuvres, I can tell it’s difficult and needs a lot of brute force… plus I’m scared the thing will explode or something if I touch it). Today, all goes well for maybe half an hour and then the annoying (blessed) sound of the motor goes off… and seconds later all the lights out. Little explosion of swearwords in my mouth (so glad to be able to swear in languages people don’t understand around here!). What now? I can’t really go to bed at 7 pm and I’ve spent most of the day at my neighbours already… While I sit in the dark and wonder what to do next, Antonio tries to start the motor again, without luck. I’m almost accustomed to the idea that it will be a (really) early night for me, when Antonio decides to go and get Lino, who’s the night-guard at our little pharmacy. Lino is the “expert” on generators around here and the one who owns a couple of very useful DIY tools. Half an hour later Antonio reappears with Lino and they start to work on the engine.
Thinking of it, “reappearing” is not exactly the right verb, s the only reason I know the two are approaching are their voices which suddenly emerge from the complete darkness.
Another hour later light is back! Although I try my best to understand what was wrong with the generator, I really don’t understand what the two men are extendedly talking about… I’m just glad to be able to read a little before going to bed and not to have another candle-light dinner (seriously, I’ve stopped seeing the romantic side of candle-light dinners).
If it wasn’t for Antonio and Lino and a whole bunch of people that work with me here, I would probably be sitting in the dark, eating cold food from a can and be terribly miserable!

Help PISI!

For more information on P.I.S.I. please write to sandra.d07@gmail.com

If you’d like to help the project, we are very grateful for donations to the following bank accounts:

Account number: 1196699031001

Account name: Projecto de Insercao Socio-Infantil

Bank: BFA

IBAN: AO06000600001196699031125

SWIFT: BFMXAOLU

or

Account number: 1000/00000100

Account name: Sandra D’Onofrio

Bank: Banca di Trento e Bolzano

IBAN: IT66B0324011610100000000100

Mothers

Here in Ganda, people find it absolutely inconceivable that I don’t have any kids. Especially after finding out I’m 31!

So the question that mostly follows is: so, are you a nun? There’s plenty of Brazilian and European nuns who walk around wearing jeans and no veil in Angola. And as the answer to that is "no", people start eyeing me a bit funny and plainly don’t have the courage to say “there’s something wrong with her” or “white women are weird”.

A few years ago I was chit-chatting with a girl on a Sunday afternoon, who happened to be the same age as me: 27, at the time. She was carrying a one-year old on her back, wrapped in traditional cloth. She told me it was her youngest. And that there were another 6…

I couldn’t help asking myself what I had been doing while she was spending her youth being pregnant: studying, travelling, going to the movies, reading books and working or just being silly, mostly. And despite my huge admiration for someone who would bring up 7 little ones through war and hunger and once that was over, through diseases and poverty, there was some kind of (feminist?) voice in me that started sobbing and grinding its teeth. Is it really a value if a woman is mother first and foremost? Is it really acceptable that before being proposed to, a young girl needs to get “tested” for fertility? Is it truly mother instinct when a woman despairs about being unable to get pregnant? Have we truly “lost” something when renouncing a huge family in favour of a couple of kids we worry if we can get through school and uni? Is this place really some kind of lost paradise we should fight to get back to or should we be happy to have freed ourselves from it?

Angola

There are moments one inevitably asks oneself about “the whole point”. So what’s the point of trying to build a small health centre in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the forest of South-Eastern Angola? What’s the point, if this tiny drop in the ocean won’t certainly solve the dearth of Angola’s health situation? What’s the point of trying, when difficulties are endless and for one solved problem there are another 15 to appear?

There is an incredibly complex answer and one that’s extremely easy: both lie in the eyes of a 17 years old mother who holds her tiny premature child and doesn’t know what to do about the child’s diarrhoea. Not only does she have no idea about what might have caused it and how she could have avoided it, but there is also no place to turn to for advice and help. The nearest medical centre is a 14 km walk away and is tended by only one nurse who often doesn’t even get any medical supplies from the city.

So the easy answer is: one must help, simply because of being human and having a heart; one must help, because there is this girl who needs help and who has incredibly sad eyes. And then there’s a whole load of more complex reasons which stem from the idea that there is a fundamental injustice in all of this. It can’t be right, nor economical as a matter of fact, for babies to be born and die after only a few months life. So even if it won’t be possible to help all 17 year-old mothers, it is necessary to start somewhere, to make one step even if it’s tiny, to sow seeds of hope.