tomato or tomato?

I have been on the chronic pursuit of culture since leaving for college.  I know myself and my ways but also recognize this as a 1 in 7 billion permutation of this thing we call life.

What do you value?  Whom do you love?  What’s your idea of a perfect day?  Do you, and if so to what or whom, pray?  Tomato or tomato?  These and more are the questions with which I mentally approach others.  I imagine this serves parallel purposes: to respect people as individuals and to qualify my own thoughts and behaviors.

Oftentimes, I used to poke fun at Ohio State’s ubiquitous mention of diversity as if it were a tangible item to be included on the campus tour.  Growing, aging, and experiencing experiences, however, have shown me the value of plural points of view.  This global health elective, then, presents me with an inordinate opportunity to expand my sphere of awareness.

I know neither how accurate nor how generalizable the words below are.  I am merely presenting a semblance of my own observations, conversations with knowledgeable folks, and reading.  Alright, alright, enough disclaimer.

Dear reader, please allow me to introduce the Angolan people.

This country continues to reel from a prolonged civil war following its independence from Portugal.  Just using medicine as a proxy, the government itself estimates that 47% of its citizens (some eight million people) have zero access to modern healthcare.  Extrapolate this to technology, education, and civil rights and then imagine the relative need here.

To expound on that whole civil war deal just a bit, it is important to know that it got going in 1975.  In that year there was another ongoing war, also drawn out, called the Cold War.  In super-duper-oil-rich Angola, the Americans and Soviets quickly took sides.  Based in the south, American dollars and South African soldiers aided UNITA and FNLA.  Their northern foe, bankrolled by Soviet rubles and manned by Cubans, were the MPLA.  The communists won.  Even with, “elections,” finally taking place this last decade, the MPLA have retained essentially all the political power.  Today’s implication of such is that China and Angola are best buds with cheap goods and labor coming west and that black gold going east.

This political schema, known as the most corrupt in Africa, affects your average John and Jane Angola. The administration has invested heavily in infrastructure, with major roads being quite nice and a national rail system nearing completion.  Government also controls both gasoline and the only Angolan airline.  Gasoline, primarily Diesel here, is 40 Kwanzaa/L (i.e. $1.60/gallon) literally everywhere you go nationwide.

Another repercussion worth mentioning is the lack of farming.  Into the 1970’s there remained de facto slavery in this country.  Rich, predominately European, land owners would visit the bush country, get folks drunk, have them sign unjust employment contracts, and load them on to buses the next morning.  With independence and its fresh air of freedom, farming was no one’s idea of a good time.  Today, despite much fertile land, there is a dearth of subsistence farming.  Angola must, therefore, import and pay exorbitantly for the likes of tomatoes ($5/lb.) and cheese ($12/lb.).  It is no wonder that Angola has the highest cost of living on the continent.

                                                                                                          

The disparity, as you might imagine, between income and the high cost of living is…discouraging.  Would you like to know the population of Lubango?  Yeah, so would I.  Estimates are between 400,000 and 1,000,000.  The reason for this chasm of a range is housing.  In certain areas, everything the light touches is a slum.  A majority of these brick homes have barren floors.  Their roofs are roughly measured sheets of corrugated metal held in place with perimetric rocks.  These sprawling communities have no pre-planned roads, no organized trash collection, no latrines, and no running water.  The (free) electricity poles that punctuate the skyline disappear in a web of wire near their apices.  Normally two families occupy a single one of these approximately 12’ x 15’, two-room dwellings but the actual numbers herein are indiscernible.  The sights and smells presented to my senses overburden my soul.

Despite such past and present, Angolans seem very happy.  The timely greetings of, “bom dia,” “boa tarde,” and, “boa noite,” are returned immediately and wholeheartedly.  I see many smiles and much appreciation on a daily basis.  Simple courtesies are not ignored.  Judgment is not passed near as readily as in western culture.  For example, when listening to those with an accent attempt to speak, Angolans only try to understand and keep the conversation alive.

These southwestern Africans seem to be a very relational people.  Hardships and successes are shared within extended families.  The uncle (tio) has a central role in family dynamics.  A maternal uncle oversees engagements and wedding plans.  An uncle is also the primary consenting party to medical treatment.  It is very common to see women and girls carrying their daughters and siblings (respectively I sure hope) on their backs. 

This closeness, however, does not necessarily translate to interpersonal compassion.  As mentioned before, employees do not make customers’ issues a personal initiative.  Similarly, in a medical sense, it does not seem as if Angolans conceptualize the patient as a parent/child/sibling and escalate compassion accordingly.

In hopes of summarizing, I would like to close with a poignant theme in this culture: survival.  The past and the present are the only things that matter.  Much of daily life is about making it until tomorrow.  This is true to the point that many patients are unaware of their own age.  The biggest sigh that I have breathed while learning about local culture, though, comes from the area’s tribal language, Ubundu.  In Ubundu, there is no future tense.