Sightseeing in Cabinda

We finally organized for our driver to take us outside of town so we could see the beach. He showed up and the rains held off - mission successful.

Chinese construction, per usual.

Palanca Negra, Angolan soccer team's mascot. 

Our faithful and dedicated car/driver, Jeremias. This is the stadium built in Cabinda to host the Africa Cup in 2010. It hasn't really been used since...

A Praia Futilia. Bathing and fishing spot for locals.

Oil rigs ablaze. Chevron alone has over 80 rigs here, off-shore Cabinda.

Typical dwellings within the city of Cabinda.

Local swimming and bathing river.

Jeremias, Petey, and I in a supermercado. Don't be fooled. Those aren't chips. Those are more like a knock-off of a knock-off of chips. You tongue gets coated in a strange film after eating these. They also have Lay's potato chips, but they only sort of taste like Lay's, or even potato chips in general. And this is all we have for a reminder of something familiar in the food department!

The TV Phantom

We have different TV channels in the morning than we have at night.
Sometimes, as we are flipping through the channels they change.
One round through we don't have the BBC. Back through and we have it.
Tonight, we were watching our only English channel when suddenly a menu at the bottom of the screen shows up and starts flipping through a channel menu. We locate the remote and see that it is on the table, not moving, neither of us are touching it. Then the menu surfing rests on a Portuguese telenovela channel and we lose our English channel. Sigh. Back to Angolan Portuguese rap music.

O Centro de Cabinda

The weekends tend to be quiet around here during the day. But the discotheques bump the bass till 4am of course. Our walking radius is small. I'm getting antsy to begin teaching.

 The heat hits like a cargo train when you step outside. There are no numbers to describe the quantity of heat that you feel. It's hot. Africa hot.

Our apartment, although we don't live there

Beer is cheaper than water in Angola. Water is cheaper than food. Food is more expensive than clothes. Clothes are too expensive to buy.

It felt so good to finally have our first meal in our faculty housing apartment. Too bad we have to wait to move back in! The water and power were turned off due to construction, or maybe it's about paying the bills...

This is a really nice and newly built apartment that we can't live in yet, despite moving into :(

Check out the insignia on the bed sheets. And I'm the dork in my ELF shirt :)

Peter's lab specimen.

Bem Vindo a Cabinda

People like to put lots of mayo and ketchup on their pizza here.
The women sell "Obama" brand underwear at the market.
The city shuts down today for International Women's Day.
We have a dedicated car/driver. We plan for 9am; he arrives at noon.
The university folks are great. Lots of energy for developing a solid English Department.

The first 9 days in Cabinda have been a bit topsy turvy, but things seem to be getting better and better. Our housing situation has been confusing. We have had 5 different living arrangements in 9 days. Finally we are settled into a nice hotel that has a gym with 360 degree view of the bay and hills of Cabinda - super plus!! The hotel orders us meals every day, calling to ask what we want. Check out the view from our room.

I've had a few English Dept meetings. My students are mostly oil rig workers who are getting an education in English to improve their futures, get better jobs. Classes begin next week, or maybe the following...

Luanda, Week 1

We have arrived, safe and sound! We've had some exhausting days at the embassy, meeting various officers (including a Federal Agent for a security briefing) and learning about my role and relationship, as the EL Fellow, with PAS (the Public Affairs Section). We get picked up and driven everywhere we go. In some ways, looking out the car window is the only way to see the city, unless you run in the expat HASH, which of course we did. Dining on the beach and swimming at night in the Atlantic was the perfect finish to our first weekend here.

The amount of Chinese construction is shocking! Driving along some streets, you might as well think you're in China. At any time of day, when I look out one of the windows of our hotel, I can see at least 5 cranes building skyscrapers.

This is a city of the world's richest and the world's poorest. Out one window of the hotel room, there's a shanty town (musseque) typical of the city.

But out the other window, there are beautiful sandy beaches for the elite, hotels with rooms that cost a minimum of 450 per night, and the infamous De Beers company.