Tomorrow will be my last day in Lobito for this mission. I should fly to Luanda in the late afternoon to catch the AF flight off to France later in the night. The past two days has seen a lot of rain falling onto the bare hills of the Benguela province, where Lobito is located. So much water that I actually had to cancel all my outdoor plans for the past weekend. No wonder my Sunday has been pretty frustrating.

We engaged in a UT LAN session with some old friends that was finally cut short by the ENE (Empresa nacional de Electricidad - local power(less) company). In Lobito due to lack of investments (in turn due to embezzlements) the power supply is so restrained that each area receives only 6 hours of power per day. The rest of the time people use generators, ... or wait.

The only good moment during this weekend was one of this few natural exceptional events that make all the frustration smooth away. A little bit like aurora borealis can be.

I had seen this phenomena just a few times in my long stay in the region but it happened again last Sunday. In the midst of the rainstorm, the water just stops falling. The air seems suspended in time. The sky is as dark as the night can be, with just the heat lightning’s marbling the overwhelming masses above. It is 17.30. But as the sun sets on the horizon its light starts to come from below the clouds. And suddenly the whole scene around you is just filled with light from within. Every object, every building, the whole countryside is totally illuminated without any shadow casted. The light has a yellowish color. The sea is sparkling in every direction. And the whole scene sharply contrasts against the darkness of the skies. It is like if the Earth was shining. That's where you get to see the magic of Africa. Truly amazing!!

If one day any of you have the opportunity to set foot on this continent do not hesitate. I just know very little of it - mainly Western and Southern Africa - and I can't guaranty you will like it. Yet most of the people I met and myself we are all affected by this love/hate relationship that pushes us to leave and come back again and again to Africa. That must be for a reason.

Just set on a journey across the Pans of Botswana or the Namibe desert and I promise you'll start seeing things quite differently ;)

Wednesday, deep into the week.

Mornings are still filled with rain. How odd! I never experienced such a frequency of rains during my 5 years here. And from talking with the olders I find fishing off the rocks on the ocean side at dusk it seems that everyone is quite disoriented by so much water falling onto their heads.

The fishermen. They just seem to live on these rocks. When I leave the house at 6.30 in the morning, they are already throwing their bait in the dark waters. The same old roll of fishing thread to their side half buried in dried crab shell and fish scales, they are still pulling on their rudimentary lines long after the sunset (everyday around 18.30 / 19.00). Their equipment is limited to just a nylon thread imported from South Africa and a self-made hook. No rod, no reel, just the minimum. Years of fishing, the nylon and the salt have hardened their hands to such an extent than greeting them feels like shaking a piece of dry wood. I usually wave at them in the morning on my way to work.

The view of the Lobito bay along the way to the office, with the ocean fogs hanging off the cliffs, reminds me of the Norwegian fjords. The short drive from the guesthouse to the construction yard is a very special moment for me. For every time I took this long straight road from the far end of the Restinga (literally The road of the wealthy) through the small soviet-style city centre onto the port area I feel I am so much better off experiencing all this than sitting in the middle of a traffic jam listening to silly commercials in the hope of just 2 minutes of decent music to smooth all that surrounding frustration.

In France radios never play the music I like anyway. Commercial 'music' is the only one to find its way through the air. It is sad because a radio station that I really liked in Paris (Radio Nova) a few years ago, has now turned into one of those commercial junks. It used to air some excellent experimental electro music and other very little known world musics. It still does. But to a much lesser extent. With the French requirement to air a minimum of 40% of French music and the same speakers gone wrong - once resourceful in terms of music critics and now pushing forward mercantile intentions - Radio Nova does no longer serve its purpose to me.
In Africa you have corrupted administrations and people. In Europe you have administrations and people corrupting your mind and music tastes. What's best? I am not sure ...

The network connections are down since Sunday morning now. I couldn’t post Saturday entry in my journal until now. Heavy rains on Saturday night seem to have disabled the satellite transmitter dish. It does not help my work much down here but I am kind of used to B-plans after so many years in Angola.

This morning the rain continues despite the end of the Kassimbu season some 3 weeks ago. The Kassimbu – an Ovibundu word – stands for the period July/October caracterised by skies packed with low altitude dark clouds, (relatively) low temperatures (10-20 C), and sporadic rains. The most impressive about the Kassimbu is that, at its peak, the sun is seldom seen picking through the thick layers of clouds for months. As if a permanent storm about to unleash its furry was hovering over Angola but just never breaking out. As odd as it seems it scarcely rains despite the clouds.

On Saturday night I found back some old friends I left there in June. My Portuguese is somewhat rusty but a few of the local brew bring back the essential vocabulary. The night ends very late. It is almost 3 am when I get back to the guesthouse. But the night will be short. During the little gathering I was invited to a little mountain bike raid along the Catumbela River on Sunday morning 8am.

Not surprisingly I had a very hard time waking up. I almost gave up jumping out of bed but the prospects of such a raid just kicked me out of my lazyness.

The raid started quietly. We rode across banana and cornfields for about 15 kms before reaching the banks of the Catumbela River. It is a large shallow river that looks more like an Oued (Saharan dry river) than a European river. We are just 2 kms away from it reaching the Ocean. The water is brown and large leaves and pieces of wood are floating by. These are the signs of dense rains up in the mountains.

We took upstream on a small trail a few meters away from the water. The start of the trail was just a pure pleasure. 70 cms wide in average, quite technical with sharp up and down hills, stones scattered on the path and very narrow passages between water and wild sugar canes. All with the immense African scenery all around. What a moment!

Along the trail we met several farmers surprised to see 4 high-speed riders on the wild. We often stopped to have a quick chat with them and also learn about the path ahead.

Soon the trail lead to a cliff with the trail carved within. For about 10 kms we spent most of the time carrying the bikes on our backs, climbing up and down rocks and carved stairs, with the water several meters beneath. At on point the trail was so narrow that it did not exceed 30 cms, all carved inside the cliff. We reached the end of that portion to find a 7-meter ladder leading down to just above the water, directly onto a rail maintained by poles. Fortunately there was no splash and all 4 of us managed to carry the bikes down the ladder onto the rail and then perform a 5-meter equilibrium walk back to the trail. All with a few small crocos bathing in the sun on the other bank.

The farmers warned us about colonies of baboons that live along the sides of the river and can be quite aggressive but we didn’t meet any. The rest of the trail was more like the start. Less extreme and we could spend more time actually sitting on the bike. After an other 20 kms we took left off the banks and rode uphill to reach a larger trail that led us back to Lobito.

I spent the rest of Sunday recovering from this nice raid. The mind still somewhere along the Catumbela River, I took lunch in a small bar by the ocean. Later I continued touring the city to great my old friends.

Monday morning with the sunburns and the soar muscles, back at work.

The construction yard has turned into a nightmare from the combination of dust and rain. Manitowoc cranes and multiwheel trucks have difficulties crawling around. The same havoc is found across the city. Rain, as essential as it is to this country which Southern boarder reaches the Namibe Desert, is a double-sided coin. It brings life and helps good crops, but also destroys transportation systems, flashes ailing electricity network, and melts clay houses.

I left Luanda for Lobito on Saturday morning 4am. That’s a real early flight. In fact I was first scheduled for a 16.00 flight on a local company called SAL (Sociedad Avieira Ligeira) on Friday afternoon but the pilot decided to take off at 15.30 instead with just 2 passengers out of 12 booked. He was probably very eager to go on weekend. I was the only passenger on a special plane contracted by my company. After a 1-hour flight the small Beechcraft 200 was set to land on the military base of Catumbela, just 15 kms South from Lobito. We use the Catumbela military track because the provincial domestic airport of Benguela is set too much away from Lobito.

The base is still staffed and upon landing a small crowd of soldiers in over worn uniforms carrying AK47 from the very first generation gather around the plane. It is just curiosity and probably some entertainment for them to see a plane land in that base. But still I cannot appreciate much such welcoming when I remember that they used to do the same during the war with humanity planes to loot on the cargoes intended for the starving people stuck in-between the two fighting parties.

I leave the airport in a pick-up with some survey equipment on the back that we carried out from Luanda in the B200. The car passes through the successive checkpoints on the road to the base. Passage is granted after a few words exchanged with the bored soldiers. Tudo bom? Estas bem disposto? The contact with people is much easier in here than in the capital city. People are smiling back at you. The pace of life is much slower and the atmosphere does not have with taste of mere survival that it has in Luanda.

We leave the area and begin the drive to Lobito on the dirt road that crosses the salt plants. The drying pools are no longer in use and became a playground of choice for thousands of pink flamingos. It is 6.30 am, and the roads are filling with farmers carrying their tools on their head on their way to the cornfields.

20 minutes later we reach the construction yard. A full day of work ahead, I forget it is Saturday.

*taking a few minutes off a long day of work - here is a small update on my trip*