My wife and I just returned from an inspiring month's visit to Angola. We have been helping to support an effort by a friend living there to create a Community Center for the children in her neighborhood.
Many of these families live in homes without electricity or water. A few months ago through the help of a kind friend in Portugal, we were able to rent a property for a year where we could begin the project. The children from ages three to fifteen can come to the center from two o'clock until six. During that time they have activities with a teacher including reading and listening to stories, number work, writing practice, and group games including goal shots, hit the can hanging from a pole, potatoe sack race, etc. The final event is the meal served around five o'clock. Afterwards the older children help with sweeping the grounds and returning the pots, pans, and plates and cups to the mission center not far away.
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| Roadside stop on the highway to Benguela |
We arrived in Luanda at 2:30 am after a long flight through Morocco. Knowing that the mosquitos could carry Yellow Fever or malaria kept us quite nervous even though we had prayed that the Lord would protect us from all evil. At 5:00 am a friend of the mission took us to the bus station to our bus to Benguela where we were to stay for the month. Our bus left at 8:00 am and started on the long journey south. Some years ago the Chinese had built a highway to Benguela, but within five years the road began to break up. What had orginally taken 4 hours on the new highway, now would take us over 12 hours as the bus had to continually leave the broken up highway to use a dirt road along side the highway.
Some time near to nine o'clock at night we arrived in Benguela and Ana and Pedro were there to pick us up. That was good because my phone's battery had gone down, even though I had a new chip for the Angolan system.
Ana and Pedro have a nice house in a neighborhood just outside the center of Benguela, a city of 300,000 urban inhabitants and 300,000 provincial inhabitants. Benguela is along the Atlantic ocean some 542 kilometers south of Luanda, the capital, and located at 12º south latitude and 13º east longitude.
To help you have an idea of where Angola is situated, Berlin is located at 52º north latitude and 13º east longitude. Both Benguela and Berlin are at the same longitude, but the difference is in the latitude. Benguela is 12º south of the equator, while Berlin is 52º north of the equator. Being close to the equator means that the seasons in Benguela are not as pronounced as those farther from the equator. The daily amount of sunlight in Benguela is quite similar throughout the year with the sun rising around 5:30 am and setting around 6:00 pm. The summer months do however get very hot and visits to Benguela are better before or after the summer months. Angola is above the word South Africa on the map, along the coast. Namibia is between Angola and South Africa.
Here I am with the first cook we had hired for the project. She was 54 years old and had had 12 children, five of whom had died. Her husband had also died some months previously, so she was very sad. I got to talk to her because I asked her why she seemed so sad. We talked about faith in God and how our loved ones go to be with God when they die. How sad it must make our loved ones to see us sad while they are enjoying eternity with God. We prayed together. I shared what God's word says, "The joy of the Lord is our strength." She definately was happier and took our time together to heart.
These are two of the children that Ana and Pedro are taking care of. Carlos is 6 years old and Maria Angela is 3 years old. Maria has a hearing problem but is very expressive with her eyes. I spent time using the Uno cards to practice numbers with them. Carlos goes to a local school in Benguela, but Maria Angela is home all day. She enjoys her time at the community center with the other children. Ana and Pedro have another "adopted" son called Pedro who is fourteen years old. We will see him a little later. He attends a Catholic school in Benguela but lives at the school during the week to help him concentrate on his studies.
Here I am with Saviola the Angolan man we have contracted to work with the children as teacher and coordinator of the children's activities. He's 29 year old and himself was brought up in a local orphanage not too far away. As a results, he has a heart for the children and young people in our neighborhood that come from poor families. He knows all the different situations and helps greatly in our understanding of the problems that each child confronts. He knows which children are more needy. He's a good teacher and has a good relation with the older boys which helps him, many times single-handedly, care for the 50 plus children who attend the center.
From 2:00 pm the childen begin to arrive at the center. Not enough school exist in the area so the children go to school in shifts. Some children go in the morning, while others go in the afternoon. 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, or 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm are the schedules. Many of the children have difficulty reading. They have no books at home and no electricity which means no television.
We brought some children's books for the center and the children and young boys would spend the first hour at the center reading through the books.
The fact that most of the children rarely watched television made them very hungry for any type of mental stimulation. The children and young people were very communicative. We didn't notice any generation gap. Even in their difficult living conditions they were generally happy.
After the children had free reading time, Ana would arrive to read them a united story. Many stories she chose were from the "Children's Bible Stories." The children and young people would sit and attentively listen. Ana would act the story out and pull out some of the older boys to help her. She's very animated even at 56 years of age.
After the story, Saviola would begin the united activities with the children and young boys. The games were usually the same each day. They would first play a game of trying to hit a can hanging from a clothes line with a ball. The ball was made from a piece of old cloth stuffed with plastic bags and then tied. The boy at the left is showing you the type of balls they play with.
Saviola has made the rule that the winning team during the game period gets to help with the distribution of the food at the end of the day. Saviola would divide the group into two teams and at the end of the contests, the older boys of the winning team would help give out the food. All the boys were interested in winning because it often resulted in a slightly bigger portion of food. We have had to balance this idea of Saviola's as the boys were going over board and keeping too much food for themselves. "The violent take it by force." But we want to teach them Christian ethics like, "let all things be done decently and in order," and "esteeming others better than ourselves." So we've had some talks and the boys are doing a lot better.
The next game was the rice sack race.
After that race came the goal shots. As usual the game can get very intense.
After the games the children line up to wash their hands.
Then they sit down to eat.
The older boys help give out the food and serve.
These boys helped to carry the pots and pans and dishes back home, while other boys would help sweep the patio for the next day in a similar way that their mothers sweep at home.
The next day we were able to visit the local orphanage and saw the desks and benches that are used there. We decided these were just what we needed to get the children off the floor and made an order with the orphanage to build some for us. The above photo is of an outside classroom at the orphanage with the type of tables and benches we will soon be using at our center.
Walking back from the orphanage I saw these older women carrying their loads on their heads. Most of the women that you see are selling something. You don't see so many older women. People die younger in Africa. The majority of the people walking about are young adults or children. Even though Angola has been a communist country since its independence from Portugal, the people are deeply religious and abortion is against the law. Maybe the communists and the Catholics made some secret agreement. In any case, Angola is a country of young people, its exploding with young people. But the problem is that the young people are by and large not getting a good formation and the economy is stagnant, offering little opportunity for work. Instead of producing food to feed the country, Angola imports much food products from South Africa. The poor live on a diet of imported rice and beans. Bananas are cheap and the children knock the mangos from the trees even before they are ripe and well developed. It's a very sad situation that the rich of the world have maintained in order to safe-guard their riches, in this case, the oil and minerals Angola produces.
I also was able to speak with Father Quim the director of the orphanage and arranged to come and speak to the boys about my testimony of how I had found God. Coming from an American born in Brooklyn, New York, this sounded like it could be interesting and the priest gave me the go-ahead. After my first talk, he invited me back twice a week for the duration of my stay. I was also able to show the movie "Sister Act" part one which the boys enjoyed immensely. I taught the boys to sing the song "Because He Lives, I Can Face Tomorrow."
On the weekend I went with Ana and Pedro to a birthday party. They had been hired to do the animation for the children. Ana and Pedro had worked with me in Portugal some 16 years ago when my wife and I had a small animation company as part of our NGO. They are very good face-painters and balloon sculpters. Ana does an improntu animation with the children through music and games.
The next evening we were invited out with a Cuban/Portuguese couple we had met. They took us over to Lobito a city about a half an hour from Benguela. It has a better port for large ships and so was the main port for export and import activities from the time of the Portuguese colonists. Julian, the Cuban, introduced us to Sr. Miguel a restaurant owner. We were able to talk to him about our project and he agreed to help with vegetables for the children as he also owns and operates a large plantation. Here he is on the day after when he came with some food stuffs for the project.
On Sunday I went for a walk along the river and saw the people digging for water to wash themselves and, or their clothes.
While doing my jogging I would pass many children sitting outside their homes unattended while playing in the dirt. As a results of playing in the dirt and because they have little running water to clean, many children have skin diseases from organism that live in the dirt.
While their mothers washed clothes in the river, these children were playing safely in the sand by the riverside. They used whatever they could for toys. I felt my camera was intruding on their privacy.
If you would like to send a donation to help our work in Angola you can use the following bank account of Pedro in Portugal.
