Luanda: Not what I Expected

Angola was interesting & quite different to what I had expected.

The city is a real mixture of some quite nice developments & some pretty terrible old buildings that look like they should've been pulled down about 20 years ago.

There's also a curious mix of cleanliness standards. On one hand, so many of the streets & pavements are kept immaculately clean by owners & stores that sweep them every day. You then have the other extreme of garbage in the river & rubbish that has been chucked out the back door of the houses & is now forming ugly mounds as it falls down the side of the hills.

The city also has a fascinating history. I didn't realise but since it got its independence in 1975, it had basically been the site of a Cold War with Russia supporting the government forces & the US supporting the rebels.

Battles were fought in the north & south, plus many land mines were laid. As a result, I saw many people with missing limbs around Luanda. There are still many areas that haven't been cleared of land mines so it's quite dangerous to go walking randomly around the countryside.

The war finally ended when one side (I think it was the US) lost interest & stopped the funding.

You can still see many remnants of the Cold War & Russian influence in the country's flag & the design of many of the city's buildings. In more modern times, there is a growing Chinese influence, as with just about every country around the world!

The people I met were all very nice & many would have looked completely at home in any US city as African Americans. One thing that impressed me about them was how well they dressed. Even in the poor areas, the girls in particular all had immaculate hair & clothes!

Epic Hotel

I stayed at a hotel named "Epic Sana". While I'm not sure what "Sana" means, they definitely got the "epic" part right.

Everything about my stay there was amazing with one exception, which I'll get to in a moment.

The room was epic in size & furnishings, with every kind of amenity you could possibly wish for, including multiple wardrobes!

The staff were epic: super-friendly, helpful & nice. They also seem to have a policy of employing a large percentage of female models ... which certainly doesn't hurt!

The food & bars were also epic in quality & probably price too. Luanda held the title of Africa's most expensive city just a few years ago when oil was at its peak, and I don't think prices have changed much since then! I'm not 100% certain however as I never quite managed to get the exchange rate formula into my head ... plus someone else was paying anyway!

I did feel kind of like a scene from the capital in Hunger Games when we were drinking expensive cocktails at a bar on the 22nd floor, while overlooking the squalid hobbles of people who earn just a few dollars per day below. This is certainly a city of the "haves" & the "have nots"!

The gym was one of the best hotel gyms I've seen in quite a while plus the pool was magnificent too.

The only part that wasn't epic was (curiously) the ironing board & its attached iron. Maybe they gave me the last one available, I'm not sure, but the one I had was terrible & leaked water all over my clothes. Maybe they're trying to encourage you to use their (presumably) epic laundry service? I stubbornly refused & slopped my way through ironing one shirt each evening, or (more likely) hurriedly each morning!

Imagine Doing a 5-day course in Another Language

The course went well though was quite slow. The participants picked things up remarkably well given many were listening to what I was saying through an interpreter. There was a team of 3 interpreters who took turns translating what I was saying on the fly into a headset, which then broadcast this to others in the room who also had headsets.

It worked well though was a little distracting as I had someone constantly mumbling in the background so I found it harder to concentrate on what I was saying.

One of the interpreters insisted on calling me "Excellency" & would say things like "Would Excellency like me to hand these out?" I didn't realise he was talking to me at first but I quickly got used to it & am now thinking I might ask all my future course participants to address me the same way!