Day 1 in Luanda as a non-Lusophone

I arrived in Luanda on a Friday morning just in time to clock into my job online. Angolan Airlines operates a direct route between Nairobi and Luanda, but it runs at somewhat strange hours and does not fly every day, hence why I caught my flight at six on a Friday morning and flew back at eleven in the evening on Saturday. Still, I was impressed by the quietness and smoothness of the apparently new and mostly empty Airbus. Not that I was expecting crowds on it, but I found it strange that when we arrived in Luanda, all the passengers fit on a single airport bus.

Just like in Mozambique, I struggled to communicate in English with almost everyone, from the immigrations official and the gentleman at the currency exchange to the receptionist at my hotel. Once again, I fell back on my Spanish, which I mutilated with the occasional Portuguese word and a slew of sounds that just sounded Portuguese to me. Somehow, this worked, though generally it was easier for people to understand me than it was for me to understand them. This was not always inconvenient. People would quickly leave me alone when I said “não falo português” or, even better, “I do not speak Portuguese.”

Since I had to work in the morning, I left my exploration of the city for the afternoon. I had some concerns about safety in Luanda before coming, so I booked a city tour for Saturday, but since I knew we would not visit the old Portuguese churches around my hotel in the historic centre, I decided to go out anyway. My first impressions reassured me that there was nothing to fear. As in most African cities I have visited, people approached me asking for money or to sell me things, but they were not more persistent than elsewhere, and some locals just wanted to have a friendly chat. What was more prominent in Luanda than in most of the other African cities I have visited was the rate of child poverty. During my few hours walking around, I was approached – individually – by a dozen children, some of them offering to clean my shoes and others simply begging. When I was too slow to move on, the children would crouch and start cleaning my shoes, one or two of them with their bare hands.

My first stop was the Church of Carmo, an old building with an ornate painted ceiling and walls covered in azulejos. There were a few women praying in the church and one woman sleeping on a pew in the back. From the Church of Carmo, I walked to Luanda Cathedral, also known as the Church of Our Lady of Remedies. There was a small gathering in the church, and I was approached for money both inside and outside it, so I did not linger very long, but I did stay long enough to notice that some of the women associated with the church (I could not tell whether they were nuns, but I think not) wore colourful dresses inscribed with the church’s name and bearing a large framed picture of the church’s patron saint.

Walking towards the promenade along Luanda’s shore, I passed the Monument of the Unknown Soldier. It struck me that the local culture around honouring the victims of war is somewhat different than that in Europe, as people came to the monument to take videos of themselves dancing. This is not to mention the defunct eternal flame which presumably should have been burning under it. The monument itself is quite interesting: I was told it was built in a shape of an X to symbolise sacrifice in this deeply Christian country, its distinct bars ostensibly referring to the individuals affected by the collective tragedy.

Not really knowing where to go next, I followed the promenade along the coast until I found myself, half an hour later, by the city’s port authority. The promenade is perhaps the most ostentatiously spacious and curated part of Luanda, which is often a little derelict and cramped with cars and people. This calm pedestrian haven is separated from the road by a row of deciduous trees and a manicured lawn, with a few outdoor gyms and playgrounds sprinkled along the route. A row of regularly spaced palm trees flanks this area from the seaside, growing alongside a bike lane that is rarely used because there are almost no bikers, and the few bikers that do bike in this area are youths with little respect for the dictates of mere paint on the ground. The Avenue of February Fourth, which runs along this pedestrianised area, is the nicest road in town. It has lanes in each direction, and the traffic lights work at every crossing.

As I made my way back from the port authority building, I passed by a garden with a quaint Portuguese Church – the Church of Our Lady of Nazareth. I had read about this church on Luanda’s Wikipedia page, but I could not find it on Google Maps, so I was delighted when I found it thanks to a poster on the wall of the garden bearing its name. The little church was full of azulejos and praying women with dresses bearing the likenesses of Saint Mary; despite there being no mass, it was busier than any other church I have visited in recent days.

Finally, I passed by the National Bank, a massive building with beige corners, window frames and pillars all topped by a big red dome. By the time I had reached it, the clouds that hung over the city all day began to disperse, so I spent quite a few minutes waiting for a break in the traffic to take a good picture from across the road. However, by the time I made it to the lower side of the harbour, the clouds closed in again, and the city plunged into a premature dreariness before night descended.