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12th Street Chronicles
O WORK
that of writing to entertain the time, it's fine sign that there is nothing to do.. Gone are the years when there were those who boasted that they couldn't do nothing. “When there is no work, I invent it”, they said. Which, all things considered, meant that work was not it was treated as an occupation of effort, sweat and sacrifice, but as a physical need for “moving around”, a kind of sport that, for that very reason, would pass to the category of entertainment. It would be a bit like that, as though working, dancing, or playing tennis for fun.
Now, it is more than evident that only those who have nothing else to do have fun. Only those who, at least for the moment, do not work have fun. From which it is inferred that no one would invent work if he had some work to do.
Stays like this said and demonstrated that work only arises, the obligation to work only appears, because there has been a long time without doing anything to think about him and, what's worse, invent it.
Work itself is not bad when done for others.
The work itself dignifies, when someone feels lacking in dignity, which, frankly, we don't really know what it is these days.
the work itself it is still a healthy occupation that makes tummies shrink (physical work) and convulse neurons (that other work that is rarely believed to be - the intellectual).
However, and no one one must forget, work is consequence of sin, it is the sentence that humanity atones for a crime it did not commit, for an apple it did not eat, for a fruit that only Adam bit, for a temptation that only Eve felt.
So woe to those who love to work! Woe to those who invent work! There of all those who insist and persist in perpetuating through work, the memory of a evil and condemned act.
Well, there are those who do nothing! The ones who sleep Those who rest because they never felt tired. The eternal sleepers who spend their lives dreaming of new and more restful rests. The pure in heart who, because they sleep and do not work and do not work, do not sin. The quiet ones who relax so they don't feel the temptation to work. Crazy because they don't care about life that is awake in another dimension. the rich because if they don't startle, they don't even need to work.. Drunks because they anesthetize themselves and don't feel
Good luck to me too, because working on this chronicle that should say something, I managed to come to an end, speaking without saying anything.
NATURALLY
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12th Street Chronicles
There are things that not even the devil believes: I hadn't been to Cabo Island for over two years.
I was amazed. I would rather say - astonished. On top of the beach, the musseque grew. Next to the sea, the snack bars multiplied. Soon, the sands will all be privatized. Viewpoints will be built for see the sea and you will have to make the “minimum expense” (as in nightclubs) to take a shower.
On the other side (that is, on the side of the Bay) one also builds - either dwellings with the good resemblance of palaces, or more cafeteria without any special resemblance.
This thing about islands here in Luanda is getting talked about. It is the case of Mussulo, it is the case of Ilha dos Pássaros. AND if anyone starts to remember, will be the case of Ilha dos Padres and Ilha dos Burros which, without any bad sense, was at the time offered to the Union of Writers.
And on the subject of donkeys that are animals with no purpose, there are those who say that journalists are masters of making criticisms without presenting either suggestions or proposals for a solution. As if the journalist (or anyone else with him) couldn't criticize, say bad things, give a simple opinion, point out where the shoe pinches him just because he doesn't know how to do it. the shoes. As if I, when talking about the Island, were now required to know everything, to teach the lord ruled to settle the problems that this island is visibly having.
Who would believe it if I arrived here and said: “My dear friends, it is easy to solve this problem. Taking what a few months ago very well said in the National Assembly one of the Deputy Governors, informing you that most cafeterias are illegal (although protected by notes and recommendations, as you also stated); Given that if we are to enforce legislation that has not yet been repealed, the dwellings will possibly also be in an irregular situation; Whereas the laws are made, to the equal satisfaction of anyone, it is easy to resolve this issue - take the tractor and proceed, in the same determined and firm way, with which, from time to time, you overthrow other unlicensed houses.
But who would believe me if I said that? Of course no one, because such a measure is not only drastic but, I would even say, fundamentalist, unpolitical, economically burdensome for the immediate interests of the State, because of the compensation which I would be obliged.
So I make another proposal: ...
... that just as there are game reserves in Angola, reserves of Indians in the United States, reserves of Free or Low Cost State Beaches are made here in Luanda. Even if they are not for bathing, because naturally they will be polluted, will serve to show our children and grandchildren how the beaches formerly they were, when they belonged to all.
And packed in this fluency of proposals, maybe I could imagine one last one, advising you not to do nothing, but do away with (for the sake of transparency) the Ministry of Tourism that really has nothing to do (at least, islands will no longer have it).
Because after all, what kind of tourism can we offer to those inside and outside? visit our islands?
Naturally, the privatized tourism of air, water, beaches and sands...
Of course, tourism future of the cafeteria: drink, pay, shower and piss yourself...
Naturally, a tour that will not be for us. It will be, as they say, not for those who want it (or for those who deserve it, as in the past) but for those who have it and who can.
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12th Street Chronicles
ONCE AGAIN MAITRE BEYE
When someone dies, it's important to bury their body and speak to their soul. That's what the ancients said. That's why there is a procession of cries and lamentations at the funeral and one prays for the eternal rest of the soul of one who has died.
When someone dies, suspected of having been caused by death, in addition to the proper and customary burial and worship ceremonies, it is necessary for the police to investigate under what circumstances the death took place.
This is to say that the tributes paid to Maitre Baye and to all those who died with him, without knowing yet what actually happened to them (the Security Council itself says it doesn't know either) seem to me, as if to say may they rest assured that we are not forgotten. A kind of tribute of conscience from those who maybe know (or imagine, or conclude) and don't say because they can't.
Nobody wants to make us believe that the UN does not have experts capable of reaching conclusions in a month that it did not reach in a year. That is, unless they have been put in the field, officials chosen incapable and incompetent not to reach any conclusion.
As I don't believe in perfect crimes (unless there was no crime) in January of this year I wrote about the subject, the lines that today I repeat and which, unfortunately, are still current:
Maitre Baye died. Something that everyone knows and no one forgets. What is forgotten is that we were promised, by those who had to explain the circumstances in which the case had taken place, the reason why he died.
That is to say: if Maitre Baye was killed because an accident killed him; if Maitre Baye died, because they purposely placed on the plane (inside or outside, the bad language says that even under his seat) some artifact that had blown up the plane.
Monua will have left for later what in any part of the world could have been explained soon. He will have tried to protect with silence, the Peace that seemed more or less well underway. could not overcome death of half a dozen individuals (Maitre Baye and his officials) the Peace hopes of an entire people. A new front should not be opened in the battle of accusations that were being made at the time.
But now that Peace is no more, and her hopes seem to pass through the terrifying voice Cannons;
But now that December has passed, and the promise of knowing how Maitre Baye died, seems to have been forgotten;
However, now that the silence is total, that no one says a word, that Maitre Baye himself seems never to have existed, it will be time to hear the conclusions reached by the experts about this accident, unless Monua (who saw, as little thing, to rearm armies never demobilized ) did not want again, for the sake of the Peace that no longer exists, to be burdened with guilt and once again, one of the signatories of the Bicesse Agreement.
Democracy has secrets and very undemocratic conveniences, when it judges that if everyone should vote, only a few have the right to know and decide.
So it was with Kennedy – hypothetically killed by one, who was visibly killed by another, and after all, he won't have been killed by anyone, because even today we don't know very well how it all happened.
If this happened to Kennedy who was, at the time, the most powerful man in the world;
If this happened to Kennedy, a president idolized like no other, well regarded by all as we know, with the eyes of a pioneer in American policy in the case of Africa, what will not happen to the Maitre Baye who was only the special envoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations?
Returning again to the question: what we need to know is if it was a bomb, or if it was a missile, so that we can guess: who had weapons there (on the bombs or missiles side). Who were the President's friends there and who didn't give a damn about the UN embargoes, and who finally knew, trusted, was sure, that beyond the weight of the truth, the bribing force of definitive silence would be worth much more. ..
We will all die one day. But in Africa, where no one dies a natural death, we need to go to the quimbanda to find out what was the spell that killed him. Was it a bomb, or was it a missile, the spell that took Maitre Baye? Just say, gentlemen, that for lack of better we believe.
LUANDA - CITY NAME
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12th Street Chronicles
Why is our city named Luanda?
Experts said that when the Portuguese arrived in these parts, they asked an inhabitant of this city, which at that time was not yet a city, what the land was called. And he, the citizen who was not yet a citizen, thinking that they were referring to something that might be around there, would have said: Luanda.
I say, that I am also entitled to give an opinion, that having Paulo Dias de Novais arrived in these lands, he called his diviner (that they also used this type of sorcery) and said to him:
- Tell me, sir, if this is a land of good character for her do we build a city?
The soothsayer retired and for more than three hours he was studying the stars, laying down the cards and trying the shells that here were called zimbos and were money.
- Mr. Paulo Dias, the stars say that you will establish your city here, with the Grace of God and through the mercy of Our Lord, may God keep you. Your city will be a big hole for the King and for the Kingdoms of Portugal, and a big hole for those who come and live in it.. You will call this city Luanda - the moon that walks, since, being very bumpy, it is very similar to the Moon, our satellite planet that has no piece without a hole. This is your dream. This is your moon. This will be your city of Luanda.
Over the centuries, the authorities have studied the best way to make holes in the city, living up to its name. And from hole to hole we come to the present day,
in which the holes achieve, through long and profound experience, an unsurpassed quality and variety.
Holes specialized. There are them for all tastes. From spring part holes that they work for the mechanics union; poop holes that the settlers left here and live normally clogged in the streets and roads; oil pull holes that the more they pull there at sea, less we have here in the pocket to buy the said; holes of fine Angolan and foreigner who speak thickly that are those holes that we thought only lived in Lundas, and after all, they are living in all sides of Angola.
There are still, invented relatively recently, the ravines that are holes geophagic because they eat earth and they destroy trees, houses, airports and more; They are also known for wandering holes that wander here and there and go nowhere. They dig in just to annoy.
Although, and the family continues to be the cell of society, there are still family holes, who are those who live at the door of our street, next to our family. They are familiar holes for two reasons: one, because we have lived with them for more than fifteen and twenty years; another, because the big hole that is the father and the little hole female that is the mother have made their litter here. As we are in Africa, where neither the methods nor the pills for limiting births and spacing births are known, there are seven small and consecutive holes that are the children.
And so we come to the end of this bumpy chronicle about Luanda, a land of big holes (holes in the ground, holes in the houses, holes in the Offices, holes here, holes there) that there are even those who think like this:
- With so many holes, wouldn't it be better, instead of government, to get a catrapiler to land everything?
Well, I say: you can fill a hole, but is it definitely buried? And how do you manage to bury a big hole, without having to dig another bigger hole?
This is the difficulty we have: burying a hole without opening another hole. Here's the case!
AGAINST
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12th Street Chronicles
Africa against AIDS. A well-crafted TV campaign, with high-quality actors, which deserves only one remark: there is no America against AIDS, Europe, Asia or Oceania equally against it.
Of course, there seems to be an explanation for this: to make people think (and of course Africans too) that they are the ones who have AIDS “guilt”, as it was rumored, without any scientific basis, when it appeared.
And as Africans are peaceful scapegoats for all blame, there we have it, the spots that our television gratefully airs, that TVI (Portuguese) also broadcasts, for our benefit, so that let us beware (and Europe and the Americas apologise) in a campaign that seems be exclusively and solely made for us. As if we were the only ones. Disease owners. The poor people who have what others don't - AIDS.
However, the diseases do not stop. If we don't have a catalog of diseases to choose from, we can say that every year half a dozen new diseases are created. And in this one, the most recent of all, it seems to be the mad cow.
I calculate that the great strategists must in the future attribute to Africa, if not the beginning, at least the blame for its spread. For the purpose of a major “Africa against Cows” campaign Crazy” may very purposefully invent steak NGOs to kill hunger in the third world. Said sore will be served in regular steaks (well or rare) with egg on horseback, in onion steaks, in breaded steaks and, if it is certain that people will die naturally from this, they do it at least on their stomachs. full, duly snuggled, which could constitute a level item us human rights: dying to starve to death.
A little more or less like when mines are made and then qualified sappers are sent to us to clear our lands and prostheses to help our people walk.
What we really need to understand is that it is urgent to rediscover charity. Reinvent and modernize Christian charity at every moment, circumstance and step of our life. Modernize and adapt charity to progress and the demands of the time. Entering the third millennium by continentalizing charity, globalizing a helping hand, creating spaces for steak against hunger to become a reality...
Viewed through a certain prism the mad cows, may turn out to be regarded as agents of charity. The mines, AIDS, will undoubtedly be a Euro-American Charitable Opportunity. Especially when, far from home, in Mission lands, bodies can be comforted and souls saved.
HOW A HOLE IS BORN
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12th Street Chronicles
A tear of rain falls and makes a hole in the ground. A car passes, a truck - it enters and jumps, hits and widens. The neighbor then helps: she discovers the first job of the hole, which is the dumping site. There you can pour a lot of water: dirty, soap, leftover food and even, of other leftovers that it's ugly to say here.
Smells bad? It's the smell of nature that is born cultivated with the help of pigs and chickens, dogs and cats that go there to rummage in the supermarket of survival.
A year goes by and it rains more. The hole widens. Now it is no longer a hole by itself - it has mud. Mud of all colors that hole is not racist: there is the white one of sandy soil, the red one of brick clay and the dark one that is the same as the gentile color here. Next year it will be a lake full of many companies: flies, mosquitoes, slime, algae where tuqueias and cacussos swim.
Watch out! no put salt in that water. If the water is salty you can have catfish, swordfish and shark in that hole. It is a danger for children who take a bath and do not know that can die of food death. Shark is an animal that kills when it's a fish, and eats all of us if it's a person.
Attention: this hole that is lake there in the middle of the neighborhood you have to treat him well, with all the affection of the world... There are holes like this who are over ten, fifteen and twenty years old. Respect for age is required. These are holes that the settler left abandoned and we nationalized them. Now they're ours. Old people at retirement age, but people can put up with them in part-time work that retirement doesn't provide.
Contrary to what is said, the hole's lagoon is not only the cause disease, it also educates. The Lagoa do Buraco on my street is truly a School for Free Times. There the children learn the art of fishing, swimming in your everyday hygiene. There the boys learn defending their property, shooing and yelling at others who are not from here. Know the law: In this fishing hole, only the owner of the fish catches.
I understand that in each school all the holes in the playground should be gathered together to make them one hole. We would thus have only one educational hole instead of the many we have.
The adults themselves who no longer need to be educated, because they know that To have it, you have to curse the mother of others, refining difficulties, because those who don't cry don't breastfeed, the adults themselves, I said, thanks to these holes they are having an iron health with the gymnastics they do: shoes on hand and rolled-up pants, each time they enter the house or leave for work. Thanks to the holes, there have already been two weddings, because the owners, as they didn't have pants to lift, rolled up their skirts. And this is like saying: whoever looked at them coveted and whoever coveted, if they wanted to go closer, ended up there in the Church. That here in this Bairro dos Imbondeiros, you don't use those asphalt customs of the rich - just go to the civil registry. Here, anyone who wants to look and see the farm pays in full.
I was told that years ago a hole like this killed an entire neighborhood with hunger. It was the case that, with the Grace of God, an alligator appeared there, already born at an adult age. It could have eaten people, but as the pans were on a hot fire, which is only water, they put the alligator inside, which, in their haste, was not even cooked well, but was very well eaten.
It is also necessary not to forget that the holes have a strong ideological side. are democratic holes - everyone, without any discrimination, can fill them with rubbish. They are, for everyone, the children's bath and the adults' urinals. Even more: they serve free water for those who want to wash their clothes. They smell bad for everyone. They don't choose noses or social position. Who passes smells. If you don't smell it, it's because you haven't passed. They divide diseases among all and kill everyone equally. Just can't kill rich, because rich people don't live here and rich people's children aren't here.
But this does not mean that we have less respect for the hole in our neighborhood. Because we all have flaws and holes are like people, with their own difficulties.
I understand that the authorities that throughout all these years have preserved, treated and even increased, with undisclosed affection, and with unusual care, all the holes that our city has should be praised.
We all know that potholes are part of the city's heritage. They are a potential source of tourist interest, so we believe that the Association for the Conservation of Holes should be created, always remembering that every time a hole is leveled, a story is lost. And propose to create, the Commendation of the Hole. Who should be the first to be awarded Hole Commander? Who?
TRAVELING CLERKS
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12th Street Chronicles
When we approach the Land of Feet-Front, we don't know if we should give thanks for so long lived, if we complain (whoever it is) for so little time that we still have to live.
We begin to look, and it is not only young people who are distant from us, but others who are already beginning to walk towards maturity.
I asked a girl and girl the other day, more girl than girl, if she remembered the traveling salesmen. No, as will be natural, in someone who is little more than thirty years old and has never arrived beyond Cacuaco, besides having traveled through South Africa, Europe and other countries in the world.
Well, a traveling salesman was a salesman from store to store that represented the country's department stores (at the time Province and later State), showed the farm, discussed prices, offered advantages, took orders and eight days later the goods arrived. Some going around the outskirts of the city, others tearing through the interiors of Angola.
By car, taking a sample of what he had to sell, the traveling salesman was, normally, a well-dressed man, always impeccable, in a suit and tie (at least on the plateau, that was how it was) very talkative and capable of staying up all night long. tell anecdotes. This was one of his best attributes, to which the power of persuasion was added. Good product, good condition, a lot of talk and good mood - here is the portrait of the traveling salesman.
It was always with an anecdote that he entered the customer's store and with another that he left. I have never heard any anecdote repeated. They were told, one after the other, always new, always different. Possibly they recycled them at the end of each trip, inventing new characters, putting a story at the end of another and so on.
Of course, anecdotes weren't all the same: some were good, others just so-so. Some decorated and repeated, others invented, adapted and whatever could have happened in the state that was Angola, or in the metropolis that was Portugal, right there they told a story about it.
They stayed and ate at the hotel. Very rarely at the client's home to avoid enmities and whispers of preferences with other clients. They were ethical: they never harassed other colleagues' customers.
This is the figure of the traveling salesman who only appears from the 1960s onwards, when the roads ceased to be the trails they had been until then. Of course, it wasn't always that way. Before, the train was the great transporter - and first the aviator - that merchant-employee who operated on his own a store for another, with the obligation to buy everything from the boss, and then the traveling salesman fulfilled a double function here: commercial, selling, and social, carrying and bringing information and news that, without a telephone, they interested everyone's isolated curiosity. There were traders who knew each other without ever having seen each other. They lived off the portrait that traveling salesmen made of them - older ones, who very rarely leave “their bush” others who, out of greed, didn't miss a day of sales and didn't go down to the head village of their municipality, let alone the capital city of their District.
And there they went along the line, Lobito/Teixeira de Sousa. Going out in the afternoon, spending the night in that train time, with a meal to satisfy hunger and arriving in Huambo the next day, to Silva Porto at nightfall, to Cuemba at eleven o'clock in the morning. night, Munhango much later and Vila Luso that today is called Luena, I'm not sure when.
Traveling salesmen, over time, disappeared from Angola. Perhaps they will return one day, when peace dawns on the roads of the interior. That as long as the war prevents the roads from opening, our traveling salesmen will be different...
... those who “we are coming with them”, on the doorstep of misfortune, offering examples of hunger, death and misery.
THE STONE AND THE WORD
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12th Street Chronicles
The boy barely says papa and mama and already knows a bad word. His father or godfather taught him and he is very funny. A joke because the way the boy talks is innocent. Joke because it is very visible how smart and smart the child is. Even a joke, because a word so well said, so well spelled, so roundly pronounced with all the ephes and rrs it doesn't even seem what it is – a brave blunder, a heavy rudeness.
But the boy grows up, and what he said and called to everyone starts to become uncomfortable. That's when the father warns: "the boy doesn't say that, do you hear?" and the mother, who has the lightest hand, kicks her hard.
The boy cries, of course. Not so much for the pain of the spanking he took, as for not realizing what he had done wrong. Before, when he called those names to his father, godfather, or neighbor, everyone thought he was funny and encouraged him to repeat them. Today, when he says them, everyone scolds him and sometimes his mother beats him. Because?
Am I not funny anymore? the boy asks. Does no one like me anymore? Do I not say the words as well as I used to say them?
And with all the doubts he has, the boy returns, although very afraid, to pronounce the blunder. And he is beaten again and again he is scolded. And now it's the father, the mother, the godfather, the grandfather and the grandmother. The boy is distressed: he does not know what harm he has done to the world for everyone to be against him.
Do what, anyway?
We have another case: the boy learned on the street, or in day care, one of those words that should not be said. And finding her beautiful, he can't help but call her mother: "Mommy, you are a..." and the mother, without time for anything else, slaps him and scolds him.
Why would his mother have scolded him, if the word is so beautiful that he even came all the way to say it so as not to forget it? Why would her mother have scolded her if the one who taught her was Toninho, who is such a good friend, and João and Manuel, they all even say the word and nobody hits them?
What am I going to do anyway?
It's simple: don't teach or let the child teach nonsense. Don't find it funny or scold her when she says one. Pretend you didn't hear. Sometimes the child says as if he were experimenting, to know what it means, if he is good or bad. The child is curious by nature, and if you say: “don't say it”, you naturally want to know why and knowing that the word is ugly you can keep it in your arsenal of violence. One day, when least expected, she leaves. It's better to let her forget...
Nobody thinks that the child will not learn this and other nonsense later on, but then, as he grows older, he will understand better why he should not say them.
Don't be afraid to tell those around you not to teach the kid such words. A swear word taught today, it is spanked unnecessarily tomorrow and if you think that everything ends there is a mistake.
The child, as we said before, does not understand the reason for his punishment, is restless for days and what is more serious keeps within itself (and without knowing it) a trauma of injustice that can accompany her for a lifetime. Complex of not understanding what others want from her. Fear of exposing what he thinks, preferring to go after the opinion of others than exposing his own.
What sometimes spoils the child is the vanity of the parents: they want to show them more intelligent than the others, more graceful than the others, more beautiful, more alive, more full of something that no other has.
And so, as the boy already dances, already talks, is already very funny of his nature, they make him a parrot and teach him a nonsense.
You cannot give others the right to spoil your children's education or to create more or less serious psychological problems. In any case, the nonsense is ugly, it is aggressive, it is almost always used in cases of violence. It is, shall we say, the stone of the word that we throw at the glass windows of our enemies.
And just as you don't let your child teach you how to break other people's windows, so you shouldn't let them teach you to do violence to each other's ears.
THE INVENTION AND THE MISTAKE
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12th Street Chronicles
A glorious time was that right after Independence when the Portuguese language was nationally appropriated and started to walk alongside us and speak our way.
Removed the guardians of Portuguese who could be the erudite professors like Dr. Mourão Correia, an illustrious Lusitanian shaped like a school inspector, to Xico da Esquina, who felt so master of the language that he explained to the servant that the wine that was wine binho it was said and how binho if bubia ...
Once the found owners of the language had been removed and the language had remained, although free, destitute of such learned and puritanical protection, it came to the streets to live with a revolution that was pre-existing.
it announced (and in the end it died of abandonment) to invent words with the flavor of the flour that was there and the fried fish that appeared.
First came the militarization of language with the war: if the enemy attacked people would "appease" to the ground, if the enemy "didn't succeed", then we would "put" him, which is how to say, we immobilized him as if he were a "saboteur" of those who are stealing wallets on the street. Because saboteur, you will remember, jumped the wall of the war, for the one of the economy and started to mean also thief.
After having established itself, the Portuguese language thought that although there were thirty or so names to say boy, since childhood, curumi, creature, gaiato boy, kid, brat, infante, kid, young man, nhonhô, párvulo, small, petiz and boy, it was good to have a word of our own and so we put in the everyday dictionary the word pioneer, the well-known piô.
Other words that the dictionary didn't have and we needed like "panicar". It is true that in the Portuguese previously spoken, people panicked, but now, with war and mortar, it was necessary to find a verb faster than the fear and the need. It stopped being polite and Portuguese in panic, to panic right there.
And all these discoveries that we made not to the Indies of knowledge, nor to the Brazils of creolity, but to the popular roots of our soul, and all these astrolabes that we adjusted to the reality of our stars were legitimate.
Legitimate, because they had a reason. Legitimate, because they pointed to a need. Legitimate because instead of impoverishing and defiling the language, they enriched it and made it more tropically alive and adapted. We were also legitimate, because as the owner and user of this language, we transformed it with no other intention than to make it more ours, more communicable, more tailored to our needs.
Now, then, these words serve two purposes: the first to demonstrate that I am not a language puritan, the other to call attention to all those who, in the newspapers, on the radio, on television, trample on it, defile it, do not know themselves serve her.
The tongue does not want to be a virgin, it wants to be a lover and girlfriend. Love her, cherish her, but don't prostitute her.
We don't talk about the at that are almost always changed and become at and that no matter how much you close your eyes, ears and understanding, they make a difference like "day to night", but let's talk about the but that can still be corrected and not say more, because it's one thing for me to be married, but to have most than a woman, it's another thing for you to be single but, no matter how hard you try, you can't get any woman.
The same situation is that of protest because you think you're right, someone else who pretext of the reason you have seeks to hurt others. We still have the director (and not the director) who cannot be graced with dinner, because it's not possible to be decorated with so much food on the chest.
And I end with the culminate which is used as a finale, when it mainly means that the highest point of a celebration has been reached, when etiquette requires that you have in your hand, more than a glass of white wine, a glass of champagne.
IT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S BLAME
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12th Street Chronicles
Take sixty artists and say you're taking them abroad. It can be, for example, to Asia. Hong Kong, or Macau.
Give radio, television and newspaper interviews. The event deserves: the name of Angola in the shop windows of the Asian world. Write to our China ambassador. Maybe he can arrange something there and the caravan, instead of going only to Hong Kong and Macau, will also go to Beijing.
Politicize the situation. Talk about the political need for two peoples to know each other. In the mutual economic, cultural, etc. advantages. Ask for an interview with the Chinese Ambassador in Luanda. He's a polite diplomat, he'll never give you a resounding no. Naturally, he will say that he will study the matter. Give another interview and say what isn't true but isn't a lie either:
- Mr Ambassador, you listened with satisfaction to our proposal and is currently carefully studying the opportunity of our visit
Arrived here, request a government sponsorship of seven hundred thousand dollars with the same arguments. Artists who travel to China (don't say how many, don't talk about the economic advantages, that everyone knows will be none) and talk about the demarches already started with our Embassy in Beijng and the Chinese Embassy in Luanda. You can talk about the availability and attention with which the Ambassador of China listened to you.
Also ask for sponsorship from large companies based in Luanda (national and foreign). To the companies that do the math, just ask without giving numbers, to the others, where the money grows by miracle, go in person and advance with figures in the order of the twenty-thirty thousand dollars. Say that so-and-so has already given, that they usually don't like to be left behind...
Give more interviews. Press. be accompanied by some prestigious artists. It gives seriousness to the enterprise. Hold. And now that you've done enough work, take a break and consider two things:
Or the government gives you about five hundred thousand and you with the thousands that you will get in private it will not, of course, take the sixty but twenty. Complain about the unbearable “cache” that the others demanded. (The rest no one will know who they are, because you were careful to only talk to two or three... All are the rest, and no one will be the rest).
The tour takes place and you go, put a few thousand in your pocket and return as a national hero, ready for other cultural-profitable and possibly larger initiatives, earn a name in the embassies and, who knows, attract enough attention to take people thinking that the late Ministry of Culture will not look down on it so badly and resurrect it. Dynamic, intelligent, well connected, what do we want more after all?
Second Hypothesis: the Government doesn't give you five hundred, or a hundred, or anything and you in an interview talks about the lack of political and cultural sensitivity of the government that threw down a whole hard work of mobilization and made you lose a considerable amount of money (which was, as we know, none) that are the dollars that the fools gave you and you, naturally, will not return them because the " spent” in the preliminaries of this action.
As you can see – easy business, always profitable and without much sweat...
THE WATER OF MY STREET
chronicles
12th Street Chronicles
It will be nine years now since the water in my street got angry with me. I don't know why, but I guess it was opportunism. It is with sorrow that I say to you, with a deep and never belied sadness that I say to you, that the water in my street ran away from my house. As it is a special water, with legs and all, there it was diverted (or was diverted) to the taps of richer people, more importantly, more than that.
If the water deviated by itself, because it understood that it would live better elsewhere, it is in its full right. Each chooses his own path. I'm just sorry I didn't give her the life she wanted, the life she wanted. she dreamed of, ever since she got out of the EPAL tanks. Possibly, a good stove to boil it, or a special bleach to disinfect it at four drops per litre, or a modern ozone filter that passes alone and comes out purified.
Despite treating it with the affection it deserves, water has a demand that not everyone can guarantee. Some, unfortunately, consume it raw, which is, as you know, water in a state of total illiteracy – without reading any meter.
If, by chance, the water in my street has not been diverted, but has been diverted against its will, we are dealing with a case of kidnapping that only the police can unravel.
As you know, kidnapping is a crime of unusual cruelty. If not, let's see: had I been in the desert and at the end of these nine years without washing or drinking water, what would have happened to me?
If I lived in Cuca or Nocal and the water had been diverted, what would happen to all of us? It was the aggravation of headquarters and national industry. Of course there are those use only the imported one, but even so, they always have a bottle of ours on their side for when you come in for a visit:
- Would you like a booze of ours, the national one? (they offer). Here at home, you don't drink from anyone else. It's good. I can say it's as good as any.
We go out and there he is, sending his cousin (who, incidentally, came to his house to study and ended up taking the specialty of serving at his cousin's table and being a maid for the said's children) said I would send the girl to the referred national in the glacier because it can appear the next visit.
Well, that's how I turned to beer when I was talking about water, just as my water was (or was) turned away when, perhaps, I was distracted with a beer.
It appeared to me some time ago a guy trying to force me to compare an accountant.
He said to me:
- If you don't have an accountant, I have to fine you.
I said to him:
- And who fines you if you don't give me water?
He left without an answer, but he left me with a mountain of problems and doubts:
What will you call an accountant who doesn't count?
Unemployed accountant, or retired accountant? Sick accountant, or accountant on strike?
And another case:
How does a “virgin” accountant (with everything set to zero in the water meter) learn to count if he has never counted, nor has he learned to count? Will we have to open a basic counting course for school-age accountants?
And another point:
What is the school age of an accountant? And the retirement age? if there are accountants in Luanda with more than fifty years of service, who have already turned their reels thirty times and are still counting?
And tell what? if the water passes and doesn't care about bills.
And to tell what for, if we always pay the same, for twenty-something years now, without having any bills or counting.
What's the point of counting water if you don't count it in the bill?
What's the point of having a meter if there's no tap water?