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THE RESERVED LOW
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Those who don’t have a car in Baixa de Luanda (especially in the Marginal) have everything to be happy: space, cool arcades where the sun doesn’t shine, the wavy blue hue of the sea and, above all, the possibility to park your feet wherever you want.
Those who have a car and come because they work, or because they need to, will certainly have a bad mood in the morning, or an afternoon that is simply a waste of time.
On one side – next to the sidewalk – dozens of cars are parked, possibly hundreds of workers who toil here daily. We have, therefore, that those who work will park on the side where there are no buildings. On the other side, those who reserve the place.
There are embassies, ministries, companies, hotels, all of which have a place to park.
Between one reserved and another, the bosses who have not (yet) managed to park by reservation are arranged and get up early, when the marginal is full of spaces to park.
Those who come later, park in parallel with the others, in the gossip of someone leaving to take their place. They are the stationers of hope, who sip the cool sea breeze and the sweet backwater of laziness.
The Marginal, which is already reserved for those who reserved it (will everyone pay for parking to the local Administration?) needs to find solutions for so much lost time, so much gas spent and so many turns to find an open road that rarely exists.
If, for example, the traffic police did not withhold the driver's license for an offense as simple as parking wrong, they could do as in Madeira Island. People would park in violation and employers, already counting the fines, would subsidize employees monthly – as many days of work as the fines to be paid.
Another idea is that of double cars. In the morning the driver comes and parks the car right in front of the company. At ten o'clock the boss arrives - the employee leaves, gives him a seat and parks on the parallel. At noon the boss leaves and the driver enters again and reserves the place again.
For those who, like us, don't have the money to build underground car parks, or even silos, which are like that, high-rise warehouses where cars are stored, and there being no, there, on the waterfront, no historically old palace to tear down and if you take advantage of the terrain, we'll have to go for the high-legged platform solution.
Behind each other, the cars are parked, some at the bottom, some at the top.
In this reserved and spaceless Marginal, there is something of “dejá vue”. Here, there is no car that can park, as further on, on the Island, there is no bather who can reach the beach any day.
Cafeterias are built so closely together that either the Administration thinks make air bridges for those who want to take a bath or, over time, the beaches will undergo a kind of privatization process – to cross a bar and get to the beach, will have to pay.
Because crossing dirty, because crossing bothers and alienates customers, because crossing, makes noise and disturbs everyone's rest.
As well as in clubs without mandatory consumption, but with entrance tickets.
Are we going to bet or not, on the mandatory ticket to be able to enter the beaches?
NATURALLY
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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) there are also constructions - either dwellings with the good appearance of palaces, or more cafeterias 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 governor how to solve the problems that this island is visibly having.
Who would believe it if I came here and said: “My dear friends, this problem is easy to solve. 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 houses without the necessary permit.
But who would believe me if I said that? Of course, nobody, 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, which 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 the saying goes, not for those who want it (or for those who deserve it, as in the past) but for those who have and who can.
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FUKAS & CARDS
Thirty, forty or more years ago here, the large farms had their canteens, where the employees, meeting their daily needs, little by little, spent what they were supposed to receive in money. They were the Fukas, the debts, because the worker, although he was entitled to his money, as he took it on credit, was always in debt.
The bosses had the advantage of profit, doing business with their own people.
Apparently, there was no downside to employees other than not being able to choose the price and quality of what they bought. The bad that was there was sold for the price of the good that wasn't found.
The least-staffed employers did not have canteens. They paid with vouchers that the employees redeemed at the merchant that the boss determined. Here, too, there was no loss for the employees, although there was an obvious profit for the boss who paid in the end of the month, with a letter at one hundred and eighty days. It means that the amount corresponding to a month's wages, only six months later would they be paid in the bank by the boss.
There was, as you see, no hidden profit, no agreed percentage, no intention that (at the time) seemed less proper.
After all these years, someone remembered the fukas and vouchers, and invented the cards that some employees are entitled to. You receive the card, and with it, the name of the supermarket where you should spend it. Theoretically, there is no downside here either.
And we go back to the old days: I don't buy the cheap, or the quality I want, but at the price and the kind to which I am obliged.
And that's how, who like me has the face of a cooperator, never goes to the supermarket that someone doesn't show up to offer - "pay with my card and give me the money". This means that people prefer cash to cards, to make it what interests them best.
In colonial times, in the time of the bosses who pointed the fukas and paid with vouchers, which was how it was, it couldn't be any other way, with the tricks and profits that the height allowed them. profits, because we received the card with the store already chosen? Why can't we choose the store that suits us best? Why don't we have the right to withdraw our money in any Bank treasury?
And we don't even want to ask what competition was held, is being held, or will be held to find the store that offers the best service to guarantee the money that belongs to all of us?
And suddenly I remember that hell is full of poor and ungrateful people... With a card I'm poor, without a card I'm ungrateful... can you settle on top of my poverty, or my bad upbringing?
Nobody. Not even the owner of the money that is ours and not ours, who after this chronicle, is able to decide that there is no longer a voucher, a fuka, a canteen, or a card.
THE BURIAL OF HOUSES
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Like men, houses are born from their foundations, grow with their floors and more years less year (for the happiest, more century less century) they fall and die, burying themselves in their own rubble.
Like men, in Angola houses are born, sometimes without foundations, they rarely grow in height and, more often than not, they begin to be buried while still alive.
Not that men and houses are different in Angola from houses and men anywhere in the world. The fact is that there are plenty of holes and to bury these, houses are also buried and with the houses, men.
The case is like this: in thirty and I don't know how many years of life, the streets, alleys, avenues and squares were never arranged. The paved ones lost their coverage, suffered an evident proletarianization process and were left with more or less beaten earth, like the others that had already been born poor. As they used to say: theory was allied to practice, ideology to reality.
In thirty and I don't know how many years the rain, sometimes more, sometimes less, but without failing a year, it fell, punctured, collapsed, deepened and made every road a showcase of potholes. if there were still “traveling salesmen” as in the old days (who remembers these store-to-store salesmen?) the municipalities employ some, to sell holes where there are none. We would thus sell holes to America, England, Japan and wherever else there was hard currency, to pay for this raw material that we have here, and so much what until we buried it.
As the rain opens up the holes and the Commissariats do not fill them in, the citizen has no choice but to find a way to cover them. One comes and carries rock, the other comes and brings rubble, the one thinks that the sand is fine, the other understands that it gets less deep, the hole disguised with the same red earth that the saying has on the banks.
Because in Angola, our holes have shores and, without having a mouth where they flow, there is the source that comes from all of us. If the rain was born for them, on a day of greater water supply, it is thanks to our evictions that the hole continues, that the hole remains, that the hole survives.
And so, year after year, the hole grows bigger in rubble, higher in landfills, and already exceeds sidewalks, and when the rain falls, instead of the houses draining water into the street, it is the street that drains the water to inside the houses.
no one doubts that we have the biggest holes on the Continent. Holes that were the largest in depth and today are, after being filled in, the largest in height. Holes that are older, and holes-boys who only crawl in their little piece of water. Historic holes too, left over from colonial times and neighboring holes, supportive and friendly: we feed their hunger and thirst throughout the year and they repay with the smell of what overflows them during all seasons. During the night we give them the solids and liquids we have left over, and when it rains, they dump the excess water on top of us.
I propose: when the Governor turns birthday, we will offer him a hole. There's one here, on 12th Street, right in front of the Church. It is a holy hole, a devout hole that attends the entrance of all the masses, novenas and processions for over twenty-five years. It should serve you well. Wrapped in cellophane, with a red ribbon, it will surely be killing you, in front of your house, or even in your backyard – the hole given does not look at the position.
At the time of the cacimbo, the hole must be watered about three times a week, that is: every other day, so that it does not dry up and die, so that it does not lose its identity as a Luanda hole: full of water, full garbage, full of wild and natural perfumes.
HOW A HOLE IS BORN
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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 thirty years old. Respect for age is required. These are holes that the settler left abandoned and we nationalized them. Now they're ours. Old at retirement age, but people can handle them in the spring part service.
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 lusted after them and whoever lusted after them, if they wanted to go closer, will end 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?
CLOSED LETTER
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Mr Governor:
Open Letters are usually written when someone comes to say something bad, when it is a question of laying bare, accusing, pointing out, saying our justice about the greatness of a mistake, or the lesser value of a person.
Cara Aberta is almost a solemn act of public accusation that only a very strong motive can make written and constitutes, as if the last, the most violent, the most forceful weapon of written condemnation. Shocking enough and able to contain all the fury of our indignation, it must be so violent that the recipient feels not only accused, but covered with shame, and looked upon by the world with amazement and disapproval.
An Open Letter is a letter completely naked, naked, with truths that make you blush, with revelations that cause astonishment, with words that cover - one by one - the weight of discredit and humiliation.
Not so much was the Open Letter that I once directed to Your Excellency. Not so much, the Closed Letter that I am happy to write to you now. Because as I said, Open Letters are written to say bad things and Closed Letters (which no one before me invented) are drafted to speak well.
Will ask you why they will be closed...
The Closed Letters, Mr. Governor, function as a work of necessity, a practice of caution, an exercise in modesty. Necessity, because for the scribe who by custom says badly, it will not be right, from one moment to the next, to change his speech. Caution, because speaking well of the governor can make you think that you want with good words, to ask for the favor of a benefit. Shame, because if no one is ever ashamed to say bad things about others, everyone always feels a little compromised when they have to say well.
Therefore, this Closed Letter of mine, to thank you for having listened to my other Open Letter, is valid. Not only listened, but immediately ordered the repair of the potholed street where cars jumped and evictions were carried out.
Grateful, gone because of my letter; equally grateful, if my letter, quite simply, coincided with the plans that would already be there for my street.
In the same way, I cannot fail to praise Your Excellency for the greenery with which you are gardening our city, which is also cleaner and more pleasant, with paved sidewalks. - as in any major city.
However (and inviting you again to my street which is 12, here in Bairro dos Mártires) however, I said, man is an eternal dissatisfied: the more he has, the more he wants, the more he receives, the more he feels lacking. . So it is:...
... now that we have a track, where before it was an up-and-down of jumps and holes; where 2- and 3-year-olds used to hover, without fear of being run over by cars - malembe, malembe - from hole to hole, they waited for them to deviate from the middle of the road; Now that we have a clue, I said, there is no car today that doesn't drive by with that desire of someone who is going to take his father off the gallows.
So far, no one has died, but there have already been two small warning disasters.
Therefore, and taking advantage of the rumor that you are going to order us to tar the road, could you add to every twenty meters those spring-breaks with which drivers are forced to walk lighter on the board? of accelerations?
Precisely the same, Mr. Governor, as there should and are not, on Avenida de Ilha. Precisely the height, the ones there should be and there isn't, in Commander Gika. Precisely, with the aim of becoming, as an element of prevention in so many other ways that should have and do not have. When, people insist on driving and drinking, a spring break can do miracles that even God does not believe.
OPEN LETTER
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Mr Governor:
About fifty years ago, in the land of my parents (I am a son of Portuguese) it was customary to have, behind the entrance door of any house, a kind of pot, better said, a sangha with a lid, which was called asado (perhaps because it had wings) where the night evictions were made.
As it was a land with a lot of agriculture, nothing was wasted: the vases were filled during the week and, unless I'm wrong on Monday, at five in the morning (still very late in the winter) the women went out to the street with their roasted, to dump them in the mines.
Well, at dawn when the asados were being dumped, no one dared to open the windows because of the smell. And there the women went, one after the other, distant, prudish and polite, so as not to sniff what was theirs, or sniff what belonged to others. In the morning, when we woke up, the smell no longer smelled and we could go about our normal lives, opening doors and windows.
Mr Governor:
Well, it so happens that here on Rua 12, in Bairro dos Martires, which you visited a short time ago, you said: in this formerly called Musseque dos Embondeiros, which was always an example of many holes and a lot of cleanliness, for half a year you can feel a perfume uninviting. That is to say: there is a clandestine importation of aromas that needs intervention, or the border police to find out which Africas he came from, or the sanitary police, to find out who is paving with manure, the clean and beautiful holes that exist here.
My aunt Aurora says that she is a person who goes to bed late and wakes up early, that around two in the morning when the neighborhood sleeps better, doors open and the pots are emptied. If you saw the quality and variety of chamber pots, you would be amazed! Because a potty that can be called a potty, there isn't. There are old bowl pots, multipurpose bucket pots that are used for the trash during the day and for what they are used for at night.
From this floor, I can believe that Rua12 will become, with today's experience, a magnet for the tourism of the future. But now that the Palace of D. Ana Joaquina has fallen and we are starting to lack attractions of historical interest, we will be able to present unique reasons in this Rua dos Penicos of ecological consideration.
Says Your Excellency enough? that this is not a chronicle, but a bunch of foul-smelling chatter and, moreover, harmful to the health of public ears?
You are right. So much so, that if I weren't the polite person I am, I would invite you to have a Wisquizito at my house with a certain smell of shit, which is something you don't drink anywhere in the world. Street specialty Twelve, only here you can.
Come, Mr. Governor: the whiskey is ready, we promise you that the little smell, too.
THE LIGHT OF MY STREET
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Here, on my street - Rua 12, in the formerly called Musseque dos Embondeiros - of light, there was never any reason to complain. It comes from one side, weak and suitable for light up the dead, goes on the other, in one of bursting glaciers capable of toasting alive
Before Christmas - of all christmases - the light starts to sob: it works and it doesn't, it lights up and it doesn't, it runs away during the day and goes back there a lot through the dawn. Or it's the emotion of the gifts, the nervousness of the parties, or the fatigue of shopping. In any case: we are better than many, who do not have light, neither by night nor by day.
What we are, is not used to it. We forget our childhood: the heat hitting the zinc, the bed and the oil lamp. We mostly forget about the sky. From the time when the school taught to the North Star that was only in Europe and the other one, which lived here, and was called Cruzeiro do Sul.
There were still those who, pulling down poles, tried to rehabilitate us to the beauty of the skies nocturnal and ended up forcing this light-girl to life It's hardly recommendable today: day and night, relaxing in the house of rich people, she arrives at our street drunk with sleep, at two or three in the morning and sleeps all day.
It is a light that walks in life stumbling in its own darkness. A light that never gives birth again, a m'baka light, without a child or pregnancy. A sick light, thin and yellow, with a hepatitis like that, which when it was called jaundice was only cured with burututo and corn shavings tea. Do we really have to start washing our light, our street light, with burututo and corn shavings?
While you wash and don't wash, it's as the ancients say: "laying down early and rising early gives health and makes you grow". What grows on those who go to bed early, I don't know, but I know how boyfriends make love to each other more flirtatiously in this darkness we're in.
Maybe that's why the girl's father walks down the street shooting, because he wants to kill the boy (but it doesn't kill, otherwise it will be without its son-in-law) and end up all friends, at a wedding party like that old. Not like the old ones, which were like this: "eat until you burst and what's left is thrown away", but the old ones of now, where what's still not left, is already quickly going into the dumps. plastic bags.
My street light is like this: sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't. When he comes, we don't even see the holes now, because the Governor ordered the street to be smoothed, when he doesn't come, those who still remember the geography of the sky can enjoy the southern cross in the dark.
TEETH AND HOLES
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Of the things we have to get used to living with, it's with the teeth.
People go at the age of the first few months and soon the teeth appear with their procession of discomforts. The boy doesn't sleep, the boy cries, the boy has a fever, the boy despairs, and all this, on account of a tooth that is born.
Once teeth are born, children grow up and you get to the age of changing teeth, which is something no one understands why. Of little use are the milk teeth, still in very good condition. But God who is God, perhaps to train man in the consumerism we are in, makes some people fall, others, more stubborn, forces us to start. In rare cases, the bottom teeth push the others upwards, or they stick to the side in a nervous confusion of those who don't know how to wait and live with each other in a fraternal global dentition. That's when the dentist shows up... rips some and leaves others. The boy screams, the mouth is composed, the dentist collects and God smiles, from the height of the foresight of someone who had to invent services to avoid unemployment.
New and definitive teeth - the young man smiles at life. Nothing more to suffer in the matter of teeth. But life also bites. And it is from there that the wisdom tooth appears in full maturity of age. Useless, which bothers while it is born and bores, right after it rots.
Caries torments us - it's a tooth that is no longer good, there is another that no longer serves. breaks. Where the teeth come out are the holes in the gums.
Man is, as you see, from hole to hole that the teeth leave, a story of telling many holes. The marks of days, years, pains, sufferings, the holes with which man is left - in the teeth, in the heart and in the soul. In the streets of abandonment. On the avenues of despair. In the places where life passes and we stumble. In the city where you live. In the capital where we live.
What teeth were pulled in Luanda to have so many holes? The incisors that cut the desire to work at first, or the canines that tore the idea of wanting to do it? The premolars that helped, or the molars that calmed down to the taste of doing nothing? The beach is always the same, with holes or without them. The mufete is eaten in the hole of a plate. Where is the beer – cold, in the bottle hole?...
What teeth were pulled out of Luanda, so that from hole to hole they would have turned my street into a carousel of holes?
Mr Governor: a man without teeth can speak, a street with holes cannot be walked. A mouth with holes often smells bad - it's from the breath, from the rotten tooth it has, a street with holes smells bad and it's not this or that, it's really the use we make, putting what we've made into the hole.
Governor: Please, just take the catrapillar scraper because the street is already higher that the houses, and when it rains, their waters, like all the fertilizer they have, come into our living room. We're getting buried in that thing that smells
Mr Governor: with the holes here, take advantage of it and you can build the Provincial Museum of the Buraco in our Morro da Lua, because the hole is also, in the development of tourism that we will have, the mark of our culture.