Ready to go!

Now I am finally ready to take off towards Ghana and Angola. After having picked up the Angolan visa yesterday, there is really nothing left to worry about – except of course the usual little things, like hoping the plane trip goes free of problems and so on...

To those planning to travel to Angola in the future, know that it is not the sort of trip that you decide to go in one day and get on a plane the week afterwards... Believe it or not, it took me roughly one year to prepare the trip to Angola. OK, maybe it was a bit too much, but I did have a few problems along the way that forced me to postpone the trip by a few months. Nevertheless, the whole process involves taking various – as in MANY - vaccines, apply for a visa (which sometimes requires an invitation letter), sorting out accommodation (really difficult to get something if, like me, you have a low budget), booking plane tickets, etc. In my case this also involved planning the whole fieldwork - methodology, data collection techniques, etc. -, which in itself was quite a challenge...

For now, and since before going to Angola, I will attend the ASF-UK workshop in Ghana, the focus is on getting mentally prepared for this. The organisation has sent the participants a few interesting texts on the main subject of the workshop - African Architecture in the African City by D.V Tassel and The African House Today, by A.Folkers. They have already arrived in Ghana and are preparing everything for the participants’ arrival, as they explain in the Local Vs Global blog - http://localvsglobal.wordpress.com/. By the way, apparently they will be posting in this same blog throughout the workshop, so if you are interested to read about what we will be doing there, save this URL and check back regularly for updates. I am really excited about the workshop and looking forward to start!

As for Angola, I anticipate that the experience will be immensely rich at every level. I was asked today if I could go to the local university and talk to the students and lecturers while I am in Luanda carrying out my fieldwork. It should be interesting to get the students’ perspective and opinions on certain issues such as the urban growth and the quality of the built environment in the country. Look forward to it... I was wondering, as I my research looks specifically at earthen construction it might be interesting to prepare something about the use of this construction technology in the European context... Still have to think about that...