One week to go

Half of the day was completely lost... I was supposed to have an interview in the morning with someone in the National Housing Institute but, unfortunately, he had to postpone to Monday... Couldn't do much at DW today either. With only one week left here I feel that I am a bit behind on my work, and fear that I will not be able to achieve what I planned, especially in terms of interviews to people from the musseque. Now I see how helpful it would have been to have had some research assistants...

It's almost impossible to plan these things from a distance. You can never truly predict what is going to happen. For example, it is incredibly hot every single day, which means that after only three interviews I am completely tired. In the city centre, where I have been almost every morning, it takes ages to get everywhere because of traffic. Also, even you you have a meeting at a certain time you usually have to wait a bit (often more than a bit...) longer until people are available to talk to you.

And last, but not least, as there does not seem to exist such thing as a quiet night, I haven't slept properly since I arrived – I am not exaggerating :).

Next week I hope to visit one of the new cities built from scratch in the outskirts of Luanda. Everyone has been telling me so many interesting things about it during the interviews, that I really want to see things for myself. This idea of building an entire city where there was literally nothing is very interesting for me as an architect. In this case I am particularly interested in the architectural solutions adopted for the low-cost housing. I'll post some photos if I manage to go there.

Tomorrow the plan is to visit other musseques (Cazenga, Rangel and Sambizanga), so I am looking forward to it!!

In the meantime here are some photos taken over the last days here in Chicala.