'Witchcraft versus smart power: who owns human rights in the postcolonial world?'

Interesting talk at St Catz College, Oxford. 8pm tonight!

'Witchcraft versus smart power: who owns human rights in the postcolonial world?'

The talk is based on historical research in Zimbabwe and the presentation is intended to stimulate questions and discussion, rather than provide a fully-formed argument. Prof. Jeater is looking to identify an interface between international political ideologies and local Zimbabwean understandings of human rights and community morality.
Prof Jeater has an interest in how indigenous ideas about spiritual and community well-being have been harnessed, distorted or destroyed by the work of international NGOs and solidarity organisations; about the consequences of this for politics in Zimbabwe in recent times; and about the implications for Suzanne Nossel's advocacy of 'smart power' as a way of maintaining US hegemony in a changing world.

A walk through Chicala

Adeus Luanda...

Hoje escrevo em Português, como homenagem ao Português que se fala em Angola! Amanhã estarei de volta ao Reino Unido. Tenho a certeza que vou sentir saudades desta bela terra de boa gente... Vou também sentir falta da banana-pão e do jindungo, assim como doutros sabores fantásticos que descobri por cá :)
Um grande abraço aos nossos "Kambas", que tanto nos mostraram e proporcionaram uma estadia maravilhosa em Luanda.
O que aprendi cá não é quantificável, mas percebo agora quando me diziam que uma visita a Luanda tem a capacidade de mudar uma pessoa...


Até já Luanda... Até já Angola!! :)

Musseque Chicala - view from the Fort

Musseque Sambizanga - Luanda, Angola

Pics - Chicala

Fire!!

Just a few nights ago I was having dinner outside and noticed that there was a fire on one of the tin shacks not very far, on the other side of the bay. Whether it is due to electric wiring left exposed, malfunctioning generators or the use of candles (many of these areas do not have electricity), it is not uncommon to hear news of families loosing their houses because of fire.

I never thought I was going to experience this, but my house nearly caught fire today! The generator had been working for many hours and one of the circuits must have overheated or something. Suddenly everything went pitch black and the generator was sounding like it was going to explode! One of the lamps then caught fire and the flames were all over the timber - you really have to see houses in the musseques to understand just how dangerous a fire can be. At the time I was shouting like crazy but luckily it was all sorted in a matter of minutes. Nothing that a bucket of water couldn't fix.
Seriously, I don't even want to think if this had happened whilst no-one was looking (we often leave the generator on if we are, for example, next door) :(

This self-building culture is a double-edged sword. Yes, it is great to build your own house, but the problem begins when people want to do everything by themselves, even if they haven't got a clue what they're doing! The precarious conditions of electric wiring, often left exposed to the elements (like the one we have here) can lead to very serious consequences. I mean, you sort of guess what may happen if, in order to turn on a light, you have got to put two wires together...

Zango

I visited Zango (I, II, III and IV) today, an incredibly big area with thousands of houses 60 Km away from Luanda. Zango's houses were by the government with the intention of housing those who, for some reason, have been evicted from their houses. From what I understood, Zango was built in 4 different phases. In fact, Zango IV is still under construction and people have only just started to move in. This allowed me to see different stages of the process, from construction to post-occupation. Interestingly enough, the houses from Zango I (the first ones to be completed) have all been altered by the occupants to meet their different needs. For this reason, most of the times it is difficult to see the original house behind the walls, extensions, trees, plants, etc.. 

Zango IV, on the other hand, is still mostly unoccupied and the houses are nothing but empty shells in the middle of nowhere. It makes you wonder whether these houses were built for human occupation in the first place... I am sure that with time the place will look better, though.

 House from Zango I

Zango IV

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.

It's not all rainbows and butterflies

It's not all rainbows and butterflies... Yesterday Q., a friend of mine, had a gun pointed at him whilst he was stopped in Luanda's chaotic traffic. Two boys threatened to shoot him if he resisted and took everything he had in his car... He's fine now, but was very disturbed yesterday.

So far I haven't had any problems, and hope it continues this way. To be honest I feel that, overall, the city is quite safe. But after what he told me – about how common these episodes are in Luanda – I will definitely be more careful.

An update

The last few days have been very productive. Fortunately, I finally managed to get hold of some of the people I have been trying to contact since I arrived. The interviews I have carried out so far have been a vital tool to identify various issues related to my research.

The focus group I did with the architecture students was definitely one of my favourite moments! It was very interesting to understand the students' perspective on some of the problems currently affecting Luanda's bairros. They seem to be fully aware of these issues and also wish to be part of a solution as future architects. It gave me hope knowing these students will be able to actively participate in the much needed reconstruction of their country in just a few years.

Also a few days ago we had a very interesting moment in Chicala. During the seminar on urban development, which took place at University Lusíada of Angola, I had the pleasure of meeting Axel Koschany, a German architect with 20 years of professional experience and with an assumed interest for dynamics of informal settlements. His lecture, entitled 'Global becomes Lobal becomes Glocal', was thoroughly enjoyed by myself as well as by everyone else in the room. We had a nice chat afterwards about the issues he had addressed and so I decided to propose a challenge – visit Chicala! Axel immediately said yes and ended up bringing two more people with him, Filip de Boek and Ann, two anthropologists who were also in the seminar.

Next day we picked them up from the city centre and came back to Chicala where we spent a nice few hours walking around the bairro. We had a really nice time!Axel is now back to is work in Germany but I hope he still carries in his heart what he has experienced here in Chicala. And of course, that such experience can also somehow positively inform his professional practice.

I really wish more people could visit such places and demystify the false ideas constructed around them. If all goes well – and I get to do enough interviews by then – probably I will invite the Portuguese architects I met during my first week in Luanda for lunch this Sunday.

It's my last weekend so I need to prepare something special :)

Faces II

 O.

T.

Faces

 O.

M.

My version of red red

Not as good as the one I had in Ghana, but good enough :)

old wooden houses

I met Bia in one of the many alleys of Chicala when I was trying to find a shop (or 'cantina', as they call it here) where I could buy batteries for my audio recorder. The many narrow streets and corners hide all sorts of stories and people in Chicala.
Bia, now in her 50s, stopped doing the laundry when she saw us passing by. She wondered why we were looking at the old wooden house next door to hers. When we asked why was this house so different from others in the neighbourhood she smiled, left the pile of clothes and stood up as if to tell us a story. This wooden house, which is in a very poor condition, was built during colonial times and, although it remains there today, it has lost the splendour it once had. "This house has been here since before 1975.", Bia told us. She also said that, at some point, the wooden houses replaced the ones made with 'luando', a kind of thick grass or palm tree leaves, a material widely used by fishermen to build their homes. Bia has not always lived here in this side of Chicala. When she was young, her home was further south on the island of Luanda where the houses were constantly destroyed by the force of the waves - "higher than that wall back there". The floods were so bad that sometimes she had to spend the night sleeping on top of the table because the floor was covered with water.
Bia moved to Chicala when there was still a beautiful forest and very few houses. Unlike the previous place, here the water never reached the houses. At night it was so dark that one could not see an inch in front of one's eyes. It was then that she began to see those wooden houses, safer and more resilient than those of 'lundo'. Perception changed the way houses were build from thereon, as the 'luando' material was not regarded as good as wood. This marked the end of 'luando' houses.
Now, many years later, the wooden house dies slowly and barely stands up. Now, says Bia, people only want cement blocks and sheet metal roofs. Wooden houses, which were considered very good quality before are now refered to as fragile and temporary, just like 'luando' houses were. This is a never ending cycle. I wonder what will follow cement blocks?
There are still a few of these colonial wooden houses scattered throughout Chicala. The war did not affect them but they were completely swallowed by the exponential growth of the neighbourhood, and now share the space with hundreds of little cement block houses. However abandoned, they still tell wonderful stories of those who lived here many years ago.

"Silêncio Obrigatório"

Necessity is the mother of invention

Pedras no caminho? Guardo todas, um dia vou construir um castelo…

Luanda was so hot today! I always thought that being Portuguese would make me stand the heat, but this is too much! I spent all morning jumping between different government delegations and nearly fainted from the heat. A woman saw me resting in front of the Provincial Government of Housing and asked me what I was doing there. When I said I wasn't feeling well she just answered “Oh, of course, you are not from around here...” :)

Luanda is not a pedestrian-friendly city, the car is used to go everywhere, whether far or close, which contributes for the craziest and most chaotic traffic one can imagine. This influences a lot the general notion of distance. When I was asking for directions to certain places people always answered “It's just there around the corner”... Right... 30 minutes later and I do not know how many metres later I'd eventually arrive.

Unfortunately things didn't go very well today. I never managed to get hold of the people with whom I was supposed to talk to. They were either on vacation, in a meeting, or who knows what else.

To be honest, today I feel slightly demoralized, and a bit homesick... I never expected that this would be a simple task, but the fieldwork has been far more complex than planned. There are many barriers to access information and, above all, the fact that there exist so many problems associated with the theme of my research makes focusing on one aspect extremely difficult. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

I always remember Fernado Pessoa whenever I find an obstacle on my way - 'Pedras no caminho? Guardo todas, um dia vou construir um castelo… ' ( 'if I have rocks on my way, I shall keep them all. Someday, I will build up my own castle…)

Just to finish, below is an interesting image showing how people build their houses everywhere, even on top of existing buildings.

 Distribution of water.1000 litres cost approximately 20 dollars

 This is one way people get rid of waste, by burning it.

I don't intend to begin all my posts with the power status in the bairro, but I can't help doing that today... There is no power, nothing, nada, rien!! It's interesting to see how people here have learnt to deal with this quite well over the years. Yesterday, L.D. - who has always lived in Chicala – was telling me that this area until recently was not covered by this infrastructure at all. He said something about the government providing energy to bairros close to elections time...

Chicala is lacking many things. One has to live here to understand the dynamics of both people and space and how they manage to cope with all sorts of problems. And I am not just talking about the poor access to the bairro and people's houses, the complete lack of water, the constant blackouts, and the low quality of the built environment, it goes way beyond that. This particular area, as well as others in Luanda, is changing rapidly and people here are aware that, sooner or later, everyone will have to move out of Chicala. Where to? No-one seems to have an answer for that just yet. What they do know is that they will lose their current life, their references, livelihoods, and close contact with their neighbours and friends. Moreover, and because Chicala is so close to the city centre, the privilege of quickly getting to the city, where many of the people work, will also be lost.

I have been talking about this issue quite a lot with different people, and I can say that the feeling of uncertainty and insecurity towards their future is implicit in every word spoken.

A few days ago, I was told that this bairro will probably be demolished in about one year time (part of it is already gone). I can't help wondering what I will find here when I return to Angola, and where will these people be living...

I am still getting used to daily life here. Getting a full night sleep is particularly difficult, since there is always something happening somewhere - which usually involves music, or very loud music to be more accurate. Last night for example, there was another concert a few hundred metres from my house :) Of course there is no such thing as insulation or double glazing, so you hear pretty much everything as if it is happening inside your house. Oh, and let's not forget the noise coming from all the generators working at the same time when the power is off...

Last night I don't know why but I woke up at around 3am and could not sleep for another couple of hours... The nights are very hot and slightly uncomfortable, and all I could think about was how itchy the mosquito bites on my legs are!! I should probably try another type of insect repellent. The one I used in Ghana was completely useless and now I am beginning to think the same of the one I am currently using... I HATE MOSQUITOES!!!

On a more positive note, I was told about about 2 markets close-by where people usually buy all sorts of building materials to build their houses. Hopefully I'll manage to go there this or the following week, just to have a general idea of prices. From what I understand the only materials manufactured and sold within the neighbourhood are cement blocks. All the other stuff are mainly acquired in the markets.

More photos

Today the power was off again... Apparently this is common on Sundays... Maintenance of the power plant, I told... It has become clear from these days alone that this is an issue, particularly in the bairros, where the infrastructure is weaker. The provision of energy is not reliable in Luanda. This helps to explain why every single person has a generator at home (I had not understood that before).

I am enjoying taking pictures of people around here. Everyone is incredibly photogenic and natural. I really wish I had a better camera with me... Here are a few more photos.