After a bewildering few days in Angola which you can read about here and here, I sat at the airport lounge in exhaustion, thinking about my Angolan adventure.
My little flunky brain could not comprehend how the 2nd largest oil producer in the continent, had multiple power cuts in their capital city everyday; how public roads with massive potholes led to sprawling mansions; how 40% of the population could live below the poverty line when it was consistently one of the top 10 diamond producers in the world; how public infrastructure in the city floundered while Chinese construction companies could be undertaking massive projects in the outskirts; how people still washed their clothes in the brown river, while a little way down the river, expats and top businessmen crowded into expensive waterfront modern restaurants.
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| Expensive waterfront dining |
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| Doing laundry in the brown river water |
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| Beautiful buildings in the city |
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Homes of the locals just outside the capital
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My thoughts didn't venture far before I noticed that the buses that were bringing people to board the plane were turning back and we were told to stay in the lounge.
In uncertain Africa, a range of scenarios ran through my mind- terrorists, fire, riot, coup.
Thankfully, it was none of the above. Someone had pulled open the emergency door latch during boarding and the emergency slide had inflated.
Over an hour later, we were on the plane, all hoping that the clown who opened the emergency door was offloaded. So we ventured onward to South Africa for our next adventure.
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