There was a general lack of doctors, specialists and surgeons in Luanda for a couple of years after the independence. At least, until the Cuban doctors turned up……but that is another story.
I’ve always been very healthy (fingers crossed, touch wood) so my problem was just trying to find a dentist. My ex-mother in law suggested someone who had taken over the dental surgery where she used to go before 75. My sister and I booked an appointment.
The “doctor” gave me a local anesthetic before starting the treatment – I think it was very strong, as I felt totally numb not only in my teeth, but also in my whole face and neck. In order to allow you to understand what followed, I have to explain that the “dentist” had a handicap in one eye, he had a glass eye. So as I’m sure you can understand, it was very uncomfortable, embarrassing and even scary to keep looking at him – so I closed my eyes. However, after a while feeling absolutely nothing, I decided to check what he was doing. He was definitely NOT treating my tooth, the *@#&* was kissing my nose!!!! Today I laugh, but at the time I was furious! Needless to say, I never went back. I discovered later, to my horror, that before 75 he was only a helper at the dentist, and I suppose I should consider myself a very lucky person as he did not kill me with that anesthetic.

I never thought I would say this one day, but I miss the queues, and “what are they selling?” Some people would prefer “What are they giving today?” but in reality, no one “gave” anything there. When they had sugar, they had no rice, when there was rice there was no oil,………..I never really understood why they only ever sold a product at a time! I suppose because the containers arriving in the ships only had loads of the same product, duplicated many times! I was always amazed at how everybody respected the stones. People would leave a stone to mark their place and then go home to sleep or eat or go to the loo…….. I never heard anyone trying to claim a stone that didn’t belong to them, even if it was closer to the supermarket door! Nobody took anybody else’s place. There was a lot of respect for each other, something I sometimes don’t see in Europe!
The beer was served in the bars in Bulgarian jam containers – there were no glasses on sale, so once we ate the jam, we would use the containers! Recycling is not at all a “modern thing”. We recycled everything in Luanda, after 75.
Food was very important at that time – there wasn’t much around! We enjoyed the tinned Spam and had great pleasure tasting the tinned chicken – it was so soft, you could eat everything, even the bones! We would put the tin in the oven 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours and the result was always the same! I personally, never had a problem to eat them: a few cuba libres to wash them down and everything would go: skin, chicken and bones! Especially after a few weeks eating fried sword fish everyday!
No running water or electricity was another problem we had to face on a daily basis. We quickly got used to block the plugholes in the sinks, washing basins and baths as soon as we saw a trickle of dirty brown liquid coming out of the taps, allowing them to fill up slowly. Some people would leave their taps open all the time and the plugholes blocked, in case the water started to run suddenly – so it was common to see floods in a town where usually there was no water at all! We soon learnt to have “cup baths or showers” – something which required lots of expertise, trying to get clean with a minimum of water! And I cannot count the number of times the water stopped running while I was washing my hair and I had to go to the beach to get rid of the rest of the shampoo with sea water! Today I see the English women paying lots of money to get that “beach babe look” which we achieved with no problem whatsoever, for free!