A blog about Angola would not be complete nor would it make any sense if I didn’t mention my childhood or teenage years, if I didn’t say anything about the time prior to the independence.
Geographically speaking, Luanda was a paradise. It was a paradise with problems, due to the big social differences. I’m proud to say that my parents always tried to help people who were victims of those differences and thanks to their attitude, they made friends for life – friends who welcomed them in Luanda with open arms, when they went there on holiday in 2006.

What can I say about those special and unforgettable years? Where to start?
I have wonderful memories of the first 17 years of my life. Precious souvenirs I keep under lock and key in my mind......just in case one day senility decides to creep in and do a monkey in a china shop! I had a more carefree childhood and adolescence than my daughters. And even though they find it very hard to believe, I was happy without TV, mobile phones, computers and internet. Without designer clothes and ipods.
I played in the streets with my friends, cycled and roller skated in the street too. These memories are precious as I am and always have been totally hopeless in sport: I played basketball but I was never good at it; my coordination – or lack of it – between my eye and my hand (left) is appalling, so I was never any good at tennis or badminton; I can swim, but not in a competitive way and my daughters think that watching me skiing is one of the funniest things in this world….well, I’m sure you get the gist! However, I was very good at roller skating, better than most! And I loved it! Unfortunately, roller skating was not in my mother’s list of appropriate sports for a girl, so she enrolled me in ballet, where I always felt like a hippo out of the water! We were 3: I was the middle one, my little sister was 3 ½ years younger than me, and my big sister, 7 years older. To tell the truth, she was not really my sister, but my cousin, but I cannot remember myself without her and she always felt like a big sister to me. My mother was very strict and a disciplinarian and she did not let us enjoy any freedom. We had to go to bed at 6PM and she would make sure we got up at 3 or 4AM to study. My mother had a theory that we would learn better that way, after a good long night sleep. It might have been true if I had gone to sleep at 6, but as I couldn’t, I would read in the dark until much, much later. We weren’t allowed to invite friends over or go to their houses, which never stopped me, really, I would go anyway, I just made sure she didn’t find out. Parties were a definitive no, no. There were boys (OH!) there! In my mother’s handbook “How to bring up my daughters” boys were to be avoided like the plague! Thanks to that I grew up feeling quite inadequate and terribly shy around them....and unable to understand them, although I have a feeling I cannot really blame my mother for that.
We were rebels but quiet ones! I still laugh whenever I think about how my big sister would go out at night and my mother would not give her a key to check what time she would return. Except that my mother would fall asleep and when my sister came back she knocked on my window and I would go and open the door.
Despite the lack of freedom, I had a happy time. I remember and I miss the endless summers, my friends, my high school colleagues, the Sundays spent on the beach….
I remember the first time I fell in love, at first sight (of course!), a “coup de foudre” when I was 10 and I remember being sure it would be forever! And it was!………Almost!