Jetlagged...

After talking with a few friends from Angola, I decided that since I didn’t have any notarized copies of my Visa and Passport - and that if I got inspected by a police officer that I would go to an Angolan jail - that I should work from home the next day. I probably wouldn’t see my bosses boss again anyway. This was good, because due to jetlag, or my addiction to finishing TV Series the day that I start them, I didn’t go to sleep until 5am. In fact, the season finale of V was so exciting that I couldn’t go to sleep for about an hour after I started trying…

At 7:04am, there was a knock on my door and then I heard “What yoou doooin in ma room boy” (Tinidad accent, similar to Jamaican). Patrick had arrived, and had been traveling for 3 days straight, and they shouldn’t have put me in his room. After getting to the bottom of who is in which room, who is coming, etc. We found out that all the rooms in staff house 6 were full!!! They assigned me to the Ilha a completely new, and big staff house about 7km away. The guy who assigned my room on the phone told me that he would send a bus at 10am to take me to my new staff house. I packed up all my things, then waited downstairs. I waited some more, then at noon, I called this guy and he said, "oh yea I will send a bus right now". Seriously?! Long story short, I arrived at the Ilha 3 hours later and it took us 2 hours to go 7 km – that’s stupid.

The drive to the new staff house was very nice. The road went along the ocean and there were palm trees on either side. The restaurants and buildings all seemed to get nicer, and nicer, I was excited about this new staff house! Then we turned down a dirt street revealing shanties on each side and finally arrived at a large 6 story building. The reception guy spoke good English, and put me in room 23. See pictures below.

Palm Tree's on Both Sides

Shanties

The room is fine but, of course, I am too large for the bed and since it has a wood frame, my feet constantly fall asleep  from resting on the wood unless I sleep diagonal. The only other complaint is there is also no gym in this staff house, but aside from that no complaints.

That night, immediately after I had dinner I saw a big group of expats, ranging in age from 25-40, congregating just outside the front doors of the staff house. I went outside to introduce myself and they told me that they were going out to celebrate one of their guys getting transferred to another location – Nigeria. They invited me to come, and said that the company would pay for the food and drink. I ran upstairs grabbed some money, and ~20 of us start walking down the shanty street, then about half a mile down the main street arrived at a Chinese restaurant. There were already seven people at the dinner, and everyone that I met was nice. People kept straggling in as they got off work and fought the traffic, and after the appetizers and a few beers, of course, my bosses boss walks in and sits two seats down from me. He never asked me about work or said anything awkward, and for the rest of the meal we enjoyed the food and many drinks. At about 11 o’clock the part was winding down, the majority of the people had to work the next morning at 6am. However, one guy, Jason said that he wanted to go out and if I wanted to come. Of course I did!

There were four of us that continued on to a small nightclub about a 10 minute car ride into town. We had fun until about 4 in the morning, and after having only an hour of sleep the night before, I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

1 pm came fast that morning and when I woke up, I was not in a good state. I meandered down to the cafeteria and the cook made me some fries and pork chops. I did some work that afternoon, and at dinner the guys that I had gone out with the night before invited me to go play poker with them. Poker was fun, there were about 7 guys plaing and I ended u splitting the pot with another guy so the game didn’t go on forever. I went back to my room at around 11:30pm and couldn’t sleep until 4am. Stupid Jetlag!

Sunday is a half-day for expats in Angola and at 3pm we all went down to the beach where there was a nice bar called Miami Beach (lol). We drank until sunset then walked back to our rooms. It was good to be in this staff house where the majority of the people are my age and everyone hangs out a lot. Too bad Im only here for another 5 days, then on to Cabinda.

I think that this map below shows the approximate location of the staff house (green arrow). http://maps.google.com/maps?q=-8.770088,13.253817&hl=en&ll=-8.806199,13.24419&spn=0.085243,0.132093&sll=-8.770191,13.253417&sspn=0.021313,0.033023&vpsrc=6&doflg=ptk&t=m&z=14