Angola is wherever I plant my field
by JOÃO MELO
in Fall 2021
Bakari Akinyele, Capoieristas (1825), 2021, Movement Series, 38x43.5, cotton canvas on dyed indigo
It was the war that brought me here, I did not choose it, I was not looking for anything, I was doing very well in my village, the war came, my memory refuses to remember when, all I know is that this memory has not let go of me to this day, it has glued itself into my skin, it speaks in my mouth, looks in my eyes, shakes in my legs, explodes in my ears whenever I hear a bang, no matter how meaningless, a thunderstorm, the exhaust pipe from an engine, a door thrown open by the wind to its miserable fate, all of a sudden we were terrified, we saw the men who had already entered our village, they ran in all directions, shouting, shooting at any moving thing, people, goats, chickens, the whole village was on fire, consumed by flames, at first I thought these men are mad, they are shooting at random, there are no soldiers here, what is going on in their minds, then I understood, kill, kill, just kill, we were trying to run away, what else were we going to do, just flee, each to his own, men, women, the elderly, children, running for our lives, escaping the village by any means, escaping death, not once turning your head, there is no time, later we will see who got away, the men coming after us, they did not appear to be men, or perhaps this is what men are like, always were, always will be, and we are the ones who insist on believing otherwise, endeavouring to invent something else, but we don't get it, men were running after us angrily firing shots, their eyes were transformed, they were speaking a strange language, the language of war, however necessary, at times, at least according to some, must be decreed incomprehensible forever and always, the day we understand it will be the day we accept it, the men pursuing us were slobbering like hyenas, I didn't manage to get a good look, they really wanted to kill us, why, to this day I don’t know, but it is not even worth asking, I saw many people falling around me, but to this day I don’t ask why they died, I will never ask this question, indeed I swear, it is not worth asking a question for which an answer simply does not exist, indeed when someone dies for no reason what is the answer to that question, besides, if there is no answer whatsoever, why ask the question, what is certain is that the day that the war arrived in the village where I used to live all I could think of was fleeing, like everybody else for that matter, but each one fled according to his own survival instinct, the men behind us getting closer and closer, the breath of death drawing dangerously close to the nape of our necks, people we had known since were were born fell beside us, hit by gunfire, the day was getting ever darker, through the intense flames of war, time had almost stopped, hanging by a thread, the end of the world was coming, but even so we did not desist from fleeing, we kept on running, each one his own way, trying desperately to find shelter, behind trees, beneath the ruins of houses, in the bush, in the river, the men always giving chase, trying to kill us, but what evil had we done to them, none, why do they wish to kill us, this was the only question that crossed our minds in that moment, no sooner had it been formulated, mentally, of course, than our own minds would ask it, automatically, as if someone would it up, but this question was like the other one, it also had no answer, even worse, the answer was so frightening that it was not worth hearing, I was running towards the river, all the while posing this useless question inside my head, when some other men arrived, they began to advance towards the first group, who had to recoil, they were no longer aiming at us, we didn’t look, we carried on fleeing as far away as we could, the second group of men and the first group of men began fighting each other, I asked once more, at least back then I liked asking questions a lot, why are these men fighting, the village is completely destroyed, in truth it no longer exists, it’s over, the majority of the people have died, others, a few, fled and had more luck, if you can call it luck, this fate that the Creator reserved for me, oh Nzambi,[1] look at my misery, my village is no more, the war has swept it off the map, my wife, my children, where are they, it seems that they were killed, now I am here, in the middle of the bush, not knowing where to run, I left the men back there exterminating each other, I don’t want to look, I don’t want to go back again, these were the thoughts I had in those moments, when I was trying to escape the war, despite everything, yes, I was lucky, really lucky so they didn’t manage to kill me, I fled, plunged into the river and swam until I reached a forest, where I walked alone for three days, only eating fruits, until I came across a patrol, first they took me to their barracks, then they brought me to this camp where I am now, in Luanda, well, this is not really Luanda, but it is near enough, if I wish I can go to Luanda, but I won’t go because I hear that there is too much confusion there, here I am OK, I won’t leave here again, yesterday they came to ask me if I wanted to go back to my home, how am I to respond, this is another question without an answer, when I came here I found few people, but everyone had fled the war like me, I confess a truth, I did not know that Angola was such a big country, oh, people from everywhere, new places, new names, new faces, but in fact I feel like I have known them for ages, we quickly became friends, they told me about villages I did not know of, some had different names, they were not villages anymore, but, yes, towns, cities, provinces, I knew nothing of this, but they explained it to me, now I know, after all, there was war everywhere, in the villages, in the towns, in the cities, in the provinces, not a single corner escaped the war, these people came from everywhere, at the beginning, when I arrived, they were just a few, but over time their numbers increased, as the war extended reaching unthinkable places that no one thought it could reach, the people, whenever they arrived in the camp, they always had plenty of stories to tell, much misfortune, great suffering, they needed to pour out their souls, I understood, but I always refused to tell my story, when I arrived here, I took a decision, not to get imprisoned by my past like a bird in birdlime, I must open my eyes wide to see beyond, into the future, most people don’t know this but the future depends on the way that we look on the past, you may ask, what about the present, I only have one answer, the present is worth nothing, the present is a will-o'-the-wisp, the present is a bridge, the present is a path that we cross to reach the river, it may be a dangerous journey littered with obstacles, zombies, and chinganjes[2] lost in the night, but it is still a path, we must cross it, if it is dangerous we must cross it even more quickly, those who spend too much time in the present, perhaps trying to decode the signs, to appreciate the detail in the landscape, rummaging through the supposedly final motives of people's decisions, forgetting that they are always provisional, they continue, in truth, to be locked in the past, fearing its return, therefore they do not advance, they never manage to reach the future, when I arrived in this camp I said that my future is here, if someone had heard me they would have said this man is a mad man, does a displaced man have a future, it seems that he does not fully understand where they have put him, this camp has nothing, only half a dozen tents, people have to sleep on mats, in the open, hospital, never, school, never, even toilets, you can forget it, they even defecate in the open, the government has brought them here and abandoned them, they did not die in the war but they will die here, the more intelligent ones have already gone to Luanda, to add to the roboteiros, the kinguilas, the zungueiras,[3] the whores and thieves, perhaps they will make it in that holy mess, but the majority will wear away and rot here, I said no, my future is really here, when I said this camp had nothing, it is true, nobody knew when the war was going to end, that’s also true, but I saw beyond this, I looked directly into the eyes of the future, I chose a piece of land and planted cassava and sweet potato, I got tired of the yellow maize flour from the WFP[4], so I went to a nearby farm and asked for some seeds for tomato, lettuce and onion, I planted them next to the cassava and the sweet potato, the other people who had fled the war like me, mocked me, they told me you are crazy, I waited, when the land propagated the tomatoes, the lettuce and the onion that I had planted, like the miracle of Jesus Christ when he multiplied the fish, I started selling them on the street, with the first earnings I made I bought wood, with the second I bought strips of corrugated iron, with the third I bought nuts, bolts and other materials and I made myself a house, with a toilet and everything, the others were amazed, they stopped laughing and started thinking, laughing and thinking are not incompatible, of course, but only when the laughter has a concrete and fundamental cause, gratuitous laughter is alienated laughter, as they used to say in the old days, to laugh is a serious matter, so, my friends, this is why I laughed, satisfied with the world when I woke up one day and saw people cutting the grass all around the camp in order to be able to start planting too, in a few months the camp was transformed. At first, three new houses appeared, then seven more, then fifteen, then suddenly the war was over and we held a party, then one day an official from the government turned up, accompanied by two white women from an NGO, along with a group of foreign journalists, to report on the situation of the war's displaced people, so that they could ask for another United Nations donation, I noticed that the two white women looked a bit annoyed, perhaps because their funding was going to be reduced, the war was over, we had started to look after ourselves long before, perhaps they would have to return to their own lands, leaving behind Miami Beach,[5] Mussulo,[6] some Angolan who had secretly consoled them, to help them forget the mosquitoes, who knows, the government man took advantage of the situation to talk at random, what you can see here, gentlemen, is an example of the authority's new strategy to teach people how to fish instead of giving them fish, as the Chinese say, the Angolan people, as well as being generous, are highly enterprising, the experience in this camp can be replicated across the country in no time at all, our strategic goal is to reduce our dependency on donors, but obviously we still need some support, there still remains much to be done, for us it is rather frustrating to feel that the international community is shunning its responsibilities, after all, Angolans did not make war on their own, you were the ones who pushed us into it, I say this on behalf of myself, the governmental official continued, Angola is a country with fabulous resources, that's true, but they are yet to be fully exploited, anyway, what kind of country has the ability to rebuild itself alone, without international support, after experiencing the kind of war as the one that ravaged ours, not even Germany, ah, you want a contemporary example, gentleman, well will Afghanistan do?, the governmental official had gone on for ages, time was passing, before they left without hearing from us once again, we said that today we do not want any filming, we want to be able to speak freely, why do you all like coming here so much and stealing our images, showing them to the world, when the world has never listened to us directly, the photographs that you have been taking also rob us of our dignity and our soul, if you do not want to help us it would be better if you forgot us completely, in order to help you have to listen to us, how can you know what people think, what people need, what people want, if you only take the photographs that your bosses tell you to take, if you only think about the value of a project, if you only listen to your own speeches, I was addressing them all indeed, without exception, the government official, the NGO activists, the foreign journalists, but to this day I do not know if they understood, the problem is that everyone refuses to see what we want to show them, they close their ears to what we tell them, even though our words are simple, as simple as are our wishes, we just want to live, to forget the war, to build something, to educate our children, even here in this camp we need support to build houses, with a backyard, with a toilet, we want to farm the surrounding land and sell our products, we want a school, a hospital, we want a television so that we may watch what is going on in Luanda, and also the world, they say that beyond Luanda there is a huge world, they noted down everything, the governmental official nodded, the two white women asked to be filmed with us and we allowed them, they left, we carried on with our life in the camp, each day there was a new field, two or three new houses, over time a market was set up near the camp, from Luanda came rice, sugar, salt, canned food and other products, and into Luanda we sent tomatoes, lettuces, onions, fruit, cassava, sweet potatoes, even goats and chickens, then the first taxis started appearing, the young, mainly, began going to Luanda, I also went once, I won’t say if I liked it or not, but I did not stay, for I am sure that my future is in this camp far from my village but which welcomed me as if my mother had been born here, my memory has even forgotten which day the war came to my village, my life has changed completely since I arrived here, I met a woman who had also fled the war, she came from a village that I do not know, because I cannot speak her language we speak Portuguese, the coloniser's language from whom we freed ourselves, we are very fond of each other, we live together, we already have two kids, the school is taking its time to appear, the hospital too, but I know that they will build them, if they do not, we will, the present is worth nothing, I have said it already, what matters is the future, but the future is much more than a promise, an illusion, a fallacy, the future is only the future if we make it, it is not from the sky that the future will come, first, the future is born in our minds, then it is built by our own hands, there is no need to search too far for the future, the future is everywhere, but it is not something you ask for, we must search for it with care, then we will build it without ever losing heart, the future is not in the past either, this seems so simple yet many forget, they live upon the waste of their memory, they fought, they struggled, they suffered, they were victims of injustice, they are stuck in the present, they do not face it, they will die covered in mould, this I learned that day the war arrived in my village and I had to flee without looking back, in order not to waste time, now I only look forward, when I came to this camp for the displaced, there was hardly anyone here, everything around seemed to be deserted, abandoned, I said my future is here, therefore yesterday, when another government officer arrived and said that the war had already been over for three years, we are creating the conditions for all the displaced to return to their places of origin, those who wish to return must sign up, those who do not wish return to the place from where they came can indicate any other place where they would like to be transferred, this camp is going to close down, I looked at my wife, at my children, I thought of the cassava, the sweet potato, the lettuce and onion that I had planted, I thought about the goats and the chickens reared by my wife, about the market not far from the road, about the taxi drivers and the farms that had started to appear, about the truck drivers who had passed through here in the last few days, about my life, which, almost by itself, was emerging in this place, I looked again at the man from the government, I spoke slowly, I do not know if he understood, I am staying right here, at least for the time being, tomorrow I can go anywhere that the future takes me, Angola is wherever I plant my field.
Author's note: Translation by Luísa Venturini. Additional revisions by Lara Pawson.
Notes
[1] Nzambi Mpungu is a God for the Bakongo people.
[2] Chinganjes are masks with special powers that are used in rituals to call upon the spirits and forces of nature.
[3] In Angola's informal economy, roboteiros work as porters, transporting goods in their handcarts; kinguilas are male and female money-traders, usually exchanging US dollars and Angolan kwanza; zungueiras are peddlers who sell all sorts of goods from containers carried on their heads.
[4] United Nations World Food Programme
[5] A beach bar in Luanda.
[6] A tiny but idyllic island just off the Luanda coast, where wealthy Angolans and expatriates spend their weekends.
João Melo, born in 1955 in Luanda, Angola, is an author, journalist, communication consultant and professor. He is a founder of the Angolan Writer´s Association, and of the Angolan Academy of Literature and Social Sciences. He was member of the parliament (1992-2017) and minister (2017-2019). Currently, he lives exclusively from writing, and splits his time between Luanda, Lisbon and Houston. His works include poetry, short stories, articles and essays and have been published in Angola, Portugal, Brazil, Italy and Cuba. He just finished his first novel, that will be launched in Portuguese by the end of 2021. A number of his writings had been translated into English, French, German, Arabic, and Chinese. Some of his stories translated into English appeared in Words Without Borders, Catamaran Literary Reader, Chicago Quarterly Review, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Olongo Africa, and The Shallows Tales Review. He was awarded the 2009 Angola Arts and Culture National Prize in literature category.