A Country without Bridges

I was recently talking to one of the PACE participants who had shown up an hour early while I was setting up the classroom and preparing for the workshops. Justin is a twenty-two year old man who has not yet finished high school. He's very smart and obviously capable of graduating from high school. He is also a peer educator. He lives on the road between the school where I run the workshops and the place where I stay, so we always ride back together. Half the days he bursts into song as he dodges the rocks in the road that would destroy his rims if he hit them. The other half he recites things he has read in books, learned in other workshops, or heard on the radio. I'll have to write down what he says one of these times. It's hilarious, and I have no idea why he does it, but it makes me think that he has a photographic memory.

 

I asked why he hadn't finished school. He simply said that he had been forced to repatriate in 2004. I followed up on that because refugees can not under any circumstances be forced to repatriate, and if this was true it was a huge deal. "My parents forced me to go," he said, which was a different story. I asked why he decided to come back and he told me that it was for an education. He had spent all of his life in Meheba and had been educated under the Zambian system, which was relatively high quality and in English. Angola's official language is Portuguese, which I don't think he speaks. If he does, it's certainly not as good as his English. He said that if he would have tried to finish school in Angola they would have forced him to start at a much lower grade level than twelve, which is where he would be in the Zambian system. So he returned to Meheba last year sometime hoping to finish school, and, if he can find a sponsor, go to a college or university in Zambia.

 

"Why can't you go to university in Angola once you complete your education here? You'll have your diploma," I asked.

 

"There are no universities in Angola," he said.

 

"None?" I asked again. He shook his head. There were no universities or colleges in Angola. I was stunned.

 

Two days later I was talking to Victor, a former librarian who I had worked with last year. He was on vacation from the University of Zambia, where he is currently studying, and came back to Meheba to visit. We started to talk about higher education, and I mentioned how shocked I was that there were no universities in Angola, which was also where his parents were from. He retorted that there were universities in Angola, but that they were in the capital, Luanda, which no one could reach.

 

"What do you mean, no one can reach them?" I asked, confused. He went on to explain how the roads are in a terrible state of repair in the country and almost all the bridges have been destroyed - over 700 in total - by the war. He said that there are many large rivers in Angola and because the bridges have been destroyed, there is essentially no way to get from one part of the country to another except by plane, which - as you can imagine in a country that is still recovering from recent civil war - is completely unaffordable for pretty much everyone but the richest Angolans and expatriates.

 

I got out the pocket atlas that I always carry with me (which is one of the best ideas anyone has ever shared with me, by the way) and looked with him at Angola. Sure enough, there are rivers all over the country. I tried to imagine trying to get anywhere without crossing one. It would be impossible. As I looked at the map, I considered how almost the whole population of Angola was stuck where they were. If you wanted to go to university, you had better be able to afford to fly to the capital, stay there for a few days to fill out the necessary paperwork, and fly back. There's no working postal system, according to Victor.

 

Imagine the implications of no bridges for business and trade. There's no way to get imported products to the inner part of the country, so they would have to be flown there. Of course, the transportation costs are just added to the price of the product, so I imagine that no one can buy anything that anyone bothers to import that far. The same thing for exports. No one's going to be able to afford to ship products by air to the capital or the ports and sell them for a profit. What a big deal to be missing all your bridges. How could you possibly develop as a country without a way to get people and things from one part of your country to another?

 

Victor said that the Japanese government or a Japanese NGO (I can't remember which one) had offered to help rebuild the 700 destroyed bridges, but you wonder how fast that can happen. Building a bridge isn't exactly an overnight project.