Angola: Saudade

When I last wrote about Angola, it was about the country’s culture and customs , because why not? If I am ever able to travel there, it will be useful information.

For this country-by-country challenge, I went with fiction. Saudadeis a novella by Suneeta Peres da Costa about a Goan (Indian) family living in Angola during its movement toward independence in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Goa was one of Portugal’s colonies; Angola was another. In this story, characters know that they need to leave Angola, and their options are Portugal, Brazil, and Goa.

They couldn’t stay in Angola, because the upheaval made it dangerous. In fact, Angola’s independence was difficult. Portugal formally left in 1975, and a 27-year civil war followed. The current population is about 1% European and 22% “other”, which undoubtedly includes some of the Goans who settled there.

In this story, a family and a household break up along with the country. The metaphor is strong, but the characters are complex enough that it does not feel forced. The relationships take precendence over the setting, so I didn’t feel like I learned a lot about Angola per se. I did love the writing, though.

Suneeta Peres da Costa is an Australia writer of Goan descent, and she writes a lot about Goan people. Portugal’s colonization of Goa created a culture that is a mix of Indian and Portuguese, not quite either. In fact, Goa did not return to Indian rule until 1961, and many people decided to leave Goa around that time.

So maybe I didn’t learn much about Angola, but I did learn more about the world in general. Is that bad?