Culture capital
I had no idea what to expect when I landed in Luanda, the capital of Angola, and the second-most expensive city to live in after Hong Kong. A simple plate of food can cost around ₹3,000, since they import everything from South Africa or Europe. They do not produce their own food. I was invited to do a needs assessment health care survey in rural Angola with the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project. There were many people who stayed at the main camp site — herpetologists, botanists, ichthyologists, engineers, explorers, ornithologists and photographers. The next expedition of the OWP is travelling in a mokoro down the Cubango river from the source to the Okavango delta over three months, surveying more villages along the river bank.
Tent city
I ha d no idea what I was getting myself into, but I kept an open mind. We camped in tents, drank water straight out of the source lake, cooked food on bonfires and saw some amazing birds and animals while we were there. The three-week trip began with a few internal flights and a helicopter ride to get to the source camp site. We visited almost seven villages, each quite unique, and at the same time with a lot of similarities to villages in India. At the camp site, were people from different parts of the world, such as the US, the UK, South Africa, India and Africa. We slept in individual tents and had a common bonfire where we sat around, shared our experiences from our activity-filled day, spoke of our new discoveries, ate our meals and planned on what we would do the next day.
People and places
The project has been instrumental in discovering new species of plants, animals, insects and fish. The Ornate Green Snake, one of the most beautiful snakes I’ve ever seen, has blue scales visible only when it breathes. Angola has been through both war and civil wars until 2002, and there are remnants of the conflicts all around, with tanks, mines and metal along the roads. There are still mine blasts that happen and cause devastating injuries to the natives. The villagers usually travel by foot or by motorbike. There are often only one or two vehicles in the village, and it takes at least four hours to get to the nearest village and at least a day to the nearest town with a medical facility. The mud roads are either washed away during the rain or have fallen trees blocking them.
