It is in one of the noble areas of Luanda, next to the Alto das Cruzes cemetery, where he continues to live, in the family house completed in 1952 and where he moved shortly after his arrival in the capital, in September 1951, after the birth of the first daughter.
Born in Matosinhos in 1930, Luz crossed paths with António, her future husband, at a Carnival dance. They also started to meet at mass, an occasion for exchanging glances and conversations that quickly evolved into courtship and then to the engagement she gave in marriage in 1951.
The death of the father-in-law forces the young couple's plans to change. António has to return to Angola to take care of his father's business, Mabílio de Albuquerque, founder of a century-old commercial house, opened in 1923, the only surviving one in downtown Luanda located in an emblematic building crowned by four statues.
Maria Luz follows him. They boarded the "Império", a Portuguese liner that operated the colonial career, in 1951 and arrived in Luanda after a twelve-day journey, together with a pointer.
It was a time when "passengers dressed up" and "boat trips were beautiful".
"There were weekdays when ladies wore long dresses, men wore African tuxedos, it was a white coat, bow tie, black pants, there were first, second and third (classes), they stopped in the Azores, Madeira and São Tomé", describes Luz.
Recently married and pregnant with her first daughter – who would be one of the first babies to be born at the Casa de Saúde de Luanda, currently the Augusto Ngangula maternity hospital – Luz, brought "that feeling" of coming to an unknown world, overcoming fears with love.
"My husband and I really liked each other", she says, her face lighting up.
On the day of her arrival, she remembers the intense heat, despite it being cacimbo season.
Open-minded and a good conversationalist, she began to blend in with local society, spending her days shopping, getting together "at one another's homes", masses on Sundays and trips to Mussulo, while her husband preferred fishing and hunts.
The family villa, which enjoyed a magnificent view of the bay, today covered by three abandoned buildings, contains the African experiences of its owners in every corner.
In the room, trophies recall the past glories of António's hunts, there are canvases by Angolan artists, traditional sculptures, a wooden panel by the painter Neves e Sousa, and family memories preserved in books and photographs.
Occasionally, Luz accompanied her husband on hunts and remembers the day the jeep stopped to see "a big elephant kick" in the wet ground.
"My husband got out of the jeep, went with the boy, took the gun, we heard bang-bang. After a while the boy came to us and said 'Mr. Albuquerque asked the ladies to come and see'. And when we got there he was on top of the elephant", she told Lusa.
"Out of nowhere" they started a cattle farm in Cuanza Sul, in the 1960s.
"My first house was a hut and the kitchen had a board and two drums, a hut for the kids and that's how we started", she recalls.
On the farm, today better known as Fazenda Cuerama, in the municipality of Quibala, where his daughter Olga developed a social project with a school, medical center and pedagogical ceramics, carpentry and sewing workshops, the tragedy of war was suffered and one of the employees died due to a mine.
"It was horrible," she lamented.
But there were also picturesque episodes, such as the day when the leader of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi, "a great man, who spoke very well, wrote very well" came to propose "a fantastic salary" to António to be his pilot, an offer diplomatically refused because her husband "had the firm and could not abandon it".
When "the confusion" of April 25th began, the husband handed over his hunting weapons. "Thank God" continues without any problems, but Luz says goodbye to her friends.
"The women and children started to leave, the husbands stayed and we didn't know what was going to happen because Salazar didn't want Angola to be independent. He was a very cultured, intellectual man, but as for overseas, no", she criticizes, highlighting that "the process after independence could have been a more beautiful thing".
And weren't you afraid to stay? "No", she states peremptorily, with the firmness of someone who has previously experienced the Spanish conflict and a war in Europe.
"I think my place was to be by my husband's side, I'm convinced that if my husband saw a great danger, either we would go or two or he would send me away", she highlighted, adding that she lived the 25th of April "with joy because it was a step towards independence", to which everyone aspired.
But Independence did not bring exactly what was expected: "At that time we couldn't talk. One would come and say 'very well, very well', another would come with his ideas and we would say 'very well, very well' and it was so in this room we always talked, some were from UNITA others were from FAPLA. But my husband said: we are here talking about the future of Angola, but we are not the ones who are going to do it, we are going to contribute".
The post-independence years, on November 11, 1975, were not easy, with rationing vouchers, many stores closing and settlers leaving leaving behind goods and souvenirs.
"It was a bit confusing at that time, they said: the white man leaves, you get the white man's house, the white man's car and there's no need to work any more. But it couldn't be. They promised a lot of things that couldn't be", vent.
Almost 50 years after independence, she says, with a big smile, that today she is more Angolan than Portuguese.
But he regrets that that dream of "better Angola" did not come true.
On Independence Day, she remembers the goat stew she was preparing for her friends, her husband António's concern and her brother-in-law Mabílio's serenity.
"We were worried because he never showed up again. And my husband went to his apartment and wrote him a piece of paper: Mabílio we are worried, we don't know where you are. Then we heard a noise and there he was coming from the beach 'very relaxed'", she recalls with a laugh.
