Ver Angola

Opinion We are in Angola!

Closing a chapter that never ends: from Angola to Portugal

Cláudia Rodrigues Coutinho

Married with 2 children. She left his life in Portugal, and since September 2015 has been experiencing the dimension of a Portuguese family living in Angola.

In Angola, and in Africa, I was very happy. After 4 years living in Luanda it is time to return home. I left for good this summer, and reflecting on these 4 months in Portugal I still feel slowly coming. Maybe I left a little of me there, maybe I left part of my heart.

CRC: Cacuso, Malanje
Cacuso, Malanje   CRC

 

 

 

Returning home after we have detached ourselves, one day, from the place where we grew up and got used to, requires us to readjust to the place that although ours sounds strange.

If it is true, unquestionably, the great happiness of homecoming - which is always regarded as the right way to go (as a special teacher told me) - is no less true of such nostalgia and total confusion of feelings.

Either comes joy, contentment, the comfort of returning to one's origins; either comes, quietly, an uncertainty of a life that is about to restart, and such discontent that hovers in the shadow.

This jumble of emotions, after a match, takes us off the ground and brings us to a kind of blank page story that results from the strange feeling that we may never feel good anywhere again.

And here I am serenely restless before you trying to understand what Africa, the departures and the returns, have taken and given.

There are people who do not need to leave for a new place to meet. But I had to.

In Angola, Africa, I received new lessons. I was filling what was empty with new opinions and concepts, new thoughts, new habits, preferences, norms, new experiences and new stories.

I came out with more ideas: mine - which brought and translate what it was - and new ideas that I found, questioned and understood, and translate a new way of being.

When you leave you return with the feeling that everything has changed: because we live abroad and confirm a new world. A world completely different from ours that, incredible as it may seem, attests to us many doubts and anxieties, but equally many surprises and satisfaction.

In Africa we attend happy people to miss. Lack of health, food, education, home, lack of opportunity, dignity, respect or affection.

But nonetheless, masters of a joy that is very translucent, clear, self-confident and felt in the purest state.

A joy that our developed world often does not glimpse.

A joy sewn with the lines of your smiles and gratitude. A joy for the people who see the new day as the last. A joy to those who deal with faults and injustices that are incombatible.

We face those who nevertheless decided to fight with the weapons of gratitude, the shield of courage, and the strength of creativity, persistence, humility, and hope.

In Africa, in Angola, in every departure, we live every day thanking, sharing and feeling meaningful.

We unite like never before and experience the simplicity of life as always.

The warm, strong and intense colors of this continent give us magical and enchanted images. The sun, which is very close to us, dazzles like never before, pierces our soul.

Everything we uncover is large, immense and free, in a streak of an imposing, adverse, sometimes unjust, but equally clear and tranquil nature.

And the air. The breathy, warm air gives us the feeling of pausing in time, as if suspended in the warm air.

In the imposing big trees, the endless paths, the magnificent mountains, the golden glow of the warm sun and the clean smiles of the people: I was very happy.

I knew I was where I should be.

So I closed a chapter, which does not end.

(and so I was able to finally fill in the blank page. Thank you).

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