FOLLOW UP: ANGOLAN ART

This was a recent article posted today on my local newspaper’s website, the Indianapolis Star. I thought it was a pretty cool article.  Apparently through CT scan technology, art experts-turned-scientists have found that in these figurines from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it shows they have created what looks like outlines of the digestive tracts inside the figurines. Even though it’s not from Angola, it is nearby, and they really do resemble the Chokwe art I talked about. And it’ll be a while before I get to the DRC, so I thought I’d post it now. It makes me wonder if any Angolan figurines have the same digestive tracks created inside. Who knows?

http://www.indystar.com/article/20120419/LOCAL/204190317/IMA-uses-CT-scans-reveal-inner-secrets-African-statues?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|News

ANGOLA: THE FOOD

This meal went over WAY better, surprisingly, than some of the past meals (even though I’ve enjoyed all of them, the other members of my family have had some varying opinions on various dishes). And I do have to say myself, that this was one of my favorites.

My daughter helping stir the batter. And, yes, those are cat ears. 

First of all, we turned on the soulful sounds of Paulo Flores, an Angolan musician I forgot to mention in my previous post about music (how did I forget about him!?). We started off, as usual, with the bread: a corn and rice bread. It was a lot less complicated than other breads I’ve made. You mixed all the dry ingredients, and then mixed all the wet ingredients separately, which included me making rice before I got started.  I usually use basmati rice, but this time I used jasmine rice. It was a little stickier than the basmati, at least the way I made it I guess. It did call for coconut oil, which I actually did find. The organic version was $8 and the regular version was $6, but it came in such a huge container, I couldn't justify buying it if I couldn't guarantee I would be using much of it again. Instead, I mixed melted butter, a little sugar, and some pure vanilla (I didn't want to go back out of coconut flavor). After that, you pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir it really well. I wanted to use a loaf pan, but the one I had seemed really small. I’m not always the best foreseer of what’ll fit into a space, but for once, I listened to that small voice of reason: I used the larger round pan instead. It didn’t brown that much, and the consistency was denser than regular cornbread, but the flavor was slightly lighter. It’s definitely a dipping and sopping bread. 

The bread as it came out of the oven. Just about perfect.  

Next came the stew. It starts out with its base: onions, garlic, and ginger. Then some added chopped jalapeño. I tasted some of it, and it really didn’t seem all that hot to me, which was good if I had any chance of my kids eating it. After that I added the chicken, spices and vegetables. I actually used the stalks of the Swiss chard I used with the Andorran food from a couple weeks ago to add some color.  I used water instead of broth (I was too tired to go to the store).  After it’s simmered for a while, you add the peanut butter and some sugar and have it simmer some more. The recipe called for optional lemon or lime juice: I squeezed half a lime into the soup while it simmered. I went with lime, since it always seems to be a garnish whenever I order anything with Thai peanut sauce on it. The smell was amazing, and the taste was even more so. Definitely a favorite in our household.

The stew just prior to serving. Don't worry, I didn't drool into it. But I came really close. 

 The third thing on the menu was the prawns with raw sauce. I used cocktail shrimp since 1) I already had it in the fridge, and 2) it’s practically the same thing.  The raw sauce basically consisted of chopping green onions, garlic, white wine vinegar, water, and some spices. It called for the shrimp to be grilled, but not only did I forget to buy new charcoal and lighter fluid, but the grill needed to be cleaned since we hadn’t used it since last summer/fall. And that’s a job for my husband to do. So, I placed the skewers on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven. It was still good. So good in fact, my kids ate them all up. Every single last one of them.

Grilled prawns that are neither grilled nor prawns. But the raw sauce was right on. 

 I would have to say that this meal was an enormous hit, as enormous as the Angolan sky itself. It was a meal that stuck to your ribs, that requires stories to be told over it, and shared amongst friends and family. I mean, even my 3-year-old ate part of it, mostly shrimp though. It still embodied the complexity that we encountered in African food when we did the food from Algeria. I remember when I was in college, we had a dinner where we had to bring something from the country we live in, and there was a woman from Africa who made a dish with chicken and peanut butter. I forget which country she was from exactly – I’m thinking she was from Ghana. But she said how amazed she was at how cheap peanut butter is in the United States, because it was a lot more expensive where she was from in Africa. Dishes made with peanut butter were served for special occasions and holidays. I don’t know the price of peanut butter in Angola, but it made me think that certain ingredients in one place may be so common, it becomes a euphemism for cheap items (as in “you have a caviar taste, but a peanut butter budget”), while in other places it’s a coveted item. (I wonder if they use it in euphemisms too?) It makes you think about your own community a little differently. We’re close yet so far away, and vice versa.

The finished product! Kudos to me for making bread that looks like Spongebob. 

Up next: Antigua and Barbuda

Resources:

Angolan corn and rice bread: http://www.food.com/recipe/angolan-corn-and-rice-bread-367994

West African peanut stew: http://www.food.com/recipe/west-african-peanut-stew-438533

Grilled prawns with raw sauce: http://www.food.com/recipe/grilled-prawns-with-raw-sauce-456822

ANGOLA: MUSIC AND DANCE

While there are several types of music that are popular in Angola, three main types come up: semba, kizomba, and kuduro. In many of these styles, the dance and the music are one and the same.

Semba is a traditional style of music that actually has led to other types, including the famous samba style of Brazil, as well as the other two popular Angolan styles, kizomba, and kuduro. Its origin is from the word “masemba” which means “touch of the bellies,” referring to moves in semba dancing.  The rhythms are led many times by guitars, rather than drums alone. Although there is a variety of percussion that is still used, mind you.  African music without drumming is like college without drinking (as in, it can be done, but why would you want to?). One really famous semba musician is Bonga. Because of his political view of Angolan independence, he was exiled from Angola during the early 1970s. He ended up fleeing to Europe and traveled between several different countries, yet kept up his music and recordings. His album Angola 72/74 is a great collection, which includes the song “Sodade” that was later made famous by one of my favorite musicians Cesária Évora (who I could’ve sworn was from Angola all these years and was really excited to show her music, but then I found out she was really from Cape Verde. So you’ll all have to wait until next year or so). I found it on iTunes for $19.80, although you can buy them separate (Angola 72 or Angola 74) for $9.90 apiece.

Kizomba is a blend of semba and zouk, a music style that originally came from the French Caribbean. Kizomba itself seems to be popular mainly in the lusosphere (a fancy word for all the Portuguese-speaking countries) and mainly in the larger cities, such as Lisbon or Luanda.

The last one, kuduro, is something I knew of before I got to Angola but didn’t know it originated from Angola. And since I’m a huge fan of various degrees of separation of everything, here how it goes: we got the movie “Fast Five” for Christmas because it was set in Brazil, and I went there several years ago, and it had awesome cars in it (not to mention Vin Diesel), and one of the actors/musicians featured was Don Omar who had sung the song “Danza Kuduro” that was also sung with Lucenzo, a Portuguese musician (which was on the soundtrack and happened to be my ringtone until I got an iPhone today and can’t figure out how to change my ringtones to something I want). So, that brings us back to kuduro. Kuduro itself takes traditional semba and kizomba, speeds it up and puts a house/techno/electronica beat underneath it.  One popular kuduro band is Buraka Som Sistema (which are actually from Portugal), and I just downloaded their album “Black Diamond” this morning. Very good album, complex with variety. I got the deluxe album (with the remixes) off of iTunes for $10.99, but the regular album version is available for $5.99.

Kuduro dancing is a wild, athletic dance style that goes hand-in-hand with kuduro music. It’s reminiscent of the styles of pop and lock, capoeira, and breakdancing. (Although, breakdancing does have its origins in Brazilian capoeira.) It’s really something to watch. My daughter was imitating what we were watching, and I realized that I really find her some dance lessons. I would’ve put up a video, but every time that I actually looked at her, she got embarrassed and stopped. Le sigh. Anyways, this video by Buraka Som Sistema not only highlights kuduro music but also has a lot of dancing.

Up next: THE FOOD!!

Resources:

Wikipedia: “Music of Angola” “Semba” “Kizomba” “Kuduro” “Bonga” “Breakdancing” 

ANGOLA: ART AND LITERATURE

One of the most recognizable pieces of art styles in Angola is the native mask. There are different kinds of masks for different purposes, and of course different tribes have their own versions. There are masks for births, deaths, marriages, seasonal changes, and other milestone ceremonies. Most of these masks are made of different kinds of wood, ivory, ceramic, and other materials. Shields, drums, and small sculptures are also popular mediums as well. Some of these can be fairly elaborate. Some of the most common ones are from the Chokwe tribe. I thought some of them looked pretty scary, but my husband thought those were the best ones and wanted to cover the living room with them. He would think that.

Today there is also a lot of painting and sculpture of various mediums. Because a lot of cultural arts went by the wayside during the years of civil war and were highly censored as well, a lot of contemporary art portrays a pro-Africa and pro-Angola sentiment and many are a reflection of their social and political views.  Today there are many local and national art shows that display artwork from various Angolan artists. Other forms of art that are also quite popular are basket weaving and textiles. One of the identifying common threads I notice among Angolan paintings is the wide array of color and contrast. I think the use of contrast is important to Angolan art, showing one way of life that coexists with another way of life. This is also true in literature (keep reading!).

The art of story-telling goes back many generations, long before the ability to write down these stories. Of course, this is true for most areas, so Angola is no exception to this. But in recent times, one of the most widely known and prevalent poets is Angola’s first president Agostinho Neto. It was really hard to find some of his poems, but I finally searched “poemas de Agostinho Neto” and came up with a lot of websites in Portuguese. (See, it pays off to be bilingual, or trilingual, or well, I suppose I could probably call myself a quasi-polyglot.)

I did find out that I do have something in common with him: we are/were both part of interracial marriages. After he was studying in Portugal, he married a white Portuguese woman named Maria Eugénia da Silva the same day he graduated. 

One of his poems called “Fogo e ritmo” [“Fire and rhythm”] really struck me. I loosely translated it, more or less, to understand it better (although there were a couple words that didn’t quite make sense to me; perhaps there was a different meaning I don’t know of? Perhaps a difference between Angolan Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese perhaps? Perhaps just the result of not studying for a while?):

“Sounds of shackles in the streets/ Songs of birds/ Under the humid greenery of the forests/ Newness of a sweet symphony/ Of the coconut trees/ Fire/ Fire in the pasture/ Fire about the heat of the plates of Cayette/ Wide roads/ Full of people, full of people/ In exodus from all parts/ Wide roads for the horizons closed/ But roads/ Open roads above/ Of the impossibilities of the arms/ Bonfires/ Dance/ Tam tam/ Rhythm/ Rhythm in the light/ Rhythm in the color/ Rhythm in the movement/ Rhythm in the bloody cracks of bare feet/ Rhythm in the nails stripped/ More rhythm/ Rhythm/ The painful voices of Africa!”

To me, this represents the perseverance of Angolans. To me, this poems talks of the hardships of the people: those who are prisoners, those who are displaced, those who have lost loved ones, and their belief in a higher source to get them through all of this on their journey to finding peace and a better life. But there is the rhythm of life that keeps them moving. The use of rhythm as a musical term goes to show how music is also so engrained in the lives of Africans on a whole, sometimes to the point where they don’t even think of it as music, just a way of life. (Keep reading when I write about music next.) But his use of seemingly opposite comparisons and descriptions creates a dichotomy of Angolan life between its people and land (“Sounds of shackles in the streets/ Songs of birds” or “Newness of a sweet symphony/ of the coconut trees/ Fire/ Fire in the pasture”). It’s a glimpse at the fire of life that even though there are hardships of unbelievable depth, the rhythm of life keeps them together and keeps them pushing forward, that even though things are bad, you can still enjoy the beauty of the land, the notes of a song, the kindness of a smile.

Up next: music and dance

Resources:

Fogo e ritmo: http://www.sitedeliteratura.com/Poesias/A_neto4.htm

Art: http://www.embangola.at/art.htm

Chokwe art: http://www.hamillgallery.com/CHOKWE/ChokweArt.html

ANGOLA: HOLIDAYS AND CELEBRATIONS

Angola has several public holidays during the year; however, only a two of which are religious-based (Christmas and Easter). A little more than half of its population practice some form of Christianity introduced from the Portuguese, while the remaining 47% follow various indigenous belief systems. Two holidays celebrated in Angola are movable holidays: Easter and Carnival (celebrated the days before Lent starts).

 January 1: New Years Day.  Many of the same holiday traditions are found in Angola as the rest of the world. There are lots of parties with friends and family, lots of food and drinking. These festivities are still going on from Christmas.  There's not a whole lot of information out there on real Angolan traditions for celebrating New Years. 

January 25: Luanda’s Day. Luanda is one of the oldest cities in Africa (436 years old this year [2012]). The day is celebrated with lots of music, dancing, food, art displays, and several walking and bus tours of the city.

February 4: Day of the Armed Struggle. This is held in memory of the Baixa de Cassanje revolt (1961). Workers at a cotton plant started to protest for better working conditions. While this was going on, some of the workers started burning their ID cards and even physically assaulted the some Portuguese traders who were on the plant grounds. Instead of dealing with those who were directly involved, the Portuguese authorities responded by calling for an air raid – on twenty nearby towns, killing a vast number of people. Most estimates are between 400 and 7000, depending on who’s giving the estimate.

Usually mid-late February: Carnival.  Carnival in Angola is celebrate much the same as in other locations, probably more closer to how it’s celebrated in Brazil or like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana (USA). There are parades with floats and people dance and are dressed in quite elaborate costumes. At night there are huge parties all over, and from the looks of it, people will dress in all different kinds of costumes – making it look more like a Halloween party. And of course, the less clothes the women wear, the more popular they seem to be.

March 8: International Women’s Day.  A day acknowledged and celebrated in 176 countries, it’s a celebration aimed at supporting women and women’s issues and connecting with women all over the world.

Late March to late April: Easter. Like most Christians in the world who celebrate Easter, Christian Angolans will celebrate by attending Easter service at church. Many families spend the time with each other, eating, and celebrating much like other areas that celebrate Easter.

April 4: Day of Peace and Reconciliation.  This marks the end of the Angolan Civil War. There are usually soccer games and religious services. It’s a day surrounded by talks of peace and especially for peace in the future as well.

May 1: Labor Day. Businesses are closed on this day.  It’s a time to spend with families and friends.

May 25: Africa Day.  This is a day in remembrance of the colonial days and for Africans who have died in the struggles for independence. Many of the Africans countries that partake in the Africa Day celebrations will have a number of cultural arts displays, music concerts, and soccer games. 

June 1: International Children’s Day.  Many non-for-profit and government organizations help to promote good health, literacy, and education while trying to fight the problems that poverty, homelessness and orphanhood that has arisen from years of civil war.

September 17: Agostinho Neto’s Day/National Heroes Day.  This is in celebration of Augostino Neto’s birthday. He was the first president of Angola and was also a reputable poet as well.

November 2: All Soul’s Day.  This is a day of giving alms and spent in remembrance of those who have already passed away. Many churches will pray for the dead with the intention of helping them to get out of purgatory.

November 11: Independence Day. Since many of the indigenous arts were banned during the war, there are often displays of music, dancing, and visual arts.

December 25: Christmas. You’ll find many of the typical European Christmas traditions in Angola as well. Schools close, and you’ll find carolers and decoration-clad buildings.  Angolans love to celebrate with many parties lasting from Christmas on through New Years. One of the traditions around this time is to eat a sweet cake called bolo-rei (king-cake) that is formed like a crown. It’s full of raisins, nuts, and fruits and was introduced by the Portuguese. The cake is usually made with a fava bean (whoever receives this slice has to make the cake next year) and a surprise (whoever receives this slice gets good luck for the next year). It sounds to me an awful lot like a fruitcake. Maybe the surprise is that this was actually last year’s bolo-rei??

Up next: Art and Literature

Resources:

Wikipedia: “Public Holidays in Angola” “Agostinho Neto” “Angolan literature”"Carnival"

Angola Rising: http://angolarising.blogspot.com/2011/12/angolan-christmas-tradition-bolo-rei.html

Children’s Day: http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/international-childrens-day-world/

Day of Peace and Reconciliation: http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/peace-reconciliation-day-angola/

Africa Day: http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/angola-africa-day/

ANGOLA: THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

Angola: the land of both rainforests and grasslands, of both age-old African traditions and contemporary European modernities. Where for every one kilometer of paved roads, there are nine kilometers of unpaved roads; where you are closer to nature only to witness human destruction against it. Situated in southwest Africa, it’s surrounded by Namibia, Zambia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Angola is a former Portuguese colony, so most of the people speak Portuguese (the official language), and that makes me happy since I’ve studied Portuguese for years. However, many Angolans also speak native languages as well, the most widely spoken being Umbundu, Kimbundu, Kikongo (all of which are Bantu languages). 

After declaring independence from Portugal, Angola spent over two decades in civil war, leaving the country in economic turmoil.  Still considered one of the poorest countries in the world, much less Africa, it continues to struggle with basic services for its people, such as access to clean water and medicine. While the countryside itself is filled with valuable minerals and gems, such as diamond, copper, gold, and uranium, there is little money to which develop a viable mining industry.

The country itself is almost twice the size as the state of Texas (US), and it’s capital is the coastal city of Luanda. While the city itself has about 5.1 million people, the metro area has about as many people as New York City. It actually is the 3^rd largest Portuguese-speaking city in the world, behind São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (both in Brazil).

The country has a vast array of geographical features. There are rainforests in the northern regions and savannas and grasslands stretching across the central plains into the south. Angola is one of the few countries to have an enclave. An enclave is an area of land that is separated from the main land by another country, like Alaska is for the United States. Angola’s enclave is Cabinda, which is separated by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Zambezi River and branches of the Congo River snake their way into and through Angola and across southern Africa. Angola is having a problem with soil erosion and the siltation of the river systems, which is one of the main causes of water pollution and lack of clean water. Desertification and deforestation are also causing problems for biodiversity.

A plethora of socioeconomic and health factors plague the country. Lack in education funding is evident with only two-thirds of the population over age 15 being able to read and write. Only half of the population has access to clean water and sanitation. Over 200,000 people are living with AIDS, and there are very few doctors available in the country. Angolans are at a high risk for major diseases such as typhoid, sleeping sickness, malaria, and hepatitis A. In fact, over a quarter of its children are reported underweight.  That being said, maternal mortality rate and infant mortality rate are also among the highest in the world. Early 20s is considered middle age, with the life expectancy being 54.

Life is especially hard for most Angolans, and it’s often the subject of its music and poetry. But their culture is not just theirs but is influenced by everyone who has passed through as well. And what you can also feel is their spirit that has led them to push though and carry on, to sustain and persevere. It’s a spirit that connects them to nature, to the land, to the sea, and to their ancestors. It comes out in their poetry, their art, their music, their dance, and their food. It’s Angola. And I’m really excited to venture through this.

Up next: holidays and celebrations

ANDORRA: THE FOOD

Finding good recipes for Andorran food is like trying to find paperwork on my desk. Theoretically, it’s there; I just have to sift through a lot of other stuff to find it. And even at that, who knows what kind of condition it’s in. As I searched on what was out there, I found recipes that were lacking details, like how long to bake something, or had wrong measurements (like the difference between a centiliter and a milliliter almost had me using a little less than a gallon of oil! Good thing I double-checked that recipe.)  But I made like a jazz musician and improvised.

First we made the coques, an Andorran flat cake. (The recipe I was originally working with was terrible – I could deal with the European measurements, but some of them were actually wrong. See note above.) Coques can be either sweet (with sugar or fruits) or savory (with meats and cheeses on it). I decided to go with a sweet bread. The recipe was a little different than any of the others so far – it had me make a batter and then tear up pieces of rolls to add into the batter. Obviously my helper loves the camera. 

I think the dough was supposed to be a lot drier, but I ran out of flour and had to work with what I had. It still was enough to form it into the rectangle shape that coques are traditionally formed. After it baked I brushed some melted butter on top and used powdered sugar (it actually called for icing sugar, but at this point I was NOT running back out to the store) and cinnamon on top. It turned out it was a hit with the family. They sang praises to me, danced in my honor, and threw flowers at me. And it was good.

Next, we made stuffed mushrooms with sausage. I ended up making a few substitutions. The recipe called for morels, but in Indiana (even though we had a record warm month for March), it’s still a little early to find morels at the store. I settled with white mushrooms. The recipe also called for botifarra sausage, which I researched and found out that it was similar to linguiça sausage. (I ate a lot of linguiça when I was in southern Brazil. It’s a very filling sausage.) But I had a little trouble finding linguiça where I was and had to look up what some substitutions for that, and I came up with mild chorizo, which you can amply find in Indiana (and for cheap!). It also called for cognac, and I had to go with the best, Rémy Martin. It turned out really well. I liked it. The only problem is that chorizo is a very oily sausage, and some of the oil would seep out of the mushrooms.

Now came the meal. In almost every article I read on Andorran food and cuisine, one dish was almost always mentioned: trinxat. It’s from a Catalan word meaning “to slice.” It’s basically kale and Swiss chard (something I bought for the first time) boiled with potatoes. I thought the Swiss chard was pretty, and I did tell my daughter it was red because farmers poured blood on the soil, so it can soak up the blood to be high in iron. (It is April Fool's Day, you know.)

Then you cook bacon in olive oil and set the bacon off to the side. After that you take the oil off the heat and put peeled chopped garlic into the oil to infuse it. I had never heard of infusing oil, but I did it for the first time today. I gave myself a pat on the back AND a gold star. Once the oil has been sufficiently infused (how long that takes for real, I have no idea. I left the garlic in there for 1-2 minutes.), take the garlic out and pour it over the mashed potatoes/kale/Swiss chard mix. Then crumble the bacon on top. I thought it was really good and quite filling.

I couldn’t help but think about what national dishes are. It always seems to me, like with the trinxat, that many dishes that are considered “national dishes” are the ones that came from poor people. These are the dishes that use ingredients that are abundant and are prepared in such a way that stretches what people already have. Using the bacon grease and the infused oil is a very old way of adding flavor to vegetables that don’t have a strong flavor to begin with, yet are hardy to grow in abundance. Just like the use of putting the torn rolls is an old way to reuse stale bread (like how French toast got its start). These kinds of dishes prove the resilience of a people, that just because we may not have a lot, we can make something good out of what little we have.  It reminded me of the end of the movie Ratatouille, where the food critic goes back to his childhood memories just from tasting the simplistic countryside dish the movie is named after. These are the dishes that bring us all together in the commonality of surviving whatever tough times befall us.

Next country: Angola

Resources:

Coques: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-coques

Stuffed morels with pork: http://www.andorra.ad/en-US/Resources/Pages/MURGUES_FARCIDES_AMB_CARN_DE_PORC.aspx

Trinxat and coques: http://www.rxx.co.il/TextPage_EN.aspx?ID=8620741