Huila Province, Angola
June 24, 2024
I’d thought the bus from Lubango to Benguela would take the road down to Namibe and then follow the coast. I was wrong and delighted to be so. Taking an inland route, the bus headed north through the highlands of Huila before turning to the coast. We were going through mostly rural Angola passing nary a town or city.
Lush crops and fields of sugarcane flowed past the window. Cattle and goats grazed, and small hamlets punctuated the fields. There are the same round thatched huts with some of them morphing into rectangular shapes.
Some hamlets have more buildings made of brick or cement. Their corrugated roofs are held down with stones and bricks. Most of the villages are small, barely a dozen or so houses. It seems idyllic and peaceful but life must not be easy here. It seems far less developed than the stretch of the road between Ondjiva and Lubango.
The road is tarred in parts but in poor shape, with giant potholes ensuring plentiful jolts. The side of the road is festooned with assorted rubbish and plastic bags. A new road is being laid out but until it is functional we are on large stretches of mud and dirt roads. I mentally doff my hat to the drivers who navigate these roads on a daily basis. Most of the traffic are freight carriers with an occasional tractor hauling passengers in the attached trailer. A motorbike has a goat riding pillion.
There is tree cover beyond the villages as far as the distant mountains it seems. Some are giant trees, dwarfing everything in its vicinity. And I see baobabs, those trees that to my mind are quintessential Africa. But not just one here or a couple there.
We seem to be passing through entire fields, meadows and slopes of them. Each has a distinct shape – thick or thin, gnarled or stately, bare branches or with hanging fruit, they stand tall in this land.
ITCHY FEET TRAVELS 