Dear friends and supporters of our mission:
In have been to over 100 countries now in my lifetime, and I can honestly say that Angola has been the most expensive place that I have ever visited. Usually throughout my journeys, I try to learn a few things about each country before I visit – things like local airports, local gas prices, visa information, etc. However, I have never had to check for the price of a hotel before landing in a country. This might be something that I add to my pre-flight check from now on.
As you know by now, when I travel, I keep my eye out for the cheapest prices possible. This is true especially with taxis and hotels. Usually, I am able to work out some kind of deal with those people if I try. Wrong answer here in Angola! After landing at the Luanda airport, I soon learn that the cheapest hotels around here are literally around $500-800USD per night! After flying all over the world and experiencing many things in my lifetime, I can tell you my friends that I’ve never been as surprised as I am now. I guess that in my lifetime, I am supposed to encounter live and first hand all of the crazy and astonishing things about our planet. In America, I would be able to stay at a Holiday Inn for nearly two weeks for that price.
So there I was on my first day, nearing nighttime, broke and thinking that I might be sleeping on the street for the night unless the hotel people would let me pay in the morning, when I was expecting some money via Western Union or Money Gram. I could not believe the things that I was hearing. After twisting and turning, calculating all of my choices for several hours and asking many people about the prices and getting the same answer over and over, I had no choice but to bite the bullet. After making my hard decision to buy a bed for the night instead of sleeping on the street, I paid for a ‘cheap’ hotel that was only $270USD/night. Welcome to Mars, Jupiter, Moon hotel my friends. Never in my life have I experienced prices this high for a hotel. Perhaps the news would have been easier to swallow if I wasn’t greeted at every hotel with the mentality that I should have been happy to find a hotel room at all.
Let me tell you, my friends, what is going on here in Luanda, Angola: the hotel owners have benefited in many ways from Angola’s current situation. In 1975, Angola achieved independence from Portugal. From then until 2002, this country struggled through civil war. It has been reported that over 300,000 people died during that time. This struggle led many people to flee their homes and settle in Luanda for safety reasons. Because of this, the infrastructure in this city has not been able to keep up. Many local people around here are living in shacks that are in very poor condition. For a city built for 1 million people, you can imagine what conditions might be like, since nearly ½ of the country is now living in this city (way more than 1 million people). Of course, these locals could never afford to buy a hotel room, but there is still much profit to be made due to the other current situation of this country.
The fact is, there is a lot of foreign money coming into Angola. Historically, diamonds were a draw for people to come here. In fact, during the years of civil war, the sale of diamonds helped to fund part of it. When the United Nations recognized this, they passed a resolution banning the purchase of ‘conflict’ diamonds from Angola. This fact is part of the history behind ‘blood diamonds’.
The other reason that is blowing local prices out of proportion here is that there is a lot of foreign money coming into the city for things like oil and gold. For one, Angola is China’s biggest supplier of oil and other countries still come in to get into the diamond and gold market here. Because of this, there are currently not enough hotel rooms in the city to accommodate everyone. But there are still a lot of foreign companies coming in who need to lodge their employees. The hotel owners have been profiting big time from this situation for a long time and can obviously get away with charging these prices, since the companies coming into the country need to have a place to stay for their employees. This should make it no surprise then, that Luanda has been named one of the world’s most expensive cities for overseas foreigners. Of course, it would have helped me to learn this before my visit.
I feel very sorry for the local people here who are not being taken care of. Since everyone wants to profit off of the foreign money coming in, it has been the locals that have suffered due to the lack of adequate infrastructure. On the other hand, one of the ways that that foreign money is coming in is through construction. Since 2002, more and more construction has been going on in this city, so the hotel situation will probably not be as big of an issue 5-10 years from now. I wonder what the hotel owners will do then, when they cannot charge as much for a room. One thing is for sure, I need to get the heck out of this place very quickly. The money that Vlora Citaku donated to our mission will be gone in one week if I stay here.
Since I know that I have to work at the speed of sound in this country, I wake up very early on Friday morning. I am ready to go first thing and now I am being told that the there are only one or two taxi companies in town and that it is very common to have difficulty finding a cab that you can rely on. Then they tell me that renting one for the day will cost approximately $250USD per day. Welcome to an alternate universe my friends. There is no way that I can deal with these kinds of prices for long.
After waiting for 45 minutes for a taxi, I could not believe my eyes what I saw. Just to ask a driver a few questions, he starts to charge me with his meter running. Even before I get into the taxi, my bill is already at $30USD! After getting into the taxi and heading to the media houses, I then find out that we are in for one of the worst traffic jams of my life, which is costing me a lot of extra money too. I can’t wait to get out of this place.
I also had a hard time with the media here as well. Since most of the newspapers are run by the government, I was only able to get interviews with two of them out of five. Guess who gave me the most run around – yup, the government ones. Thanks to Ms. Elsa Alexandre for her interview with the newspaper journal “Angolese” and Ms. Serafim Goncalves, who was the boss of the newspaper “Semanario Agora” and their journalist Mr. Raimundo Ngunza for their hospitality and their interview.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs were very receptive and cordial, thanks to all of their professional staff. I am not as hopeful here in Angola that they will make a decision about Kosovo soon. I have a feeling that there is still some residual issues from their civil war and some current instability here that may make us less of a priority to them. On the other hand, Mr. Joao Quosa, Special Advisor to the Ministry, did take some of his time to speak with me and also accepted Vlora Citaku’s letter to give to the Minister.
Finally, even at the end of my visit, expenses here in Angola continued. It seems that if you have any local money left when you try to leave the country, they will take it away from you with no arguments unless you end up going back into town to change it to another currency. If it’s a weekend day that you are leaving on, forget about it, since the banks are closed. Don’t forget that if you need to stay in a hotel for the rest of the night, that you will pay those exorbitant prices for it.
My friends, I got out of Angola as fast as I could. Though I can see where Luanda may be a great place to visit in the future (with all of the construction and changes going on), I must tell you again that this was the most expensive country that I have experienced in my lifetime.
