My four years in Angola

[Shilka]

This is to Gurey25, he asked yesterday how I'd come to Brazil and my experience with the people, culture, and to an extent - the language I never quite mastered

From 1972 to 1976 I traveled between Luanda city and Viana, and I wasn't alone. Many Somalis, up to 500 I would estimate - mostly in their late teens and 20's, even our generals were adolescents - were enlisted in primary schools and university campuses from Hargeisa to Jigjiga and further down and across the Somali landscape. I was in primary school when I enlisted, at the time I was seventeen years of age, a little older than my fifteen and sixteen year old peers, so it was sort of a coming-of-age experience for me, I had given up in school, for the moment.

When I went to train in Jigjiga I was one of only six boys who was at the hangar [we trained near an airstrip], however I soon found out that I was one of the last to make it to the camp, and the others were already in cargo ships to Angola. Two weeks of light training and my scrawny frame was thrown in with my training mates to Angola. Now, as an educationally disadvantaged youth, I didn't know this place called Angola, all I knew was a giant mess of colonies in the Southern quarter of our continent, but soon I would learn.

On the 12th of May, 1972, I departed a cargo plane, square in the middle of the Kalahari desert. Five boys, a Jeep, one crate, and a sleeping bag full of dry rations and evaporated water also departed with me; that was all I had now. One of my training mates passed away during the week-long journey; stop after stop his health deteriorated, a very detailed and harrowing experience it was, Allahu naraxiisto.

I was given permission over the wheel during training camp, so I drove us into town. Viana, Angola, here we came. When we entered the town we saw bodies laying like an abundance of tyranny. Scary and eye-opening, we simply were not ready, but we had to be. We fought for months against mysterious Angolan factions, different uniforms each group. We were assisted by the Cuban Revolutionary Army and the Angolan Liberation Front, both Soviet-backed and anti-Colonialist. This was the cause that we were taught in school, this was our duty - to liberate our Socialist brothers from the tyrannical grip of capitalism and European supremacy.

After three years and six months of grit, determination, and ethic, Angola was liberated. Ramadan 1975.

We stayed in Angola for another eight months, until summer of 1976, less than a week from this very day, then we went home. All five of my training mates and myself, home, alive and healthy, and mentally scarred but uplifted.

This is how Mohamed Siad Barre, Allahu naraxiisto, trained us for the invasion of Jigjiga in 1977, which I did not participate for educational demands.

[DerbiJiiF]

hmmm, this sounds like Agostinho Neto's biography during the Angolan Revolution. Are you sure you are not stealing part of that book's narrative- Revolution in Angola? The atrocities, the dreadly humid pungent forest, the portaghese air riads that oblitareted villages. It all sound so familiar. Are you sure you are not copying?


Derbi,

[Shilka]

Ask any Somali man above forty years of age, what we were taught in school. And then ask him about Angola. If he doesn't go on for over a half-hour, then I am a liar plain and simple. But that's not the case, brother.

[DerbiJiiF]

Are you the last communist left on this planet? Why do you have Stalin's avator....

Beh, I forgot Castro and his brother


Derbi,

[paidmonk]

Shilka: Who were the Angolans in the different uniforms???

[Demure]

That sounds like another lifetime. So Shilka are you a communist?

[Shilka]

Demure and Derbijiif, I am not a Communist, I just wear Stalin's portrait on my avatar as a reminder of my earlier career.

Paidmonk, the Angolan rebels in the various outfits were anti-Portuguese and anti-Communist rebels, mostly Christian and Animist, they were supported by Western Europe, South Afrikaaners, and even the United States. Those traditionally pro-Colonial forces had asked the ailing Portuguese Empire to exit Angola so the massacres of Whites in nearby countries and destruction of their businesses would not be repeated. But Portugal stayed. And the West, in a strange sort of nurturing, began setting examples through anti-Portuguese proxy rebel groups, what can happen in the future if the Empire still remained in Africa. Its a long story, but that's roughly what it was at the time.

[FAH1223]

Interesting.....

[gurey25]

God lord we have a war veteren here.
Shilka i assumed that you were young like most people here, the average age is in the 20's.

This was a facinating insight into a different age, I believe the somalis were also involved in Mozambique at the same time.

can you tell us more about your experiences in the 77 war?
and how you made it to the west?

[Berke]

[quote] I was one of only six boys who was at the hangar [we trained near an airstrip], however I soon found out that I was one of the last to make it to the camp, and the others were already in cargo ships to Angola.[/quote]

[quote]One of my training mates passed away during the week-long journey[/quote]

[quote]All five of my training mates and myself, home, alive and healthy, and mentally scarred but uplifted.[/quote]

[1_londoner]

[quote="FAH1223"]Interesting.....[/quote]

very.

[Shilka]

[quote="Berke"][quote] I was one of only six boys who was at the hangar [we trained near an airstrip], however I soon found out that I was one of the last to make it to the camp, and the others were already in cargo ships to Angola.[/quote]

[quote]One of my training mates passed away during the week-long journey[/quote]

[quote]All five of my training mates and myself, home, alive and healthy, and mentally scarred but uplifted.[/quote][/quote]
------------------------------------------------------

My vocab is a bit off, haven't been in the United States since 1997. That last line was "All five of my friends, including myself" not "And myself." The five of us who had made it through the journey in Angola, not the plane ride.

Thanks for spotting it.

[Gedo_Boy]

Shilka very fascinating story. Can you tell us more about the '77 war?

[paidmonk]

Cool story.

[Shilka]

Gurey25 and Gedo Boy,

If you read the end of my post, you'll see that I didn't fight in the Ogaden War. I was sent to Portugal by my father for college, despite lacking even basic high school education. There, I further developed my Portuguese linguistic skills, and sparked my interest in Brazil and Portuguese societies around the world.