Angola's Passion for Fashion

After many years of isolation by the civil war, the Angolan fashion industry and its designers are now emerging and is winning plaudits for its fusion of African and interational style.  There was certainly no shortage of interest in Angolan's designs during Angolan's Fashion week in June 2010. There were eight Angolan designers altogether, including designers from Portugal, Brazil and the UK were present with an interest in the emerging designs.

Lucrécia Moreira, one of Angola's top designers states," Urban Angolans are characterized as very good consumers of fashion. This can be seen by walking down any street; they all like to dress well and look good. You can see all the new boutiques opening in Luanda – this is a big industry. When the Hugo Boss store opened a few years back, it made the most sales on its opening night of any Hugo Boss store in the world, which gives you an indication of the appetite people here have for fashion in Angola.”

Moreira’s work is a fusion of influences. She likes to use traditional African fabrics, patterns and colours with European flourishes to create a modern style but one with its roots in tradition. Explaining her style, Moreira said: “The education that we had during the long years of Portuguese colonisation did not allow us to interpret our own culture, so Angolans were not used to wearing African clothes.

“But through travelling around the continent I started to see that people in other African countries used African-style clothes and identified themselves as Africans through their clothes. It was from there that I started to create African fashion."

Ginga Neto, as pictured at left, has a Luanda boutique, Mahinda Prestige, that is becoming a fashion landmark. It is one of the few shops in the country where you can buy Angolan designed and produced clothes. The big attraction this season is Ginga’s new Jeanswear Collection, the first Angolan denim range, which comes with unique symbols of Chokwe sand paintings on the pockets. (Adapted from Sonangol Universo Magazine September 2010)

Who says flight safety instructions were dull?

Up to now passengers were used to flight attendants telling them about the flight safety instructions in a kind of robot-like performance, which many passengers found boring and therefore, didn´t pay much attention to. The traditional flight safety card was also often frequently ignored....

BUT

times seem to be changing and we are witnessing new creative ways to get passengers´ attention to important flight safety instructions. Let´s see these two entertaining ways to present such instructions:

So which approach do you prefer as a passenger the traditional or the creative one? Do you really think passengers pay more attention to flight safety instructions with the rap and the dancing? Please leave your comment.

The Rise of the 'Rural Mercedes': the Bicycle

Transport and development go hand-in-hand. In Angola's burgeoning rural economy and society, virtually everything traded must be transported, and almost everyone needs wheels to develope social structures.  The rise of bicycle use in rural Angolan areas represents simple, affordable transportion which can generate wealth, as well as saving lots of time and back-breaking work.  Most importantly, this rise has occurred due to widespread war damage and devastation that has left many secondary roads decrepit and rivers uncrossable by 4 X 4 vehicles swept away by floods.

Bicycle use is also widespread amongst NGO and relief agencies trying to reach remote populations overcome with logistical difficulties in efforts to bring aid and medical relief.  Recently, MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) an international medical response organization, used bicyles to reach many remote villages in the remote northern parts of Angola; in regions where many of the paths are not big enough for a car. As well, the roads are suspected of being mined so access is often only on foot or by bicycle. MSF frequently uses bicycles in Malange to do vaccinations in communities without access by road.
 

Bicycles are now being used as a useful tool in Angola to present the Gospel and build up church congregations. Angola, much like many other parts of Africa presents a unique challenge to Christian pastors and evangelists. Due to the high illiteracy rate among the Angolan population, often the gospel has to be spread orally. However, communities are far-flung which means that great distances have to be covered in the quest to spread the gospel. In addition to this, the terrain is frequently inhospitable and unforgiving, making the lack of a properly developed transport infrastructure more sorely felt.  Since most rural Angolan pastors are very poor, the bicycle is the most practical and affordable answer to these financial and logistical challenges. A bicycle can go where a 4 X 4 cannot go.

New Bid to Halt Polio in Angola

(BBC News - Oct 1, 2010)  A mass polio immunisation campaign is starting in Angola in a bid to vaccinate all children under five.

The campaign is part of a series of programmes aimed at stopping a polio outbreak that has paralysed 24 children this year alone. Over 7 million vaccine doses are set to be delivered.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) says previous attempts to stop the virus circulating failed because too few children were vaccinated.

This outbreak in Angola started in 2007 and the WHO now considers it the greatest risk to Africa's polio eradication efforts.

Polio is a highly infectious virus which mainly infects young children. It is transmitted through contaminated food and water and once it enters the intestine it multiplies and can spread into the nervous system. "The good news is that we know this outbreak could be stopped very rapidly”  Oliver Rosenbauer,  Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

In the worst cases, polio causes paralysis which is often permanent. Current vaccines are highly effective in protecting children against infection. This outbreak, despite previous vaccination campaigns, has now spread to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The virus can only be stopped if all children receive the vaccine. The WHO estimates that in some areas of Angola more than a third of at risk children have not been immunised. Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesperson for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at the WHO said: "Children across Angola, and indeed Africa, will continue to be paralysed by this awful virus, and it's completely needless because it could so easily be prevented.