Tired of the sounds of war, Angolans revel in poetry

Jose Luis Mendonca is an assistant information officer at the United Nations Children's Fund. Anny Pereira does public relations for a big diamond company. And Cho de Guri is a pharmacist downtown. All of them, however, are also writers - sitting up late at night to capture an image, sneaking in time over lunch to pen a thought, rising early to rephrase a line, and meeting every week at the writers union to share ideas.

They are members of Angola's new generation of poets, in a country that craves a well-written verse. Despite - or maybe because of - Angola's poverty, displacement, unemployment, hunger, and illness, hundreds find the time to write poems, and thousands more take the time to read, listen to, and appreciate them.

"We are natural poets here," says Noa Wete, a freelance poet, critic, and theater director. "We live a life of drama, and we are melancholy. Since the 1950s, we have experienced the hardships of war and misery, and people need to express their sentiments and have those sentiments articulated for them."

The role models for this new generation are the old liberation-movement fighters who took up arms in the 1960s against the Portuguese, and took up pens to write about the injustices of colonialism and the wretchedness of the people. "During the revolution, we wrote poems all the time, even right in the middle of war," says Manuel Augusto Fragata de Morais, once a rebel fighter, and today deputy minister of culture. "It was our way of giving ourselves strength and putting into words the dreams we were fighting for."

Most verse written at the time was "just written down on scraps of paper ... nothing was published," Mr. Morais says. After the battle for independence, those scraps came out of the fatigue pockets and became popular poems.

The civil war that continues to drag on here inspires nowhere near as much ideological fervor. Yet the misery of the Angolan people remains the major source of material for the new generation of poets.

"If you live here, you see too much suffering," says Mendonca, who grew up poor. "Writing is a way of protest ... but also just a way of expressing anguish. We are giving voice to all those who are crying out."

When he first started writing as a teenager, he was drawn by his father's life adventures. "But I got distracted by all that was going on around me," he says, "and so ended up writing my first poem about the poor mothers with their babies on their backs." There is much to be written about love and life and happiness, he adds, "but we are still on the suffering. We have not reached those other places yet."

Ms. Pereira, a double amputee who lost most of her family in the war, says poets are able to criticize social and political wrongs more than journalists or politicians can. "People want to stay here in Angola, they need to retain their positions, so they don't say boo," she says. "They are scared to speak out, but in poetry I speak out, and people read and listen."

Reading is hard for most Angolans, however. Only half of school-age children here have ever set foot in a classroom, UNICEF says, and most never make it past fifth grade. The UN Development Program (UNDP) reports that only 50 percent of adult men and 30 percent of women here can read or write. There is a severe shortage of qualified teachers, a limited number of textbooks, and scarcely any bookshops.

But many people get their poetry over the radio. Others gather around neighborhood TVs and watch the artists. Musicians put the words to music, and theater troupes turn the verse into drama, performing free at churches, schools, and outdoor events.

"It's beautiful," says Maria Bondo, sitting on a street curb next to her wares - plastic bags filled with small tomatoes - and listening to a poetry reading emanating from a small transistor radio nearby. "We like beautiful things in this country."

It's 6:25 on Wednesday evening, and the Luanda writers union is full. Young students with oversized glasses have taken up plastic chairs in the front. The poets and writers crowd in the back or loiter around the musty hallway, leaning on pillars and chatting.

Ms. De Guri takes the stage, and opens a debate. "Why are there so many poets in Angola, and are some of them fakes?" she asks. "We don't have any writing schools," says one young student, shooing away mosquitoes, "yet everyone just starts writing. It's contagious."

Later on, there is a poetry reading and book signing for a new volume of poetry. Manuel Rui Monteiro, one of Angola's only poets known outside of the country, saunters in with a beret on his head and makes his way to the bar for a cup of lemongrass tea. Pepetela, Angola's foremost novelist, and also world renowned, stands aside, pipe in mouth, deep in conversation with the deputy minister of culture.

Almerindo Jaka Jamba, a parliamentary representative of the rebel group National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, is waiting in line to get his book signed. "Just like everyone else here," he explains, the rebels care very deeply about poetry. "It does not have to do with any one movement or the other.... Angola is weeping and singing together. And when we hear this poetry, so do we."