The Carnation Revolution

The Carnation Revolution happened on April 25, 1974 in Lisbon, Portugal and although government officials killed four people before surrendering, the revolutionaries did not use direct violence to achieve their goals. The population holding red carnations convinced the regime soldiers not to resist and the authoritarian dictatorship gave place to a democracy after a two year transitional period full of social turmoil and power dispute between left and right philosophies, where the left had a heavier weight. It was the end of the oldest totalitarian regime of the western Europe.

Meantime in Africa, I was in High School then and I knew something mysterious was happening in Europe but had no idea how much impact it was going to have on my life and everyone else's around me! Eighteen months later, I found myself in Portugal among over half a million other refugees. A civil war had broken up in Angola after the Portuguese forces practically abandoned the former Portuguese province in Africa. The multinationals quickly took sides and instigated a division among the Angolan people creating an uncomfortable environment that ended in a 20 year war among brothers and sisters. Friends turned against friends, races against other races, freedom of speech became a passport to death. Children became soldiers, mercenaries flocked to the country looking for quick money, and terror became the way to conquer and to control. Freedom fighters lost their way and the reason why they were fighting in the first place. Angola became a chaos and children starved to death. Today, there is peace at the surface, but the poor is still poor and the rich exponentially richer. The nouveau elite takes care of each other and pretend not to see how the poor struggles to stay afloat. Perhaps it is the pendulum still swinging to the extreme before it returns and finally stops at mid-ground. Perhaps it is life where the greed gets greedier and the poor remains poor forever. Only time will tell what it will happen to Angola. I don't believe the current generation of multibillionaires really think about it. They just enjoy their new lifestyle while they can. But when the poor is forgotten, nothing can be sustained and so, I am curious to see what will happen in the next decade.

The rain in Africa

Missing someone or missing something can be a real painful event!
Like this morning when I woke up with this void inside me, refusing to open my eyes as I searched for the sound and feeling of rain drops in Africa. It is unexplainable the sense of being in the midst of jungle and rain, interrupted often by heavy thunder then silence - total silence! Then quickly come the flying ants and a beautiful rainbow at the other side of the mountain. The sun smiles again like a child that just played a prank on his parents, and we can't help it but to smile back in awe! I miss it almost desperately. In the morning, on my way to work, I greet the rubber plant at my front door and I see the whole Africa in a vase! Somehow, I thing the plant greets me back in its own way - I prefer to believe that such is true...

above all, I miss you!

My catholic Youth

Watching the Pope's visit to the US on CNN (hard to miss such event) made me think of my days as an altar boy in a little town buried in coffee plantations and green mountains with lots of caves to explore (before they splashed them with war mines in the early eighties).

I was born catholic as most Portuguese families before the end of Salazar's dictatorship. There was no exception for the provinces in Africa since they were under the same European rule. If you were not catholic it was OK, just couldn't tell your neighbors if you wanted to be part of society. My mother is a devoted catholic and so are some of my kids. I think it is okay to be part of a religious group for camaraderie and to have a sense of belonging. What is not okay is to think that anyone else is not "seeing the truth" and will probably burn in hell. Truth is a very personal thing and each of us have to find our own. I praise my younger daughter for being a devoted Catholic but I constantly remind her that there are many truths and that it is alright to explore other ways without feeling guilty about it.

There were three aspects I loved about being in church back in Africa. One was the old organ they had that sounded like angels in the sky, my first introduction to European music. The other was the voices of native people singing on Sundays. The third one was their library, the only one in town and a place where I spent many hours exploring. I used to snick in and quietly read page after page of the classics. It was my window to the rest of the world. No one new I was there. It was my sacred place. The other s.p. was the top of the mountain that surrounded the town of Gabela. There, the wind would whisper me stories of a world without war and greed, a world with lots of love for one another. I just didn't know that a few years later, that little town would the place where hundred of families would find their maker in a civil war created by the multinational powers.

tony araujo
4/20/08

We are all related (Thank God!)

Well, if the geneticists were in charge of immigration control, it would be an open-door policy.

"Every one of us has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. The number of ancestors doubles with each generation. So what does this mean? Going back 30 generations (approx. 750 years ago), every person alive today will have over a billion possible ancestors. However, the world population for the year 1250 AD is estimated at only 400 million..."

DNA tests could also be a powerful tool in the fight against racism. It is not just that they prove, once and for all, that any notions of race or racial purity are patently absurd and scientifically wrong. Their power lies in that they prove it by showing people what is in their own blood. When the truths of science become personal truths, they get taken more seriously.

Empty Heart

She arrived suddenly
catching me off guard...
and then she vanished
leaving an empty awareness
in my heart!

And now I ask, was it worth it?
or would I rather not
possess the feeling of her being?

tony araujo
4/2008