Time passed … August 2006, a call rang on the phone, it had an international feel to it. When I answered I heard this strange voice. The voice described that it was calling from Holland and that we had come from the same place in Gabela, Angola.
I patiently listened and begun to understand the just of the call. It was a childhood friend that found me. I took his number and email and placed it in my friends section of my Palm Pilot.
A few weeks later Paulo called again and mentioned he was going to be travelling to Atlanta and could I have the time to meet him in Atlanta. Now I receive many of calls just like that where most foreigners do not realize how big the United States is as a country. I laughed for a bit and mentioned to Paulo that I would look at my schedule but that he needed to understand that Atlanta was almost as far from San Francisco as Amsterdam from Atlanta. After going back and forth Paulo agreed that we needed a different place to meet.
Sometime in October Paulo called and mentioned he was coming back to Atlanta and would this time work for me. We chatted and decided to have him swing by San Francisco on his way to Atlanta. He agreed and planned to reconnect a few days before November 11th weekend.
A couple of days before the weekend we synched our schedules and I was to pick him up at 8pm from San Francisco Airport and we would hang out until Sunday morning when he returned to SF airport for his maiden flight to Atlanta.
And so it was, I picked him up around 8pm and we went to hang out in SF.
For the next 16 hours we mostly compared notes of our child hood and since using San Francisco legendary sights as background for our conversation.
I learned that Paulo lived just a couple of houses from my house. He was seven years old when I left, at the age of 11 years old due to the raging civil war. We went to different schools due to our age difference. It seemed at the time Gabela was developing very fast and each year new exciting things would be added and so it was with his school and friends.
It is amazing how we can still recognize the place of our childhood where so much was happening everyday. Be able to draw the streets, buildings, institutions, business, the police station, church, market, school, swimming pool, the barber, dentist, … the kids that we used to play with … as if that setting was still alive as 32 years ago.
We found out that our fathers had worked together at the same merchant when they both moved to Gabela in the earlier sixties. We promptly called his father in Portugal and mine in Modesto California. They had not talked since leaving Gabela in the late 70s and had also lost track of each other. They will be meeting next year in Portugal.
Clearly it was a moment to ponder about Paulo whom had become a successful Finance Analyst for an American company in Holland married to a beautiful Dutch lady and me a Successful Serial Entrepreneur in the cradle of high technology in Silicon Valley married to a beautiful young California girl.
All of this from two kids who would have to hunt and deal with day to day survival in a land that is so beautiful and rich in the middle of the jungle in South West Africa 3 decades ago.
Gabela Angola
