Cabinda, Angola

As I mentioned in earlier post, I spent most of 2002 and half of 2003 commuting from Houston to Cabinda, Angola.  I was working for BearingPoint and my client was Chevron.  I would be gone for 4-6 weeks at a time, and then home for 4-6 weeks.  Time gone from home was rough.  Time home was great.  There are lots of oil & gas guys who have made a career of working like this.   It's really not that bad. They can live anywhere they want and make a nice living giving the extra pay for working in dangerous places and as an ex-pat.  My experience was very interesting to say the least.  It played a tremendous part in my faith journey and I had no idea it would.

I met a particular guy from Nigeria when I arrived and had a very insightful conversation with him.   He asked me if I was a Christian.  I said yes.  His response was "we will see".   That really made me think.  After more conversations with him, and many nationals (locals), I learned that Africans were very confused about who Americans were.   Typically, the first American they met were missionaries.  These missionaries came to spread the word of Christ and to do great service projects for them.  The locals had a tremendous respect for the missionaries.  

Turns out Africa has more Christians than most continents.  Most of the nationals we were worked with were very public about their faith.   They brought their bibles to work, prayed before meetings, and held bible studies at a night on our compound.  Since Angola was in a civil war, we were restricted to stay within our remote compound.  Even through it was an easy drive from the airfield (yep dirt field), we still had to get to the camp via helicopter due to security.  Chevron said they had to let the Nationals bring their bibles and pray because that is their local custom and they did not want to disturb.  Something very ironic about that, given it was American missionaries that started this custom but in America, you could never get away with be that vocal about your faith in the work place.  

After missionaries, the next Americans most Africans met were oil field workers, which I was one of.   This group is normally very different than missionaries.  We brought our bad language & jokes, our love of beer, and not exactly the type of people that the nationals wanted to model.  I soon learned why the man from Nigeria was skeptical about me being a Christian.   

My normal day schedule consisted of:

- up at 5:00 AM

- eating breakfast at 5:30 AM

- in the office by 6:00 AM

- 11:30 - break for lunch till 1:00.  This allowed me to go for a five mile on a dirt road around the perimeter of the camp.  I had to stay on the dirt road due to snakes (cobra's, green momba's, and vipers) and land mines.  That was very good incentive.  This meant having to run through packed of prairie monkey's and around giant monitor lizards and other friends of Africa.  

- 1:00 - 6:00, back in the office.  Which was really a small metal room attached to a warehouse.  

- 6:00 - 7:00 - eat in the mess hall

- 7:00 - 8:00 - go for short run up and down a steep hill 

- 8:00 - 9:00 - I would do my own bible study in my room and then off to sleep

In this schedule, I spent a lot of time with the same guys at work and in the mess hall.  So when I was not working or eating, I preferred solitude by running or holed up in my room reading and studying scripture.   I would never do this at home due to the hectic lives we all live.  It really made me pay attention to all of the distractions we have in our normal lives.   Most of my time at home was spent with my family as well, which is not a distraction but a blessing.  I realized that too while being gone for so long.  

I also learned that the kids of Cabinda, whom I rarely saw since we were confined to the compound, were using bibles to learn English.  The problem was they only had King James versions.   I was able to hook up with a national that worked in the shipping & receiving area and found way to ship them NIV bibles. Our church in Clear Lake provided me a enough money to buy and ship a couple of hundred NIV bibles to them.   They really appreciated them.   It was like a two for one: Bibles and English books.  

When I left Angola, they through a nice party for me.  They also left me with a very nice gift - an African photo journal that they all signed like a year book.  That gift still means a lot to me.   My Nigerian friend came up to me that last night and said he was proud of me.  He said he watched me closely and it took a year, but he finally agreed that I was a Christian.  Big lesson learned there is that there is no such thing as a Sunday only Christian.  Once you make that statement, you better live up to it or else you will join one of the many Christian hypocrites who say one thing and then behave totally differently.  Unfortunately there are plenty of those to go around.  Given that none of us are perfect, there always will be.  

On a side note, we also had a ton of bats all over the camp.   They were mostly fruit bats that lived in trees and went out at dusk and dawn.  I hated those bats.   They were stinky, would spray you, and just looked nasty.  A fruit bat looks like a hairy yellow rat with wings.   Why people are fascinated to watch bats come and go from bridges in Austin is beyond me.   They do good in eating mosquito's but do not ask me to watch bats fly.   Angola made me hate them.  

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