Celebrating one year in Angola naturally brings up memories of our first days and nights here. We can laugh about it now, but unfortunately we have very poignant memories of sleepless nights that began the night we arrived and lasted for almost 2 weeks. In fact we attended our first Marine Ball totally exhausted from the combination of jetlag and insomnia from the all night disco tech music that blared outside our bedroom windows. We could sing along to it perfectly. We were the first tenants to live on that side of this new apartment building, so noone was aware of the issues with the disco down below. Not wanting to be the "princesses" of the mission here, we were hesitant in writing an appeal to the housing board. But after our second sleepless night, enough was enough, and Briant wrote the appeal. He invited and challenged anyone that was willing, to "come and get 5 minutes of sleep." Here's why: :)
If I sound tired in the video, it's because I was! And just to clarify, the video was taken from INSIDE our master bedroom. The music started around 9:30-10pm and went until 6am, Wed-Sat., 4 days a week. All of the bedrooms were on that side of the apartment overlooking the club. We tried putting the kids in the kitchen on their mattresses that we dragged in, while Briant and I dragged our queen mattress into the entry way that was exactly the size of the mattress. We closed all doors to all of the rooms, set up fans as white noise, and used ear plugs. We still didn't sleep. After reading our appeal and watching our videos, the housing board agreed to pull us out and put us in temporary housing until another house could be found.
A few members of the housing board told us later that they were convinced on the need to move us after seeing the video that Thomas took at 5am as the sun was rising, music still playing! Thank you Thomas! Thank goodness they accepted our appeal! Briant is now on the housing board protecting our interests. :)
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