On May 25th, Angola celebrated Africa Day along with most African countries. All of the local embassy employees get together and plan a fun afternoon for the embassy community. Everyone dresses up in their finest African clothing, especially the women. They look beautiful in their dresses and head wraps! Below upper left, the ambassador was in the spirit with a dress and headwrap combo. Below right, Briant and his friend Casey, who heads back to a D.C. assignment next week. Briant and Casey made the trip to Namibe together and had many late nights at the embassy. Briant will be sad to see him go!
This year, they invited a group of young women to come to sing and play the drums. They also danced a little, which got the local staff to loosen up as well and get dancing. It was so fun to watch them and to see their bright happy faces while cheering each other on. Some of the embassy local staff felt the rhythm and got in on the dancing.
I loved seeing all of my English students dressed up and happy. Every day, they're in their custodial cleaning clothes and worker clothes as they work around the embassy grounds and in the houses of the American staff. So it was amazing to see them all "cleaned up" and polished in their nice clothes.
After the performing, they invited us in to eat from the beautiful spread of local food (very little of which we see regularly) they had prepared.
As I was getting pics of the food, some of my students asked to get a picture with their "professora." Gabriel and Lazaro, Claudia, and Geraldo and Ginga. 
Riquita (Briant's senior consular assistant and right-hand woman), Goncalvez, Ginga, and Geraldo, followed by Anna our nurse, Gastao, and John (our wonderful TDY nurse).
We had a great time at our second (and last) Africa Day, and enjoyed seeing the culture that is often swallowed up and invisible in a bustling city of seven million crazy Angolans. Hard to believe we'll soon be transitioning to Russian and Baltic/Nordic/Scandinavian cultural adventures in the snow.
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