Memoir: Title page and preface

Welcome to Angola

Something Always Goes Wrong

A Memoir of Missions and COVID-19

---

Preface

Something always goes wrong

02 April 2020

Waiting for permission to leave, sitting in the shade of a porch in rural Africa, the smell of bacon sandwiches and the taste of flat Coca-Cola. This bungalow is painted a cheerful blue and white, and the lawn ornaments are repurposed bombs from a bygone war. This all belongs to the HALO Trust. They locate, remove, and destroy landmines around the globe. It’s good to have a sense of humor in their business.

This is HALO’s base in the remote town of Menongue, Angola. This country has need of HALO’s services. Decades of civil war left untold thousands of mines strewn across the beautiful landscape, left behind by cold-war powers who preferred to fight in Angola rather than make a mess of their own countries. Today’s Angolans inherit a nation marred by war, disease, poverty, and corruption. But Angola is on the road to recovery. It will be a long haul, and they know it. The story was told to me of an Angolan official welcoming a visitor to his country. With a handshake and a smile, his greeting was, “Welcome to Angola. Something always goes wrong.” It’s good to have a sense of humor in his business.

Not that you can tell from here, but the world is in the grip of a pandemic – a “novel coronavirus,” soon to be infamously known as COVID-19. People are dying, nations are panicked, and borders are closed. HALO’s base in Menongue is largely deserted. Four expats remain, and they are trying to leave. Three are HALO employees: two from the UK and one from the nation of Georgia. The fourth is a visitor, an American on what amounts to a scouting trip. Something definitely went wrong. I wasn’t even supposed to be here. Good thing I still have my sense of humor.