It is in one of the noble areas of Luanda, next to the Alto das Cruzes cemetery, that she continues to live, in the family home completed in 1952 and where she moved shortly after arriving in the Angolan capital, in September 1951, after the birth of her first daughter.

Born in Matosinhos in 1930, Luz met António, her future husband, at a Carnival ball. They also met at mass, an occasion for exchanging glances and conversations that quickly evolved into courtship and then into an engagement that led to marriage in 1951.

The death of her father-in-law forces the young couple to change their plans. António has to return to Angola to take over the business of his father, Mabílio de Albuquerque, founder of a century-old trading house, inaugurated in 1923, the only survivor in downtown Luanda installed in an emblematic building crowned by four statues.

Maria Luz follows him. They board the "Império", a Portuguese ship that operated the colonial career, in 1951 and arrive in Luanda after a twelve-day trip, along with a pointer.

It was a time when "passengers dressed in style" and "boat trips were beautiful".

"There were weekdays when ladies wore long dresses, men wore African tuxedos, it was a white jacket, a bow tie, black pants, there was first, second and third (classes), we stopped in the Azores, Madeira and São Tomé", describes Luz.

Newly married and pregnant with her first daughter -- who would be one of the first babies to be born at the Casa de Saúde de Luanda, now the Augusto Ngangula maternity hospital -- Luz, brought "that feeling" of coming to an unknown world, overcoming fears with love.

"My husband and I loved each other very much," she says, her face lit up.

From the day of her arrival, she remembers the intense heat, despite being a rainy season.

With an open mind and a good conversationalist, she integrates with the local society, spending her days shopping, socializing "at each other's houses", attending mass on Sundays and going to Mussulo, while her husband preferred fishing and hunting.

The family's villa, which enjoyed a magnificent view of the bay, now blocked by three abandoned buildings, holds in every corner the African experiences of its owners.

In the living room, trophies recall the past glories of António's hunts, there are canvases by Angolan artists, traditional sculptures, a wooden panel by the painter Neves e Sousa, and the family's memories preserved in books and photographs.

Occasionally, Luz accompanied her husband on hunting trips and recalls the day the jeep stopped to see "a large elephant footprint" in the wet earth.

"My husband got out of the jeep, went with the boy, took the gun, we heard bang-bang. After a while the boy came to us and said "Mr. Albuquerque asked the ladies to come and see". And when we got there he was on top of the elephant", he told Lusa.

"Out of nowhere" they start a cattle farm in Cuanza Sul, in the 1960s.

"My first house was a hut and the kitchen was a plank and two drums, a hut for the kids and that's how we started," she recalls.

On the farm, now better known as Fazenda Cuerama, in the municipality of Quibala, where her daughter Olga developed a social project with a school, medical post and educational workshops in ceramics, carpentry and sewing, the drama of the war was suffered and one of the employees died due to a mine.

"It was horrible," she lamented.

But there were also picturesque episodes, like the day when the leader of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi, "a great man, who spoke very well, wrote very well" came to propose "a fantastic salary" to António to be his pilot, an offer diplomatically declined because her husband "had the firm and could not abandon it".

When the "confusion" of April 25 began, her husband handed over his hunting weapons. "Thank God" they continue without problems, but Luz is saying goodbye to her friends.

"The women and children started to leave, the husbands stayed and we didn't know what was going to happen because Salazar didn't want Angola to be independent. He was a very cultured, intellectual man, but as for overseas, no," he criticizes, stressing that "the process after independence could have been something more beautiful".

And weren't you afraid to stay? "No," she says peremptorily, with the firmness of someone who has previously gone through the Spanish conflict and a war in Europe.

"I think my place was to be by my husband's side, I am convinced that if my husband saw a great danger, either we would go or two or he would send me away," he said, adding that he lived April 25 "with joy because it was a step towards independence", which everyone aspired to.

But Independence did not bring exactly what was expected: "At that time you couldn't speak. One came and we said 'very well, very well', another came with his ideas and we said 'very well, very well' and that's how we always talked in this room, some were from UNITA, others were from FAPLA. But my husband said: we are here talking about the future of Angola, but it is not us who will do it, we will contribute".

The years after independence, on November 11, 1975, were not easy, with rationing coupons, many stores closing and settlers leaving behind goods and memories.

"It was a bit confusing at that time, they said: the white man is leaving, you stay with the white man's house, the white man's car and you don't have to work anymore. But it couldn't be. They promised a lot of things that couldn't be," he says.

Almost 50 years after independence, she says, with a big smile, that she is now more Angolan than Portuguese.

But he regrets that the dream of "a better Angola" has not been fulfilled.

From Independence Day, she recalls the kid stew she was preparing for her friends, the concern of her husband Antonio and the serenity of her brother-in-law Mabílio.

"We were worried because he never showed up. And my husband went to his apartment and wrote him a note: Mabílio we are worried, we don't know where you are. At this point there is a noise and there he came from the beach 'very relaxed'", he recalls with a laugh.

 

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