Angola: gleaming from the ashes of its colonial past.

 

Google Angola and you will find lots of information on the influence of its Portuguese colonizers and the Catholic Church. However, if you spend any time exploring those links, you can likely to fall into a rabbit hole of stories and images of European ex pats running charities caring for children living on the streets. If those stories and images are all you see of Angola, you will miss the more inspiring narrative of sons and daughters returning home to a nation to build upon their parents' legacies or starting businesses. 

This video (another gem by France 24) showcases Luanda, the capital of Angola. True, you need not look to far to find multi-lane highways that dead-end into dirt roads or families who were displaced by urbanization. But you will also find a place that gleams with the hopes and dreams of its young people.