By popular demand...

Ok, my dear subscribers have a one-track mind... I didn't get any questions or comments about anything other than guys being interested in me.

Well it's like this: Guys here in Angola are not shy. If they like you, they'll pretty much go after you. The way they go about it, though, it's kinda weird. At least to me. I'm pretty sure having "game" here is an altogether different thing than in the U.S.... because whatever methods guys use here works for them with girls from here. With me, ummm... not so much... lol.



How are they different? Well first of all, they are direct. Like, TOO direct. To the point where you can tell they're just putting up a show to try to impress you. One guy, for example, (a janitor from my old workplace) would stop dead in his tracks whenever I walked by him, no matter what he was doing, and just stare. Stare HARD. He did it one time in the stairs, I was going up, he was coming down and he just stopped and stared at me super wide-eyed. I just said 'good morning' and he whispered, not SAID, but whispered back a fervent, intense, and almost reverent 'good morning'... I was like, wow. You're not normal (well I didn't actually say that, but I thought it). After a couple of more encounters with him around the office, he mustered up the courage to talk to me and ask me for my phone number or for a date or something (don't remember) for which I swiftly turned him down and he tried to act all devastated about it. But that was the end of that.

Another guy tried to show me some porn on his iPhone to show me what he wanted to do with me. Mind you, this is after he had shown me pics of his wife and baby girl on said iPhone and talked about them like a proud papa. Ummm... ok. I was too shocked to even be offended...I tried to sermonize him, but to no avail. He wasn't really seeing where I was coming from... in the end I realized that he didn't really see what was wrong with what he was doing, since unfaithful husbands are all too common in Angola and everyone accepts that as a fact. So much so that most wives expect their husbands to be cheaters, and many women don't regard a married man as off-limits.

There are also guys who never approach me, I just hear through the grapevine that so and so likes me. It's quite jr. high, but whatever. One less person to turn down, which is just fine with me, lol. One of my coworkers that I used to always sit with at the cafeteria was like, "Man, you don't know how many guys ask me about you..." I would just laugh and say, "why don't they come up to me?" and he would be like "I don't know, I guess they're intimidated". OK... I'm totally approachable, what's there to be intimidated about?!

And apparently at church some guys are scared to approach me because I'm my uncle's niece (he's kind of a church personality... you know how SDA's have local "celebrities"? He's one. Every SDA in Angola knows him). They try to go through my male cousins or even my girl cousin's husband, but I don't think my family is very encouraging. So they walk away even more intimidated than before...

There was one bold guy who devised a plan to get to spend with me while everyone was none-the-wiser. He was my cousin's (aka my current roommate)'s acquaintance when they were little... they were in Pathfinders together. Well, one day he offered him a ride home after the AY program at church, insinuating that he wanted to catch up with him and all these wonderful tales (My cousin lived in South Africa for the last 12 yrs... he just came back about 7 months ago...). So when they get to the house, they found me there. My cousin invites him in and he introduces us and they keep talking as if nothing and I go on about my business. Well, I was just finished making dinner, so I invited him to stay for dinner. Little did I know his plan was falling into place. He stays for dinner, we all have a lively conversation about the youth in the church and how we to fall back in love with the Word of God, and what we can do to be a part of a spiritual revival in the church and all these wonderful things. Well, somewhere in all this conversing, he finds out where I go to church (My cousin and the guy go to the Central church of Luanda, I go to a smaller church because I used to live in the neighborhood where that church is. Once I moved out of that neighborhood, I decided to stay in that church because I was too involved in it already and I enjoyed it), and he mentions that he's never been there but he'd like to visit someday. I told him the whereabouts of the church, but I didn't think anything else about it, and after a while more the guy thanked us for dinner and went home.



Ok, so fast-forward to a week later... It's Sabbath morning and I'm walking from my bus stop to church. It's about a 10 minute walk, and as I'm trying to hurry along, a car pulls up beside me and he says "Hey! what a coincidence, wanna ride?"

It's the guy. I say sure and climb in and we get to church a couple of minutes later. Well since I end up showing up with him, it looks like I brought a visitor. So I talk to the deacons to make sure he gets a seat (church gets pretty crowded here, if a guest isn't accommodated, they might have to stand or sit outside and listen through a speaker...) and go to my spot at the piano. I don't interact with him for the rest of the service.



After church, he walks up to me and asks where I'm gonna eat lunch... with that forlorn air, you know, like trying to pull an invitation out of me. By this point I'm annoyed because I already see where this is going. But I'm polite because, c'mon, it's the Sabbath, he's a guest at my home church, blahddy blah. Ok. So I go talk to my aunt, the one that lives in that neighborhood, whose house I used to live in, and in whose house I always eat Sabbath lunch, and tell her that if it's ok with her, there is a surprise visitor and if he can have lunch with us. Well, she's like "Oh, this is so unexpected, I didn't make anything for a visitor..."

You must understand that to Angolan ladies being an adequate host is of the utmost importance, so she wasn't too thrilled to be caught off-guard. I kept reassuring her that it's ok, he knows we weren't expecting him... but she was still unhappy about the situation. Anyways, she ended up saying yes, and off we went like a big happy family. When we get there, we set up shop to eat and then throughout lunch the conversation starts shifting to more of an interrogation session from my aunt to the guy. She's all: What do you do? Where did you study? Where are your parents from? and all those questions. I quickly realized he had fallen into the category of 'Elisa's friend' in their mind. The fact that I had explained to her that he's just a guy from Central church who had nowhere to eat that day TOTALLY escaped her mind and I could just SEE her inquisitive curiosity trying to figure him out like he was someone that was gonna be around from now on. And what's more, HE was acting like he was 'Elisa's friend' too! He kept talking as if he was trying hard to impress my aunt. I was like wow, what's happening here?

Anyways. We finish eating, I say I have to go back to church for a practice with one of the acapella groups. He offers me a ride. I say sure. When we get to church, he doesn't drop me off... he parks the car and goes in. To watch me practice. By this point I'm really through being polite and I ask him, don't you need to go somewhere? The whole day is passing by and you're just hanging out over here in this side of the city... He says no I wanna see ya'll practice. Ok. Whatever.

He wathces us practice and then he offers me a ride to the bus station. I say sure. When we get to the bus station, he just keeps going and says, well I might as well give you a ride home. That's when I confront him and say "How can you possibly have nothing better to do but hang around all day?"

"Well, I had kinda cleared my whole day"

"why?"

"To be with you"

"Why?"

"Because I like you" and he goes on to explain how he noticed me since back in the day when I first got to Angola and attended Central church, but then one day I disappeared and he hadn't been able to figure out where I went. That is, until the week before, when he had heard my cousin mention casually that he lived in Gamek at his uncle's house, with his cousin Elisa. That's when he offered my cousin a ride home, and that's how he ended up in my house the previous week.

"So why are you putting up this whole show of wanting to hang out with my cousin, and to see what the Viana church is like and all this? Why not just say what you're trying to do from the get-go?"

"Because I didn't want to give you the option to turn me down"

"Well, I think I have a right to that option."

As you read the above conversation, it may seem like I was being harsh. But I wasn't being harsh... it's all in the tone of how you read it. I was being casual/conversational, but direct.

Anyways, we had a long ride to my house, so I changed the subject and we had quite pleasant and easygoing conversation the rest of the way home. When we finally reached the front gate, I explained to him that although I was flattered, I was not interested in him so he should stop wasting his time and energy.
His reply? "It's MY time and MY energy, so I can waste them however I want."

Oh boy. This wasn't going to be easy, I could already tell.




Wow, would you look at the time. I gotta catch some zzzz's. I'll finish this tomorrow.

(Oooh, a cliffhanger... how exciting!... not!) lol