The road to Calvary

From the mountains of Lubango, a story of life and death emerge from the rocks, rocks that built the city, rocks that took life from its citizens, the rocks from Tundavala. Southwest of Angola, Huila is a beautiful province with 13 diverse municipalities, each displaying incomparable beauty, and waterfalls from Chibia, caves covered in crystals from Chivinguiro. These are exuberant symbols through which nature continues to amaze us; Tundavala is no different but at the same time its history might just contradict the earlier statement.
An intrinsic volcanic fissure situated at the end of a road paved by hands using granitic multicolored stones, Tundavala is a breathtaking escarpment rising some 400 feet from the beautiful plain bellow, providing a wonderful location to view the sunset, popular destination for romantic escapes and a guarantee of good Instagram moments. Clouds can be seen bellow providing a feeling of standing in the skies, with abundant oxygen, plenty of fresh air. Curious monkeys can be seen and the occasional eagles patrol the skies. The bottom part of Tundavala’s cliff is painted with a wide green plateau dotted with odd-shaped hills that stretch to the sea far away, in Namibe.
Not tales but recent history allow to describe this beautiful place as hunted, for the place has witnessed and swallowed the life sons and daughter of the motherland, they were thrown into the 8 second-long fall abyss. Rattling and cracking of bones would have been the most common sound, today replaced with the sounds of stones hitting stone when the apparently unaware couples and kids enter into the new ritual of accessing how long it takes for pebbles to hit bottom. The place is not scattered with skulls of the less fortunate, nor has it traces of the red liquid that circulated the veins on those the ground has blessed, one has to read the writings on the stones, in dark for mourning of the ones departed against their will and in white for hope, hope that life never really ends.
To those aware of the past, Tundavala is a mass grave, emptied of its bones; still the hazy feeling never really leaves one’s presence when looking down the fissure. Fear dizziness and emptiness can fill one’s soul, yet the brave ones arm themselves with courage not only to throw stones but to capture the fault like structure in its minimal details, perhaps to rewrite the location in silent descriptions, unbiased and stripped of its history, printed on paper without captions nor history. Just quiet beauty.









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