Lessons in safety

I ran into a man who actually worked for Chevron, one of the clients that I was doing research for in Luanda. At the time I was actually falling asleep at the bar while drinking a $16 irish coffee and trying to finish up some work. We spoke about where we were from, he was from England, and what we were doing here. He had been here a few times, and was intrigued that I never received a security briefing on arrival to Angola. He started discussing how dangerous this place was, and warned me to be very careful and always be aware of my surroundings. He had even witnessed a robbery that very day; a car that had been stuck in traffic was robbed. Meanwhile, suddenly all the power cuts out and we find ourselves sitting in complete blackness. I had been meaning to go to bed for the last half hour, good thing I wasn’t in the elevator at the time! We both hung around until the lights came back on 15 minutes later, and I went to bed feeling a little more uneasy than I had been feeling before. I didn’t feel completely safe in Luanda, but I was starting to get comfortable. Maybe God wanted to remind me of where I was, and how vulnerable I was. Luckily I had a driver that took his job pretty seriously doubling up as my security guard, and was at my side almost always, even up to the point where I crossed through security when I was leaving the airport (he waited 2 hours in line with me!).