BEFORE I LOST MY COUNTRY

BEFORE I LOST MY COUNTRY describes John's life in Angola during his military service, as well as some episodes before it, until his birthday in October in the year of the revolution in Portugal in 1974.

in January of 1971, John surrendered to military life as part of the local incorporation because he was a resident of the country.

With him, like him, also all young Africans of his age. Before the law, everyone without exception had the same rights and duties that John had.

As an adolescent he already doubted about his role in the country, but John was never a revolutionary, he lived in fear.

At the time of his military recruitment, John already had a driving licence and this was enough for him to be chosen to become a sergeant mechanic, head of a small military maintenance unit.

In the previous decade, a bloody tribal revolt and some attempts to create a guerrilla war against the colonial occupation had been completely defeated and in 1974, before the revolution in the European country, the nationalist organisations were on their way to self-destruction either by factions and dissidence or by giving up or complacency, but mainly by treason and corruption.

On the ground, ten years after the uprising in the north of the country, there was no real danger of a conscript losing his life to enemy action, despite some casualties (mainly African civilians) near the borders with Zaire (north) and Zambia (east).

As one reporter wrote in 1973, "In this year of peace, more soldiers have drowned in Angola's rivers (six) than have been lost to enemy activity."

His military service was unduly prolonged. The main reason his military period exceeded a few months beyond the period prescribed by law, was due to the actions of a young woman who accused him of rape.

John returned definitively to the capital six months after the revolution in the European country. He found the city in full panic, and he soon realised that the civil war was already underway.

Precisely on his birthday (late October), the day he was also discharged from military service, he received bad news coming directly from his estranged father. Everything around John seemed to be falling apart and he could not foresee that everything would become much worse.

After a long period of peace and progress during the colonial era, the civil war expanded when European mercenaries, the Zairean army, and the South African army (though small intervention units) invaded the country (north and south). Soon, they faced the Cuban army recently arrived in the country.

Against everything and everyone, the first president of the new independent country introduced the death penalty in Angola as a way to instil fear among the population. He ordered a public execution of seven Angolan soldiers in the middle of the city by a death squad (these events are not part of the book).

This macabre event shocked John terribly. All this because of a past event during his military service.

In Portugal, the death penalty had been abolished in 1864, John knew this well, and it was one of the reasons why he hated that European country.

During a lunch, a General and also the local Governor, swore for the death of an alleged "criminal" sergeant, and that such a death-penalty would happen covertly, and the Brigadier explained how.

The announced death sentence scared the couple who organised the lunch and had taken John in when he arrived in that city, John himself, and a military chaplain.

Shortly after, it was John's turn to be charged with the crime.

John survived.

Pure luck, friendship, or regret, such facts gave John no rest as the book says, narrating how he survived the system: a young man seemingly against everything and everyone.