Benguela

Benguela was founded in 1617 as São Felipe de Benguela, when a Portuguese expedition under Manuel Cerveira Pereira, then governor of Angola, established a fort and settlement on the bay, some four hundred kilometres down the coast from Luanda. The site was unhealthy and the colony small for its first century, but it had a purpose: it gave Portuguese and Luso- African traders direct access to the peoples of the central highlands, and Benguela became one of the principal ports of the Atlantic slave trade. From the eighteenth century into the nineteenth, captives taken in the interior were marched down the escarpment and shipped from here, above all to Brazil and Cuba.

When the trade was suppressed, Benguela turned to what the hinterland could send instead — beeswax, ivory, rubber and later maize, sugar and sisal — carried by the long-distance caravans of the Ovimbundu. The decisive change came at the start of the twentieth century, when the Benguela Railway was begun from Lobito in 1903 and pushed through to the Congolese border by 1929. Lobito's deep water took the freight and the port business; Benguela kept the provincial administration, the schools and a settler town of avenues and gardens.

Independence in 1975 was followed by the departure of most of the Portuguese population and by the civil war, which cut the railway and isolated the coast from the plateau for years, though the city itself escaped the destruction suffered by Huambo and Kuito. Since 2002 the line has been rebuilt, the airport at Catumbela reopened in 2012 to domestic flights, and the coast between Benguela and Lobito has grown into a single busy corridor.

Benguela thinks of itself as a coastal city with its own manners, distinct from Luanda's and from the highlands behind it. The old town is a matter of local pride, and the city is known within Angola for its carnival, when neighbourhood groups rehearse for weeks and then parade with drums, costumes and satirical songs in the days before Lent.

The population is mixed. Umbundu is widely spoken, brought down from the plateau by generations of migration, and Portuguese is the common language of the streets. Catholic parishes date back to the colonial town and Protestant congregations, rooted in the highland missions, are strong; funerals and church festivals are major social occasions. Semba, kizomba and kuduro play everywhere, and Benguela has produced musicians of national standing.

The sea shapes the calendar as much as the church does. Fishing families work out of Baía Farta and the beaches, and the late afternoon on the Praia Morena — people swimming, footballers on the sand, food stalls opening — is the city's daily gathering. Weekends mean the beaches south of town or the Restinga at Lobito. Manners are formal by African standards: greetings and titles are used, and visitors are pressed to eat.

The 2014 census counted 555,124 people in the city and 561,775 in the municipality, and together with Lobito and Catumbela it forms one of Angola's largest urban areas. The city government, the port trade up the coast, the railway, fishing and fish processing, the Catumbela industrial area and a growing tourism and construction sector provide most of the work, alongside the universities and schools that draw students from the whole province.

Most people live outside the colonial grid, in bairros of self-built houses spreading inland and towards Catumbela, where water and power supply are uneven and generators are common. Trade is largely informal: markets, street vendors and small shops handle most of what households buy, and fish sold straight off the beach is a daily economy of its own.

The rhythm of the day starts early, with markets and fishing boats before sunrise, slows in the heat of the afternoon, and picks up again at dusk along the seafront. Rebuilding is still visible — new housing estates beside colonial buildings scarred by decades of neglect — and the reopening of the railway corridor towards Zambia and DR Congo has raised expectations of more work on the coast.

Benguela eats fish. Grilled horse mackerel, corvina, sole, prawns and lobster come off the boats at Baía Farta and the city beaches, and the standard meal is fish grilled over charcoal with piri-piri, served with rice, chips or funge — the smooth porridge of cassava or maize flour that accompanies most Angolan dishes. Calulu, dried and fresh fish stewed with greens, tomato, okra and palm oil, is the household classic, and mufete, grilled fish with beans in palm oil, sweet potato and cassava, is the weekend dish by the sea.

Inland cooking reaches the city with the Umbundu families who settled here: funge of maize flour with beans cooked in palm oil, feijão de óleo de palma, and vegetables and potatoes from the highland farms. Muamba de galinha, chicken stewed in palm oil with okra, is on most menus, and caldeirada de cabrito, goat stew with rice, is the dish of national holidays.

The Portuguese legacy is strongest at breakfast: bread rolls, strong coffee and pastéis de nata in the cafés of the old centre. Kissângua, a lightly fermented maize drink, is sold in the markets, sugar cane from the Catumbela valley goes into local spirits, and mangoes, bananas and papayas fill the fruit stalls in season.