Angola Diary
By Fr. Efren de Guzman SVD
March 21
I was awakened late at night by a desperate call: “Mano, Mano, (meaning brother). Come and help Devota.” The caller said their relative, an eighteen-year-old girl was thrashing about so violently like an animal. She seemed to be possessed by an evil spirit. Reaching the house, she growled at me like one possessed: “I know you and you don’t know what you are doing.” (The voice was like a hyena) a thought struck me: “Look at her eyes” The ‘demon’ would not look back but said: “She’s mine!” I said, “Leave her now, for I will call on the name of Jesus and the forces of heaven to overcome you.”
After I got back to Angola from my medical check-up in the Philippines I was expecting to see better changes in the life of the people here in Luanda. But, to my dismay and deep sadness, the situation here is getting worse everyday. The poverty of the people is becoming more insupportable, the rate of criminality is rising, the number of the unemployed is growing by leaps and bounds. The general picture of Angola is a country beset by all forms of human affliction and torn apart by conflict and division.