"Life stops in the village when IRIN's drama is on air"

Twice a week, an almost audible hush falls over villages in Angola, as rural communities stop whatever they are doing to listen to the latest episode of Camatondo on their radios.

Or so it would seem, from the hundreds of letters and personal comments from listeners expressing an almost fanatical passion for the IRIN Radio soap opera, that plays on the national Angolan broadcaster, RNA.

"My family and I never miss a single episode," wrote one listener. "I love Camatondo," said another, "because it mirrors the very life we live and breathe."

Photo: IRIN

Talking to women in Huambo

Set in a fictitious village called Camatondo in the central highlands, the soap opera gives a voice to Angola's rural population. 

Typically, such communities have rarely, if ever, had access to the airwaves.  But now, they are talking about their issues and concerns, and setting the agenda.

The Camatondo production team, including writer Ines Neto and acting cast, attracted huge numbers of fans in every province on a series of roadshows around Angola. 

In Bie, one man wanted to know how the writer managed to evoke the refugee camps in Zambia, having never even been there herself!  "When we listen to Camatondo, we feel like we’re reliving what we've already been through," he exclaimed.

A blind man in Benguela left his market stall and took a motorcycle taxi, with his five-year-old son to guide him, to the local radio station, where the Camatondo writer and cast were guests on a live phone-in show. He had already recorded many episodes from the radio himself, but he wanted more.

In Kwanza Norte, some listeners wrote in to the radio station enclosing 10 kwanza notes in their envelopes to help Epalanga, one of the popular characters in the soap, to buy the cow he needed.

Photo: IRIN

Disabled workers in Zaire province share their views and concerns with IRIN Radio

Two soldiers travelled from Bailundo by motorbike, hoping to take part in a Camatondo phone-in show at the radio station in Huambo.  By the time they got there, the show was long over - but they begged the IRIN team to give them cassettes to take back to their colleagues at the military base in Bailundo.

In Huambo, locals have even named a street “Camatondo Road.” 

The writer often has to switch off her phone to avoid being woken up in the night or early hours of the morning, by listeners complaining that they missed the current episode, for one reason or another, and would like to get another chance to hear it.

Photo: IRIN

Camatondo actors posing for photos at Radio Nacional de Angola studios

Camatondo's appeal is universal, and the soap opera has broken down social divides in the country in a way Angolans say is unprecedented.

"It is listened to in the countryside and the city, by peasants and by university lecturers," says Ines. "In Benguela, a teacher said  he uses texts from Camatondo as examples in his lessons and asked if we had copies of the scripts that we could give him."

This year, IRIN is planning to launch two more versions of the Portuguese soap opera in the local languages of Umbundu and Kimbundu.

Many of the issues arising in the soap opera are handled in a different format in IRIN Radio's current affairs programme, Angola Adentro.  This is a coproduction with RNA staff, and reaches all corners of the country on RNA's shortwave and FM network.  

Photo: IRIN

Interviewing local people in Gabela, Kwanza Sul, for IRIN's Angola Adentro

Angola Adentro, produced in Portuguese, covers diverse issues from water and sanitation, to HIV/AIDS and refugee resettlement concerns.