This was how home was for the Meerkat Family back in southern Angola.
The Meerkat Family was dirt poor. So poor, if it only took a nickle to go around the world, they couldn't have gotten out of sight. Four sons were born to the meerkats, Bron and to his wife, Lacara, The birth order was Moze, the oldest born in 1979, then Jorad, born in 1983, then Zhang, 1986, and the youngest son, Cheesah, born in 1992.
Home was a dirt floor, tin roof, clay wall, bungalow style house in the Angolan countryside in the southern province of Cunene, not far from the Cuando-Cubango Province. The house had no glass in the windows. There were curtains instead, as well as curtains in place of doors. However, it was home, it provided shelter, and it was a fairly quaint and nice house for the kind of house it was, and for the area of countryside it was in. Bron, Lacara and the sons knew some neighbors in the community who had less of a house than that to call home. Other images of the house are shown in http://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=832587 . Zhang's family spoke an Angolan dialect of Portuguese, which is the language of Angola. But they, and many others they knew, could also speak English. Many of the locals would often speak Angolan Portuguese mixed with English.
Moze, Jorad and Zhang didn't go to school because times were so hard, the sons were needed to help bring in family income. Bron, their dad, developed hip dysplasia when he himself was a cub, and could only work what temporary odd jobs he is physically able to do, thus requiring the sons to help bring in family income when ever they had the chance. There was usually enough food to eat, and water was drawn from a nearby creek. But during times when food was scarce, the cubs were allowed to eat before the adults did. The cubs need to grow...the adults are already grown.
During that time, Angola was ravaged by poverty. And the power struggles between factions, sometimes erupting into paramilitary confrontations were no help to the nation's economy either. The political unrest had existed since 1975, following a 1961 to 1974 war for national independence from Portugal. In 1992, when Zhang was going on age 6, that was the year Cheesah was born, bringing the number of the brothers up to four.
