House hunting

House hunting in a place like Kinshasa sounds rather difficult. After all, it’s not exactly a destination of choice for most of the world.

But it is, of course, the headquarters of the UN’s biggest peace keeping operation, and has multiple other UN and other international agencies there. You name it they’re there.

And where the UN and international donors are, there’s money to be made in housing.

This fact has not escaped the notice of the Kinois (residents of Kinshasa). They have built big time. Indeed I think they’ve been rather hasty in building so many new houses. It’s great for the person looking, and not so good for the person trying to let it out.

Unfortunately the market is not working as well as Adam Smith might have predicted. The first thing to note is that the Congolese have built according to their taste, not that of the market they are hoping to participate in.

Anyone who has seen photos of Mobutu’s palace in the bush will know what I mean when I call the style Congo-Versailles. Actually, I can sort of understand the ambition of Mobutu, Emperor Bokassa of Congo Brazzaville and Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast to have their own Versailles, or Paris, or whatever tickled their fancy. After all they had (in their understanding) the money, so why not?

But when you transpose those values and that sort of design to rooms of little more than ten square metres, it gets a bit absurd. And have houses with some many tiny rooms that you get lost. And then stuff the same rooms with furniture as massive as any that Mobutu would have enjoyed. Throne furniture, I suppose you could call it. That’s when it doesn’t really attract the moneyed classes from overseas.

The care that went into the design, such as multiple layers of ceiling, each of which with hidden lighting, is astounding, and this in a house squeezed between many others of indifferent design, served only by a deeply pitted dirt road and occasional services such as electricity and water.

As interesting as these little palace-in-slums houses are, the people who showed us around were even more interesting.

As soon as word had spread that we were looking for a house they would turn up at the office, and wait around until one had time to go with them. As often as not they had no transport, so we had to hijack an office car. They put on a mien that can best be described as gangster cool: gold chains, baseball hats etc. One of the more sophisticated ones had a digital camera to show pictures of what he had to offer.

As soon as we were off the hyperbolic language beloved of estate agents would start. Lovely big house, very close, delightful garden, etc etc. These were interspersed with obviously desperate calls to persuade the owners to allow us to enter the said gems.

In fact some of the houses we saw were quite nice, and with limited changes in design could be made very pleasant. Nearly all were new, and came with new appliances etc. All were surrounded by high walls and guarded by a watchman behind a huge solid steel gate.

But what hurt the most was that when we occasionally met the owners their eyes glowed with pride, and to tell them that we didn’t think it was quite what we were looking for was very difficult. Their faces would be transformed from – what shall be say, “glowing with pride?” – to a near suicidal sense of total helplessness and despair.

But here again Adam Smith failed us. Not only did the market not work in terms of style – it didn’t work in terms of price either. How come all these houses were lying empty, but still the prices were as high as an apartment in New York? Of course, how silly: the market soon finds out what housing allowances are, and surprisingly pitches the rent to match them exactly.

Then we found out about another style of house agent, who catered for the higher end of the market. She drove – or rather her driver – drove a very unreliable and very old BMW. The door handle falls off regularly, and her excuse for being late was usually something to do with the car. The trips are marred by a stream of verbal abuse of the driver, mixed with multiple phone calls to and from a huge range of different business dealings, and lists of the different places she had on her books. No one could call her anything less than a total enthusiast who piled five times as much stuff onto her plate as she could properly handle.

She finds us a lovely place. It’s expensive, but worth it. Very safe, near several embassies, and with day and night security guards, and thick thick burglar guards over all the windows. Very suitable, we decided. There’s even a small garden that we can use for the dogs.

But wait, what is that door?

The house is a flat, in fact, in an apartment block which has a typical entrance with double glass doors onto a lift lobby and staircase. But behind the glass doors is a solid steel door, about two inches (50mm) thick which can be locked and barred, with two huge swinging levers, from the inside. “It’s for when there are riots . . .”

But some might think this is not enough. What if they come when you’re sleeping? Don’t worry: there’s a door within the flat which is exactly like a safe door, and which cuts off the bedroom wing. Totally impenetrable. In a word, bombproof. You can lock that too when we go to bed. Trivial? We joke about it, but then someone from the British Embassy reminds us that they installed those doors after the riots about four years ago. They were so bad that all embassy staff were evacuated for months.

I suppose it give the term “safe house” a somewhat different twist.