The centre of Kinshasa is not a place of beauty. Empty and very run down buildings are everywhere, and an apocalyptic edge is provided by messy roadworks. Add to that a love of argument which seems to be a characteristic of the Congolese, and you have a scene which is stressful and stressed.
(I can’t leave the reference to arguments without recalling a scene at the airport when I had just arrived. We were waiting for our baggage at the carousel. It took an eternity. Suddenly, just behind me a ferocious argument broke out. There were about five official looking people, maybe customs or police, I wasn’t sure, and a member of the public. He was being harangued so noisily that I couldn’t even hear what the man next to me was trying to say in polite chat. He was being pushed around, and eyes were bulging in apparent anger. But he wasn’t cowed by this behaviour, and was shouting back just as noisily. It was clear that there was a major incident in the making, and I pictured him being carried off to the cells in handcuffs, one man at his head, another at his feet, his arms and legs waving helplessly in the air. Probably still shouting in outrage.
Just as suddenly, it all stopped. The officials wandered off, looking, if not amiable, at least not angry at all; and the victim (or whatever he was) wandered off too, quite relaxed. No one seemed in the least bit disturbed by the incident. To a newcomer these scenes seem quite frightening, and in the street one can never be sure whether a riot is starting or it’s merely a squabble over the price of a banana.)
But there’s another Kinshasa, so completely different that it is hard to imagine that it is only a five-minute drive away. There the roads are under a canopy of huge verdant trees and more or less empty of traffic. And on the road, every day after about five p.m. the expats come to walk or run, to play with their children, or to exercise their dogs.
This is not the typical colonial Henry, marching out with his walking stick in search of new parts of the world to include in the empire. It is ordinary people from Bangladesh and Ecuador, Cameroon and Italy, Korea and Norway. Young people, old people. People in Burkhas, and people wearing skinny little pairs of shorts and very little else. They come by car and on foot, and they come in their hundreds. Correction it’s not just expats: everyone comes. There are Congolese of all sorts as well: secretaries, football players, lovers.
They stroll or run along this leafy avenue and then turn northwards where, one block away, is the mighty Congo River. You can walk along the banks here for about two kilometres and admire the brown swirling waters, eddying around small islands; or look across to the other side of the river to Brazzaville, capital of the other Congo. Indeed, although the river is very wide it’s not so wide that when someone in Brazzaville has a very noisy party you can’t hear it in Kinshasa.
Because it is an international frontier, and, I suppose, because there are presidential offices and presidential houses very close, the place is full of soldiers. It’s quite unnerving at first, as they sit there under the trees by the river bank, with their machine guns on their knees staring at you as you walk past. Then you realise that they see the same thing day in and day out, and have long lost any actual interest in you or anyone else. They’re only thinking of the time when they can knock off, or hoping that they will get paid this month. I have started to say bonjour to them: their eyes light up with delight, and, they respond with smiles and cheerful bonjours.
Not everything is bucolic. Yesterday I saw a truck, parked where no soldiers could see it, unloading very dented body parts of cars, like bonnet, roofs etc, and carrying them the few metres to the river bank. A little way off shore was a small boat which, I presumed, had come to collect them, and would sell the metal in Brazzaville for a higher price. That’s a first for smuggling.
Maybe it’s because it is such a popular thing to do, or everyone sort of gets to know everyone else that no one says “Bonjour”. Or is it that the diversity is so great, no one assumes that you would want to greet them. I haven’t worked that one out. One thing I have decided: it’s much nicer than being in a sweaty gym trying hard to pretend that you like it.
No comments:
Post a Comment