Assassinations and assemblies

We are one week away from I-day: the massive celebrations planned to celebrate 50 years of Independence of the Congo. The King of Belgium (unpopularly in some quarters) has accepted the invitation to be guest of honour. President Kabila will have an opportunity to showcase the progress his government has made: the central boulevard has been transformed from a picturesque major road in a provincial French town to an eight lane super-highway – a sea of asphalt which is as dangerous for pedestrians as its grey dominance is ugly to the eye. But the grey is now being mitigated by hundreds of flags, while buildings along the route are being hastily painted, ready for the great day.

The event has been rather overshadowed by the assassination of a leading and very popular human rights activist, giving critics of the King even more ammunition against his attendance.

I-day -6: Thursday. We all receive circulars. Due to the likelihood of civil unrest, we are not to go near the main celebrations, but should stay at home. The office will be closed for the whole week. The circulars from the UN and other international organisations, warning of civil unrest, are sent round by email. On our evening walk we meet an old timer who warns us that the body of the activist will be carried from the central hospital to the burial chapel the following morning, and not to go near the route.

I-day -5: Friday

Go to the bank, which happens to be on the boulevard, and run into the said procession. Probably about 1000 people are walking in a slow procession, carrying memorial banners. A bunch of press photographers head the procession, walking backwards, trying to get good shots. The mourners are outnumbered by police and soldiers of all types, from comparatively normal ones, just walking along, to pick up trucks loaded with menacing riot police. We gently push past the processing and no one takes any notice.

I-day -4: Saturday

We have engineered invitations to a Japanese concert which is held at the main theatre (absurdly called the Palais du Peuple, absurdly because it normally hides behind locked gates, and entry for the people is strictly verboten). In the morning we check the route so that we can be sure to find it in the evening. The road is blocked due to roadworks and we are diverted willy-nilly into a little street. In turn this leads us into the old cité, the area designated for Africans in colonial times. Trying to find the right route out we find ourselves in a huge market area. There are so many tiny stalls, handcarts, rubbish piles and potholes that there is hardly any space for the car. We plough on very gently, every so often having to stop completely as a vehicle comes from the opposite direction. The further we penetrate this mass of people, the more unlikely it looks as though there is a way out at the end of the road. Meanwhile the buyers and sellers throng around us, and we are quite scared that we will bump into someone, or knock the load from someone’s head. Gentle beeping of the horn helps. Just when we seemed to reach the final impasse someone shows us a small road to the right which, much to our relief, leads into a quieter street and eventually back to the town. Going a distance of about a kilometre has taken almost an hour. After this experience we decide not to go to the concert alone, and get a lift with a friend.

We arrived early, and find that it is to be scene of the major march past. A huge area of what used to be parkland is now concreted over and grandstands are being erected for the dignitaries. Small groups of soldiers are half-heartedly practicing their drill. One, on his way home, catches our eye and breaks into over-the-top goose-stepping. After ten steps he crumples into helpless laughter.

The proceedings are opened by the Japanese Ambassador, who starts with one minute’s silence in honour of the assassinated activist. He gives a speech in gratifyingly easy-to-understand French.

The concert is too long, but fun. The main act is a traditional Japanese guitar-type instrument playing with a piano: a very interesting combination of sounds. The grand piano has lovely tone, but is unbelievably battered and scratched. It clearly has many interesting tales to tell. In due course the National School of the Arts is thanked for the loan of the piano.

I-day -2: Monday

Things are warming up in the neighbourhood. The Belgian ambassador’s house, more or less opposite us, is being decorated with bunting, and a beer lorry is delivering beer, tables and chairs all bright yellow and branded with the logo of the local beer, Primus. The brewery gives free beer to embassies if they accept this branding complete with waitresses also decked out in bright yellow. It’s interesting to know that the Belgian Ambassador and his King are not averse to a freebie, particularly with such commercial overtones.

On the evening dog walk I am stopped by a security guard: “The king is here,” he says in a tone that suggests that he’s got a hot tip for the races. Further on a municipal gang has finished its job of painting the kerb stones alternate red and white, and wait for a lift; a Land Rover is delivering large cardboard boxes to the soldiers guarding the river – new uniforms perhaps? One of the soldiers shouts across to me – Belgian? When I say no he’s disappointed – clearly he wanted to talk about the king. The frisson of royalty is clearly in fertile ground here.

I-day -1: Tuesday

I have to go into town to get internet time. Everywhere there are gangs sloshing on paint in a last minute realisation that tomorrow is the big day. Shops are frantic with people stocking up, and the white lines on the Boulevard are nearly finished. Nearly home, and there’s a massive traffic jam as the King’s party has started. Looking at the queue of guests waiting to have their credentials checked one is struck by the number of seriously scruffy people – Belgians probably.

I-day

All calm as we take our morning walk: the only obvious difference is that the tank, next to a military check point near the river, which has been perpetually hidden under a dirty tarpaulin, has gone. Massive white gouges in the tarmac show that it has headed towards town.

At about ten one of the security guards comes to tell me that since all our policemen are out today, he is all alone, and will therefore sit in the middle of the property. His predictions are obviously wrong and when I wander out at midday to let the dogs do their thing I see him sat outside with a small colour television, watching the parade. The TV is powered from an overhead cable – ingenuity was never lacking in Africa. Our neighbour, a Swedish diplomat, comes back from town saying that everything is quiet, but she just managed to avoid being trapped behind a massive procession of newly bought refuse trucks and the like. She came back because she was warned that there’s some crowd trouble building up somewhere.

Everything is spookily quiet until we hear gun shots – but the pace and number suggests that they are a 21 gun salute.

As the sun begins to set the dogs get restive so we go out for a walk. Huge UN convoy outside the Belgian Ambassador’s Residence – speculate it is Ban Ki-moon, who’s in Kinshasa at present. At the ceremonial entrance of the Residence facing the river, we see someone who is probably the Belgian King being shoved into a smart car and zoomed off towards the President’s house with an escort of twenty cars and about 100 soldiers. He’s not wearing a crown so one can’t be sure it was him, but he looks sufficiently undistinguished to be Belgium’s head of state. One of the dogs chooses the moment of his grand exit from the Residence to turn her back to him and do a poop on the ?royal? turf.

Listen to the news. Clearly nothing particularly bad has happened, so it’s doomsville for all the security types who were predicting mayhem. If only people hadn’t learned how to behave, life would be so much more fun.

Ménage à 11

In a rural capital, we are invited to dinner. Our host is a highly respected local dignitary. He carries himself very upright, and is greeted wherever he goes. “You know everyone”, I say. “No”, he replies, ”everyone knows me.”

He is not rich, though in relation to the majority of the population he is considered well off. After all, he has two cars, neither of which work very well, and both of which have multiple dents, but they are cars.

It is dark when we arrive, but the house looks quite imposing. From inside we can see that extensions are in progress. “It’s my wife,” he says, “she does all that.”

And a lot more. They have nine children, of which the youngest is 15. She also, of course, cooks.

There are two other guests beside my colleague and myself. We are offered drinks by one of the sons who has graduated from university but is unemployed. He is clearly in great awe of us, but more particularly his father.

As we drink we see dishes being placed on the dining table by what we assume to be daughters. First one dish, then another, then a third, at intervals of between five and ten minutes, so that after about 45 minutes the table is literally covered with dishes. At this point, the dignitary’s wife comes out of the kitchen. She looks far too young and fit to be the mother of such old, and so many, children, but we are assured that she is. Apart from a robust stomach she could be 40. As she is introduced she stands in the corner, meekly, with hands crossed over her skirt, then comes across to greet us.

We are ushered over to the dining table, where the plates from which we will eat are hard to find amidst the huge number and variety of serving dishes. It is not just the variety which is overwhelming, but the quantity. Each dish alone is enough to serve five or more people.

So, we sit, trying to work out what is what. There is clearly chicken (roast and stewed), beef and goat meat, brown fufu, rice, peas (yes fresh peas) and carrots, mushrooms, miniature aubergines in a lovely fresh tomato sauce, mounds of chips, a spinach-type vegetable, sweet potatoes, and white bananas which taste like potatoes. Have I forgotten anything? Probably - there was so much that none of us tackled more than about half the total. And the flavours of each dish were quite different.

The dinner was for us, not the family. The Mother sat, silent, in a corner, quietly watching and I imagine enjoying our exclamations of joy as each different dish was tasted. And half way through the meal two daughters and one son were brought in from the kitchen and made to introduce themselves.

This was not just a meal. It was a ceremony, designed to show us, very embarrassingly, I thought, how must we were respected. I hate to think how much it all cost, but I also don’t think that cost came into the equation from our hosts’ side. They were going to give us the very best. And that they did.

What do you DO?

It is hard for some people to picture life in Kinshasa: I think they have images of jungle mixed with Poisonwood Bible situations and dilapidated buildings.

Funnily enough, it’s actually pretty normal. For example the electricity works most of the time, there are some very nice restaurants (and you don’t get cholera from eating the salad, or even a runny tummy). And there are all sorts of things to do. Almost everything is within ten minutes drive, and you can usually park really close.

One of the star shows is the French Cultural Centre which has art exhibitions, films, dance and music. The shows come from all over the world, at great expense, no doubt, and one feels really privileged to be able to see them. Because of the warm climate there’s no need for walls – the entertainment area consists of no more than a huge roof under which everything takes place. They have excellent lighting and sound equipment, and next to it is an enchanting café and bar under the trees. Last week we went to a fabulous jazz concert and more recently a fascinating documentary about Kinshasa's polio victims who have formed a band, followed by a Q&A session with the directors. The film had a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival.

And then, of course, there’s the Belgian centre. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the French speaking Belgians (Walloons) have got the upper hand (vis-à-vis the Flemish half of Belgium) in the Congo. Lucky Congolese, I thought, not to have been colonised in Dutch. Anyway, to prove their benign influence, the Walloons have a small theatre (Walloon-Bruxelles Centre Culturel) in the centre of town. Almost invisible, entered by a small door from a scruffy street, it holds some very interesting events.

We heard about a chamber music concert there. To us, with memories of the delightful music of Buskaid in South Africa, it sounded like a fun evening of mixed Mozart and local music; probably played with more gusto than skill. To my colleague, who politely turned down the invitation, it probably brought back memories of those precious events, attended by the blue rinse brigade nursing tiny hankies to catch their sniffle; the intervals where people speak in hushed voices for fear of spoiling the atmosphere; and possibly an overweight soprano performing tragic liede.

We were told to get there early, and sure enough the theatre was virtually full ten minutes before the nominal start (half an hour before the actual start, as everyone knows). We were the only two white people: no one took any notice except that occasionally someone would catch our eye and give a nod of appreciation. The audience were chattering away, obviously looking forward to a fun evening. Behind the stage were two flags announcing the 50^th Anniversary of Independence, which is a month away, but for which preparations have begun in earnest. One of the flags had partially fallen off.

The evening starts with a small speech about the Independence celebrations, about the need for us Congolese to be proud of our heritage, and for the importance of diversity. The speaker appeared to be warning the audience not to dismiss the music of Beethoven and Bach just because it was different.

The orchestra comes onto the stage. The men are wearing dark suits and ties over brilliant lime yellow shirts. The women have little yellow beads in their hair. There are eight string players but that was where the conventional chamber orchestra ended – a guitar, saxophone, flute, piano and drums are there as well. Clearly this was not going to be just Mozart.

When they struck up the first number it sounded so simple, musically, that I thought we were in for an evening of nursery music – the sort of music that a school orchestra of 13 year olds would play for their end-of-term concert. But before long it was clear that though the tunes being played by the strings were very strong and simple, there were fascinating rhythms and complexities coming from the other instruments. They played with great energy and professionalism, resting only a few seconds between one piece and the next. There was no conductor: that role was divided between the first violin and the drummer.

The task of placing the music into a conventional category proved impossible. A mixture between pop songs and German oompah music is the closest I can get.

It was clear that for the audience this was pure bliss. They all knew the music, and at certain points would often burst into spontaneous applause, or shout their hurrays. At the end of each piece, suggestions as to what should be played next were shouted. The orchestra took this adulation with great modesty, trying hard to look as if they were in charge.

As the evening wore on inhibitions began to break down: hands were being waved, and the participatory noise levels rose. People started singing along. A young man in front of us got up to dance, and soon there were little groups gyrating in the aisle. The best moment came when another young man, moved by gratitude to the orchestra for giving such joy, got onto the stage and started handing out money to the players.

Chamber music?

One of the more esoteric places is the cinema. It was started recently and shows a mixture of French and English films, projected from DVDs. Esoteric because there is usually no one there – it feels such a shame. This was a brave new venture – as Kinshasa has been without a cinema for years. Indeed most of the Congolese have never been inside a cinema. To reach it you climb to the second floor of an otherwise deserted office building. There are no signs to advertise its presence and even the front door is anonymous. Very strange – probably a tax avoidance trick (or royalty avoidance??).

Then there is the British Embassy. Every Friday they have a barbecue, which anyone attend. It’s run as a club, and if you join you can also have lunch there or after work drinks at any time. I’ve never come across an embassy in recent times with such a relaxed attitude to security. During the World Cup they have been showing matches, and they had big screen coverage on election night. If you go there you’ll see all nationalities and people from all stations in life, from penniless NGO/backpacker types up to ambassadors. Congolese are as much in evidence as expatriates.

Restaurants? One of the nice things is that many of them are out of doors, so if you protect yourself against mosquitoes (and there really aren’t many of them) you can have a lovely meal in – wait for the cliché – the velvety night air. There are several very good Indian ones, Chinese, Japanese and Portugese. Belgian, of course. No special Italian ones – maybe they consider that the ingredients are not up to scratch. And, plenty of Greek and Lebanese. The wine is mostly French, but Portugese and Spanish are popular and occasionally South African. There are a few are very posh restaurants where you can have a very special meal if you can afford it: prices are very high.

And when we don’t go out, we can resort to that archaic form of entertainment: reading. We’ve started reading French books, well, sort of French. They are rubbish American books translated into French, which tend to be structured more simply. And if you don’t want to read you entertain. Not too bad, really.

Money

There was a time in the DRC – then Zaire – when the black market in currency was thriving. It was much the same in other countries where I worked – Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia. Pretty soon after one arrived – whether for a long stay or a short one – someone would come up to you and suggest a deal. Sometimes it was shopkeepers, sometimes professional people, whatever their background, the message was the same: I’ll pay you a lot more for your US Dollars (or pounds) than you’ll get at the bank.

A colleague describes how in Kinshasa it was not the Lebanese shopkeepers, or the dodgy Belgian diamond merchants who were giving the best currency service – by which I mean the best rate and the cleanest deal. It was the church. So every morning a line would form outside the church offices next to the Catholic Cathedral of, not penitents, but expatriates with money to sell.

Those days are gone. Few countries now bother about exchange controls, and currency deals are openly advertised by street traders. In Africa, the dollar is, for some reason, always the preferred currency, and everyone seems to know the dollar exchange rate of the day.

The Congo has gone one step further. Because it has a shortage of bank notes, and because the biggest bank note, 500 Congolese francs, is worth only about 60 US cents, it is impractical to work in the Congolese franc. That’s not to say that no one does: you see people staggering out of the bank with ten kilos of bank notes, presumably to pay factory wages or something of the sort. At least the currency is stable – so it is different from the mad scramble of Zimbabwe’s currency crisis.

So the dollar is used for most transactions bigger than 10 or 20 dollars, but don’t assume that because you have dollar notes they will be accepted. They will be subjected to scrutiny far more intense than anything they might get in a US shop. If there is the tiniest tear they will be rejected. If they are more than a certain number of years old, they will be rejected. Any other defacement, like writing, is also treated with great suspicion. The note will be held up to the light to check for watermarks, silver threads and other guarantees of authenticity. Small dollar notes are very much frowned upon, and one dollar notes are usually returned with regret.

Change is normally given in francs. But here’s the interesting thing. Franc notes can be so crumpled, torn and plain filthy that there is hardly anything legible on them. Tears are cavalierly repaired with sellotape, and no one blinks an eyelid.

If you think about these notes it can be nauseating. There can be no question that they have spent many hours, no days, next to the human skin, as that is the safest place. And, as far as specific places on the body are concerned for men it is socks and for women it is in the bra. But there’s an even better place which lots of people use: right down there in their underwear.

The potential for this money to carry germs is enormous. It has long lost that starchy feel of newly minted notes. It is soft and very absorbent, spongy, almost.

But, there is another side to it. What stories would the money have if it could talk! Where in the country has it been: was it looted, were its users honest hard-working peasants, looting and ravaging brigands, industrialists, diamond miners or all of the above?

Having a dual currency requires more than a little ingenuity and mental arithmetic in shops and restaurants. Sometimes one has the feeling that it’s used as a smokescreen for pulling a fast one. But in the larger supermarkets they have tills which compute the amount due in dollars and francs simultaneously – quite fascinating. You offer payment in dollars, which is then converted into francs, and then a split amount of change is calculated, so that you get a few thousand francs, and a couple of dollar notes. There is so much room for confusion and mistakes here, notwithstanding the dual tills, that there is an army of supervisors hovering around the tills – just like in a casino – to check that no one is making a mistake.

Just as there are no large notes in francs, there are very few small ones, and no coins that I have seen. In effect there is a monopoly of the 500 franc notes, and if there aren’t enough small notes to make up the change you get it in sweets: one per 100 francs. I’m sure they don’t cost 100 francs each: they are more a token admission of debt.

A colleague spotted such a bowl of sweets by the till (not unusual in some shops in Europe as a trick to keep the children coming back) and was helping himself to a few when all hell broke loose. It took him a long time to understand what he had done wrong.

Garden city

It would be considered stretching a point to call Kinshasa a garden city. That term is supposed to be reserved for the idealistic settlements of the 20^th Century designed to show that cities did not have to be slums. Welwyn Garden City and Kinshasa definitely have little in common.

But one of the interesting by-products of the grandiose way in which the Belgians laid out Kinshasa was the width of the roads. They have names to match too – Avenue this and Avenue that. Mind you, looking at some of them today evokes a very different picture. The roads themselves are potholed, many of the trees are missing, and the buildings are typically a curious mixture of the grandiose and the shack. This gives them quite a homely look. Because cars can’t drive fast, people can stroll along, chatting, while children play in relative safety on the verges.

It is these verges, though, that are the kernel of the garden city. If you work out how wide they are you realise that they are a substantial resource. Now here’s a good news story. The European Union undertook a project to advise people on what to grow on these verges, and when and how. As a result you see neat patches alongside the road, beautifully cultivated, of a variety of vegetables. What is more, the plants do not get stolen.

Verges also serve as excellent locations for plant nurseries. They offer not just a few plants, but a huge variety of flowers, ferns, palms, bougainvilleas – you name it they’ve got it. On some roads, many such one-man nurseries have set up their trade side by side, so you can walk for hundreds of metres to find the best example or best price for what you want.

As well as vegetables and decorative plants there are, of course, goats and hens. The goats wander around looking for patches of nice grass, or trees with hanging leaves. There are many tiny ones, not much bigger than a miniature poodle – pigmy goats you could call them – which look so cute as they go about their business with a sense of self importance, fully convinced that their tiny horns will protect them from all predators. The hens are also very busy, clucking around with their little brood in tow. Somehow they never get run over.

Not all users of verges are quite so rustic. There are many little wooden kiosks selling groceries, hard boiled eggs and bread, cell phone air time, beer and occasionally offering services such as haircutting, milling or shoe repair.

As night falls, the hens go to bed, and most shops are shut. Just as pedestrian traffic seems to be slowing down a new activity starts. Plastic chairs appear from nowhere, and are laid out on the verge in inviting circles. Weary post-work men flop onto them, chilled beer is served and the street becomes a party. The customers chat about this and that, in the good tradition of an English pub. Some stay longer than they intended – or their wives would like – but by ten thirty it is closing time. The chairs disappear, and the men stagger home. The next morning the hens are back, looking for the peanuts and crumbs dropped by last night’s customers.

Chaos Theory

Something a bit different for a change . . .

There are theories about chaos enabling political upheaval, and thereby allowing leaders to gain economic and political advantage.

I think this theory is being proved correct at the ports of Kinshasa and Brazzaville on the Congo River.

Let’s set the scene:

ACT 1

Scene 1:

Enter immigration officers, neatly dressed in grey uniforms with the name of their department prominently embroidered on them.

Officer 1: We are not making the system work for us. People are able to pass through with hardly any hold-ups. It makes us look unimportant.

Officer 2: To add to that Officer 1, more face to face contact would be good. It allows us to, so to speak, establish a relationship with the public, if you see what I mean (putting on a very evil face).

Officer 3: I’ve just had a bright idea. Let’s all work in separate offices so that no one can see what we’re doing and (speaking with hand over mouth to prevent the public from lip reading) give us more freedom to negotiate.

Officer 1: And, here’s a better one. Let’s make it so that no one knows where to start, and what to do when and where.

Officer 2: That’s it: we can employ our friends to guide people through the system. The more complicated the system is, the more the public will need people to expediters (the word said sneeringly, with a quizzical lift of the eyebrow) it for them:

Officer 3: And no one must ever know what we are supposed to charge so that we can really negotiate in earnest.

Scene 2

Enter THE PUBLIC, a mixture of businessmen, sweaty tourists, beautifully dressed Congolese pulling neat overnight bags, cross-looking Lebanese traders, and the odd man in the street, thus providing local colour.

Angry Lebanese trader: Can someone help me here? Where do I go?

Mr Fixit 1: Do nothing sir, I will handle everything for you; just sit here in the VIP lounge and relax.

Smartly dressed businessman: Can someone help me here? Where do I go?

Mr Fixit 2: Please beware of touts and expediters: they are a menace. They will rip you off. I’m an off duty person who knows everyone here, and will look after you. My name is Jean. Just trust me and relax.

Businessman: Thank you – it is nice to know that some people are honest here.

Woman backpacker, obviously nervous: Can someone help me here? Where do I go?

Mr Fixit 3: sends her the wrong way. When she arrives at the wrong office there is the nice –

Mr Fixit 4: Hello, what are you doing here? Mr Fixit 3 sent you here? Idiot. You have to be careful who you speak to here. But don’t worry, I’ll help you. I know all these people. Some can be very difficult. Come with me.

Man in the street, carrying a colourful bag of unidentifiable produce: Can someone help me here? Where do I go?

Mr Fixit 3: Babbles to the man in the street at high speed in the vernacular, obviously trying to persuade the man in the street to use his services.

Man in the street: Do I have to talk in words on one syllable? Go away! I don’t need you.

Walks off at speed.

Mr Fixit 3 follows, trying to stop him: Don’t forget that since you are a trader you’ll need someone to help . . .

Man in the street: Get out of my way.

Leaves.

Scene 3

The office of Officer 2, who is sitting behind a desk covered with papers, passports and mysterious bundles of documents.

Enter Mr Fixit 4 and the tourist:

Mr Fixit 4: Here I have brought with me this nice young lady who needs help.

Officer 2: First she must pay me $40: that’s our ledger charge.

Mr Fixit 4: But that’s outrageous!

A very noisy argument ensues in the vernacular, tempers appear to be lost, and eventually Officer 2 appears to soften;

Officer 2: Alright, in this case, since the young lady appears to have little money, I’ll do it for $10.

They depart the office.

Outside

Backpacker: Wow! That was quite an argument.

Mr Fixit 4: I know, those people are bastards.

ACT 2

Scene 1

Thirty minutes later

Enter the members of the public. Mr Fixits 1, 2 and 3 drift in and out pretending to look very harassed.

Lebanese trader: What’s happened to my passport?

Mr Fixit 1: They will give it back to you when you board, but meanwhile you have to pay a fee of $20.

Lebanese trader: What’s that for?

Mr Fixit 1: That’s the ledger fee.

Businessman: What’s happened to my passport?

Mr Fixit 2: They said there’s something wrong with your visa. I think if you pay them a little something they’ll overlook it.

Businessman: There’s nothing wrong with my visa.

Mr Fixit 2: It’s a very technical matter.

Businessman: Let me go to see the officer and we’ll sort it out.

Mr Fixit 2: (Face lights up), Of course – come with me.

They leave

Backpacker: What’s happened to my passport?

Mr Fixit 4: Everything is fine. Don’t worry, you’ll get it in a minute. But there’s a small fee to pay, then you’ll get it.

Scene 2

The office of Officer 1

Enter the Businessman and Mr Fixit 2.

Businessman (outraged): What’s all this nonsense about my visa?

Officer 1: Please sit down. There’s nothing to worry about.

Businessman: What do you mean, you’ve got my passport and say there’s nothing to worry about. I’m supposed to leave on the boat in ten minutes. Of course there’s something to worry about. Kindly give me my passport, and I’ll leave.

Officer 1: It pains me to hear your anger. I’m just doing my job. With your type of visa I cannot stamp your passport without referring it to a higher officer. Unfortunately he is not available at present.

Businessman: This is ridiculous – take me to your superior.

Officer 1: As I said he isn’t here. . .

Seems to have a sudden inspiration

But I am allowed to stamp your passport if you pay a small fine. And then everything will be settled and you can go on your way.

Businessman: Fine for what? I’ve done nothing wrong.

Officer 1: Ours not to reason why, this is the rule and I have to obey it.

Businessman: How much?

Officer 1: It’s supposed to be $50, but I can make a special exception in your case and bring it down to $20.

ACT 3

Scene 1

On the boat

Lebanese trader: I had to pay $20: $10 to one, $5 for another and $5 fee for the so-called expediter.

Businessman: You got off lightly: I had to pay $60 altogether.

Backpacker: We agreed on a fee of $15, and then when we had finished he said that that was for the costs, and his fee was $15 . . . , then there was another $10 fee the expediter.

Man in the street: I had to pay a facilitation fee, a ledger fee and an export fee for this (shows his bag of merchandise) – it came to $70. It’s an outrage. Maybe if I’d used that fixer I would have got off with less.

Scene 2

In the customs house after the boat has departed

Officers 1, 2 and 3; Mr Fixits 1,2, 3 and 4

Officer 1: Congratulations everyone: that went very well. There are a few rough edges to sort out. I noticed that Office 3 had hardly anyone queuing to see him – I think this needs attention.

Mr Fixit 1: And some customers appeared to be able to work out what was happening and will be able to do it themselves next time: this is a real problem.

Officer 2: I had a very successful time, inventing a new fine for the wrong visa, and we had a good fake argument about it. I think I could have got $40 out of him.

Mr Fixit 4: What was good was that she was so pathetically thankful I got $10 tip.

Officer 3: I think we should have more efficient screening at the entrance because I saw quite a few people avoiding some of our procedures, and if they find out that they are not necessary there’ll be hell to pay.

The End

True or false?

Four such experiences leaving Kinshasa, entering Brazzaville, and vice versa, make one wonder . . .

Having babies

We are at one of those dreadful team building workshops. Everyone has to introduce themselves, describe their families and say what they like doing. That was when it hit me: having babies is great sport for Congolese men. As we went round the room my jaw was dropping to the floor. 5, 6, 9 – no number is too large for a good family. Being good Catholics and knowing that there’s plenty of room for more people in the Congo, no man worth his salt will have less than six.

Whether their wives share this view I’m not sure.

Marriage and babies actually define who people are, which puts young people at a disadvantage. For such men (and there were a few at our workshop) to admit that they weren’t married, or even engaged, was very difficult. Shame – that was the dominant emotion felt by both the speaker and his audience. How can a full-bloodied man not be married? And not be having babies?

Living in Zambia for many years one could never forget about babies. Every woman in the street, behind a market stall, cultivating a vegetable patch, or cooking the dinner had a baby on her back. Nicely wrapped up in a piece of cloth, with its little feet just showing on each side of her body, the babies slept very contentedly. Occasionally they would squawk and would be peremptorily yanked around to the front and fastened onto an ample breast. That must undoubtedly create a wonderful bond between mother and child, and usually the baby would be carried in this way until about 18 months, when the next one was on the way.

But that’s not the way it’s done in the Congo. To look around the streets of Kinshasa one would assume that mankind has stopped reproducing. No babies on backs, no prams, nothing. No babies, full stop. Except, one should add, on the walk along the banks of the Congo river where children of all sizes, ages and races run around, ride bikes and generally have a good time.

But to get back to the Congolese: I hadn’t noticed the lack of babies until one day, two and a half months after arriving, for the first time I saw a woman with a baby on her back. What an oddity! She didn’t seem self conscious about it, but she was without doubt the odd one out. For the rest of the babies, I can only assume that they are stuck at home and looked after by a young relative, because their mother will certainly be walking the streets selling something.

Tale of three buildings

Cuba is famous for its cars, those wonderful and absurd American monsters which have provided the transport in Cuba for many many years after their counterparts in the US had been thrown onto the scrap heap. History, for Cuba, stood still.

It has been isolation of a different kind in the Congo: the isolation of warfare, maladministration and poverty which combined put urban development into stagnation. As a result many parts of the smaller towns have hardly changed at all for forty years. Curiously dated but immensely interesting examples of architecture survive relatively unscathed. Kinshasa is a slightly different case, and there are quite a few new buildings, though they jostle, in the disjointed streetscape, with some classic 1930s and 1950s buildings.

Bukavu was spared this modernisation. Built on a number of hills at the south end of Lake Kivu it was obviously a place of importance in colonial times. While never a metropolis it was clearly a thriving market town. I imagine it was in the late 40s and early fifties that it was really booming, and the products of that era are with us still. Sometimes really dilapidated and disused, but for the most part still serving the purpose for which they were built, are amazing colonial buildings.

By far the most important of these was the Hotel Residence, a stern 1930s style four storey building right at the centre of town. It survives intact, complete with its original colonial retro dining room. Its beautiful heavy glass and brass doors lead into a dark stained oak bar area that, even when it first opened in (I think) 1951 must have had that escapist ambience which would have appealed to the mercantile colonialists that were its main customers. From the bar there is a similarly gloomy wood panelled restaurant, and only at the extreme end is there any natural daylight in the form of large windows overlooking the lake.

The hotel’s entrance hall has a similar feel, with the original stubby Bauhaus lettering over the reception desk and a dry cleaning (“Pressing”) desk, long since abandoned. The centrepiece of the lobby is the magnificent lift, glass and wrought iron, with all its original fittings. Around the lift is the grand staircase with decorations somewhat reminiscent of Art Nouveau.

Art Nouveau is even more in evidence at two 3 storey government office buildings. The central staircase has a fancy handrail and delightful plasterwork which though completely understated, strike a playful note. But architecture cannot stand alone, and the valiant efforts of the architects have been largely subsumed by the neglect and decay of decades. Broken windows, original light fittings replaced by a hanging bulb, washbasins removed, leaving only the bare pipes – these are the predominant features inside. But that, as they say, is not all. There is no electricity for much of the day, and people sit in a deep gloom. Worst of all, no one sweeps the floor which is literally thick with dirt. It is hard to see how conditions can be allowed to get as bad as they are, and one can only assume that they reflect the misery of the civil service which survives remarkably well even though salaries are a tiny $40-$60 a month, and often paid very late. If they cannot be bothered to pay me, why should I work? Is that the reason? I don’t know.

There are other offices in a semi-basement, which has its own entrance. These are clean and well-loved. Maybe their occupants have a sense that these are personal spaces in which they can take pride.

And it is pride which dominates the third building. A single storey L shaped place with white walls and brightly painted green woodwork which houses the provincial agricultural services. No sooner do you enter than you feel a different force at work: everything is spotless. The conference room is the star of the show. The tables are covered by brightly coloured tablecloths, and around the walls is an extensive library of technical books and departmental archives. They are neatly classified by subject and by language – yes, books in English, French, Dutch and German. But . . . the last time a new book was put on those shelves was 1961. There it is, the pride and joy of a long forgotten colonial servant, petrified in history.

How come this is so different from the other buildings, which, incidentally housed the parent Ministry of Agriculture, as well as the Ministries of Education and Health? Could it lie in the personality of the Director of Agricultural Services, a small quiet man, dressed in a grey safari suit with a thick brass cross hanging round his neck? He, we are told, goes to mass every day: indeed he is considered almost as a priest. Maybe this provides the clue: the stern precepts of the mission fathers, cleanliness is next to godliness, survive in his world which he manages with the same authority as the fathers manage the schools and the churches.

How is it that you never see any photographs of these wonderful buildings, whether Bauhaus strict, or stupid and playful Art Deco? Apart from the fact that the DRC is off the tourist circuit, so gets far less attention than it deserves, there’s another reason. Taking photographs is illegal, and even if you get a permit for $25 or whatever, you’re liable to be arrested. I’ve heard no reasonable explanation for this ban – maybe it was Mobutu in a fit of paranoia – but people take it very seriously. It gives the police a nice excuse to demand a bribe.

So one day, a little project of mine will be to outwit these controls and take pictures of the buildings before they are demolished in the name of “progress”.

To B or not to B

If you’re choosing where to live, what factors are important? Climate, safety, the environment, the culture. All that. By the standardised classification of what are considered nice places, not too big, not too small, where the quality of life is high, Vancouver, Melbourne and Copenhagen are the sort of places that float to the top. For big-city lovers, there’s nothing like Paris, though New York and London are baying at its heels. And then there are the classic cities of Rome, Edinburgh and Salzburg.

But out of this list, only one is a B city. As is Kinshasa. Surprised? The B stands for baguette.

This is certainly a pretty important criterion in my book. Good baguettes are hard to beat, and to live in a place where there are baked and sold freshly is really special. If coffee is really important to you, you can make your own, and most sorts of food can be reproduced quite well wherever you live. But there’s something different about the true baguette. There is no substitute.

In Kinshasa, everywhere you go there are women with baskets of baguettes on their head. They’ll sell you one, of course, but they’ll also make you a peanut butter sandwich. This is the working man’s lunch: sitting quietly at the side of the road, made on the spot, to your specification.

When we were staying in the hotel I used to make my own baguette sandwich. Being a proper continental hotel, the breakfast buffet included salamis, hams and cheeses. So what better than to make a baguette sandwich or two for lunch, and smuggle it out? Not that they really minded.

It would sit on my desk tempting me, and by 11.30 I would succumb. There’s something so special about the crunchy crust and the soft insides. Very special.

But there’s more. B countries also retain the trappings of civilisation, without the tiniest drop of irony. For example, when you first meet someone, the proper response is “enchanté” (pedants will note that if you’re a girl there’s an extra e on the end). When you sign letters you ask that the recipient will do you the honour of accepting your profoundly good wishes, or something of the sort. And before you start eating, of course, there is “Bon appétit.”

An outing

It was about time that we took a trip out of Kinshasa. We had heard enthusiastic accounts of the Botanic Gardens (“only an hour or so away”). And, they said “it’s an excellent road”.

So, one Sunday morning we set out. The road, grandly called N1, is the same one used by container trucks from the port of Matadi, so we knew traffic might be a bit slow, but, as we found out, it is also the one used by everyone in the suburbs of Kinshasa to shop, to chat, to buy to sell, to walk, to . . . everything.

After an hour we had gone about 20 kilometres, pushing people out of the road with gentle pushes of the bumper, horn blowing and more, lurching from pothole to pothole. This really didn’t seem like the N1, and it certainly wasn’t the “good road” that we had heard about. We must be lost.

We stop at a petrol station. “No,” he said with a broad smile when I told him we were lost, “you’re right. This is the road.”

To our relief, soon afterwards the town began to melt into scattered little farms and a few roadside kiosks, and before long we were on the open road, in rolling, quite open, countryside. None of the tropical jungle for which the Congo is famed.

From time to time we pass small towns and villages, all characterised by intensive trading activities, lots of heavy container trucks parked at the side, and people everywhere – the road included. From time to time there are speed bumps – viciously sharp ones – and lots of police to make sure that no one does anything wrong.

To our surprise when we are about half way it turns into a toll road. The queue at the toll station is somewhat chaotic, and someone tries to push in front of me, by now second in line. The man in front of me gives him a long lecture about the need to respect other people and take his turn, and he backs away. The fee is not small – about $40, but I take my beautifully printed receipt in duplicate gratefully, and get back to the car as quickly as possible, relieved that another unfamiliar hurdle has been overcome.

The gardens turn out to be majestic. But they are a shadow, we are told, of their former selves as many of the most delightful plants, such as orchids, were looted during the fighting about ten years ago. There is clearly a lack of capacity to maintain the huge area (about 80ha), but this gives it the sense of wilderness which is quite attractive. To one side is a huge river, flowing – as they all seem to do here – very fast. Just inland from the river is the remains of a tiny chapel, remains not unlike those of a Norman castle in Britain, though this cannot be more than 70 years old, and was probably burned down in the looting spree.

The other delight of the gardens is the restaurant which cooks us very nice Congolese food, and some of the best chips we’ve had for years.

At the toll station on the way back there are far more people, and I have the feeling that my place is going to be usurped by the many people pressing behind me, excitedly waving their money to attract the attention of the cashier. I give a little lecture about the need to respect other people and take your turn. It goes completely unheard. But when my turn comes the cashier ignores the several people who have by now pushed in front of me, and demands that he serve me next. Justice is sweet.

The journey is hectic because the road is so narrow that there isn’t room for two vehicles and pedestrians on both sides. Since there are pedestrians almost all the way, the chances of someone getting hurt are huge. But the Congolese rule of the road – the bravest wins – works pretty well, and I position myself near the middle of the road to avoid killing anyone. I have the satisfaction of seeing oncoming traffic slowing down or lurching to the side.

As we enter Kinshasa a huge storm is brewing and it becomes prematurely dark. The storm blows over and the sky is lit by one of the most vivid sunsets we have ever seen.

It’s been a wonderful day, but suddenly and strangely the chaotic streets of Kinshasa feel like home.

Food

It’s astonishing how conservative we can be, and food is probably the area in which we keep so-called traditions alive with the least flexibility. See the ‘traditional” Christmas dinner, and the vagrant British colonialist with, as you can see, his jar of Marmite.

Moving to a new country like the DRC one cannot help being astonished at the degree to which the food is totally Belgian/Dutch. I’m not talking about the restaurants, but about the supermarkets.

As you walk past shelves and shelves of jars of the Dutch favourite of peas and tiny carrots in brine, tins of cassoulet, apfel stroop (apple syrup), packets of goudse waffels (waffles with apple syrup in the middle) Dutch gingerbread and so on one could be forgiven for thinking you were in a very different country than the DRC. Few concessions to other nationalities here.

But the pain of living without Marmite can be dulled by looking at the cheese counter. There’s a huge range of cheeses at the same price, or even lower, than Europe. And the charcuterie – salamis, hams, pates: it’s all there, and not expensive at all. And for the real aficionados there are the Dutch herrings.

While we may be familiar with mortadella and camembert, making head or tail of the detergents is something else. None of the names we are used to are there. There are some really old-fashioned ones which we had forgotten about: Persil, Tide, etc. and many new ones which mean nothing. We are overcome by shame at our reliance on brand names in making decisions about stuff like detergent. And the prices!! We swallow hard and settle for a giant pack of Dreft which is about $50 – no exaggeration.

As we unload the car I see a little trail of white powder and before we know it the bottom has fallen out of our newly bought extravagance. Dreft all over the entrance hall to the block of flats. Luckily it was not outside and raining, and we can sweep up most of it. But it seems like a cruel irony that our most expensive purchase is the least reliable.

Gates - not Bill

Before we came to Kinshasa, someone who had worked here for a few years used a throwaway line – “it safer than Johannesburg”.

As a professional sceptic I took little notice of the remark. Émigré South Africans tend to knock their own country. Yes, we know that Johannesburg has a high crime rate, but you can deal with it through vigilance, and efficient burglar alarms. Cars all alarmed and are fitted with tracking devices in case they are stolen; houses (like ours) have high walls, electric fences, burglar protection on the windows, and inside burglar alarms.

Coming to Kinshasa with the masses thronging the streets, and the apparent lack of control over everything one could not help feeling apprehensive. Stories of pickpocketing outside shops when one has no free hands and is vulnerably holding multiple bags of shopping don’t help. And at night there are the street children and young men who are, frankly, predatory.

But tell this to a Johannesburger: we walk in pitch darkness along the river and around our house with never a thought that there might be a problem. Little children play in the road as dusk falls with no parent in sight. A friend mistakenly left her computer on the back seat of her car, and was really scared when she realised what she had done. Her driver (who was with her) scoffed at her fear: “they’ll never break into a car when there are so many people around” he said. And we’ve never met anyone whose car has been stolen.

Break-ins? Same story. We have never met anyone whose house has been robbed.

One of the reasons for the domestic security is, of course, the ubiquitous day and night security guards, and the gates.

The gates follow a standard pattern: they are solid, they have a little pedestrian entrance, and they have tiny peepholes through which the guard can see who is on the other side.

This completely anonymous and standard face to the world has its uses. One cannot see what is behind, so for the very rich it disguises their opulence which might be an advantage in times of strife; for the poor, it helps them to pretend that they are rich. One of the pleasures of this secrecy is that behind the bland façade you sometimes find a delightful oasis of lush plants, peace and tranquillity.

An expert security consultant made the point that these huge gates and high walls are no real protection in times of civil strife, but is that the point? For us, behind the gate, we feel as safe as houses.

Getting legal

I had the good fortune to buy a car from a departing diplomat. In Kinshasa second hand cars are a pretty safe bet: because there’s nowhere to go mileage is low. Our car, 4 years old, had done 15,000km.

It’s a Toyota Prado diesel, the work horse of the Congo, built like a tank, sounding like a tank and driving like a tank. But in spite of its old image it has plenty of hidden tricks like cunning storage places, a third row of seats and many other features which the proud owner explained to me and which were instantly forgotten.

Of course, the seller said, you can’t drive it with the embassy’s number plates: you’re not a diplomat so it would be illegal. That made sense: anyway, a couple of days waiting for the new plates wouldn’t be a problem because I could use office transport for most things.

A meeting was arranged with the Embassy’s protocol officer cum transport manager. He was very helpful and produced all the forms to be signed. Copies of passports, father and mother’s names, all known details about me were duly entered onto the forms. “I’ll phone you when the transfer’s approved”, he said.

“How long?”

“Two weeks, two months, who knows. It’s the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you see.”

I looked at the car and it looked at me. “Go on,” it said, so I did. I drove it with the CD plates, pretending and enjoying pretending to be a diplomat. Gates were automatically opened when we went to embassies and donor offices, security guards would show us to the best parking places, and one could stare down a policeman knowing that they were a bit scared of diplomats. Beggars would raise their rates – “come on Mr Diplomat, you can afford more than that . . .” If I had been stopped and asked for my papers it would have been disastrous. I had no insurance, no ownership papers, NOTHING. But somehow, it was worth it.

Every so often I would phone the embassy guy. Nothing doing, he would say, and I could picture him rolling his eyes at my naivete in expecting things to happen. Seven weeks later, I went to the embassy in person. “Hi,” he said, “I’ve being trying to get hold of you,” (lie, I think), “the papers came through last week”. And there they were, signed in quintuplicate by the Ambassador, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and dozens of functionaries underneath them.

“So?” I ask.

“So now you have to get the car registered with the city and get new number plates.”

“How do you do that?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” (lie?) he said, “but your logistics man will.”

Well, he didn’t either, but eventually he found out what to do. But that, in Kinshasa is only half the battle. The other half is getting it done. It appears that number plates are one of those services which, if you don’t know someone on the inside, will never happen.

As luck would have it, a colleague knew someone on the inside. Five weeks later, at 9 p.m. I get an excited SMS. “Your number plate’s been approved. It is ……”.

Well that was good news. But it turned out to be a false dawn, because the man issuing the plates was sick or something, so was never there, and it was another month, after my driver had queued for five hours, that he got the new plates.

Now here’s the interesting bit: in addition to the plates we needed a whole lot of other documents. One was the certificate of third party insurance. That was quick – all done in half a hour. Then we had to pay our vehicle licence fee.

The City of Kinshasa issues these – like the licence disks that most countries require. The driver has a feeling that a bunch of men sitting in the middle of a roundabout near the office are the right ones – but it turns out they issue the insurance. Yes, all in uniforms, they just happen to use the roundabout as their open-air office. They direct us to a petrol station nearby – “that’s where the licence people are”.

Sure enough, finishing their breakfast were three people dressed in dayglo jackets advertising Kinshasa’s Revenue Collection Agency, sitting at plastic tables waiting for us to pay our licence fees.

We sit in the car, and one of them comes up and asks us what we want. The driver explains. That’s $147.20, (Yes, everything’s in dollars in the Congo) says the man, and then sits down to fill in a form for us which I sign. Then the driver takes the form and my money to the Bank, which is no more than a kiosk on the garage forecourt, and deposits the money.

When I get the receipt for the rather strange sum, I see it includes all sorts of strange items like “late fee” and some fine or other, but decide that since everyone had been so efficient, and the money had not gone into anyone’s pocket, it wasn’t worth arguing.

The final stage is reached when the clerk excitedly carries the disk to the car, peels off the backing, and sticks it very carefully, and very straight, onto the windscreen. I get outside to look. 2007/08, it says. “But this is the wrong year” I say, “or do the numbers mean something else?”

“Oh no,” says the driver, “it’s just that they’re running a bit late.”