Filth

Driving into Kinshasa from the airport takes one past miles and miles of small shops and markets. They are separated from the road by a space that might, at one time, have been a very broad pavement but is now simply thick filth. This is not the odd piece of litter, but real squelching, rotting filth.

How has it come to get into that state in the first place? It’s an interesting story. In the Mobutu dictatorship people were required, every Saturday, to clean the streets in an activity called Salongo. The result – as documentaries from the period illustrate vividly – was spotless towns and villages. But when Mobutu was overthrown one of the first things to go was Salongo. The shackles of oppression were thrown off in the form of – garbage. And while in most cities there would be some form of service to sweep the streets and remove said garbage, not in Kinshasa. So it just built up and up and up: a future archaeologist’s dream.

To an outsider it is hard to comprehend how the man and woman in the street puts up with such filth, and why shopkeepers seemed to do nothing about it.

Maybe things are changing. In preparation for the 50^th Anniversary of Independence Kinshasa was ordered to clean itself up. And, much to everyone’s surprise, it did. What is more, to emphasise the fact that this was not to be just a flash in the pan, they had a parade of little motor-bike driven litter trucks on the great day.

Indeed, driving to the airport recently for the first time since the celebrations, I was amazed to see that the filth had gone. What is more, shopkeepers were sweeping the ground in front of their premises.

But my heart sank a few days ago when I saw how the little garbage trucks are being used. Less than a month has passed, and the enterprising officials have found a much more fun way of using them. Sitting in the back of the trucklets, they cruise the streets looking for (supposedly illegal) small traders. Those who don’t have the money to pay the bribe have their goods piled into the back of the little trucks and carried away.

So maybe the airport road scene is just a flash in the pan. Let’s hope not.