Two wheels, eight legs

Building materials are notoriously awkward to move around: they’re so heavy and bulky that transport is often a real problem, especially for the small builder.

Kinshasa has solved this problem with the environmentally friendly solution of hand carts. These typically have two large car wheels, and a metal box body into, and onto, which the materials are placed. At the back and the front are large handles to push and pull the load.

One can’t help feeling sorry for the operators of these vehicles. There are two problems. One is that the cart, having two wheels, needs to be kept level. With a heavy load there’s often a tendency for it to overbalance and for one end to be stuck on the road. You’ll see a little man (they all seem to be little, the hand-cart pushers) trying to bring down his end of the cart, his feet dangling uselessly in the air.

The more serious problem is that they might have a load of a ton or more, and find themselves stuck in a pothole, or have a hill to negotiate. For heavy loads there is often a crew of four, but even so they sometimes have to enlist the power of passers-by to negotiate the obstacle.

From the employment generation point of view, this is clearly a wonderful solution. It’s also obviously a very green solution: no carbon emissions here.

But from the traffic point of view it’s disastrous. There’s a six lane highway to the airport, and often there’ll be huge jams caused by nothing more than one such hand cart. And when one hand cart, laboriously overtakes another, there’s an even bigger jam.

You would expect motorists to be furious about this, but no: I have never seen a menacing hand being shaken out of a car window, nor heard an angry horn. They take these blockages as they come – part of the day-to-day reality of life on the roads of Kinshasa.

In spite of this, and in spite of the fact that they’re slow and can carry only a limited amount of goods, the system works. Materials are delivered to all corners of the city, to houses in tiny lanes and streets that are nothing more than rural tracks. A door-to-door service for loads big and small. One can’t help thinking that this 18^th century technology still has value today.

The taxman cometh

It’s conventional wisdom that the main threats to law and order in the Congo are the forces of law and order – the police and the army.

Now we’re hearing an increasing number of complaints about a new ogre: the taxman. Taxmen have always had a bad press. The apostle Matthew had a tough time convincing people that he had changed. But the Congolese equivalent have definitely got the edge. From large to small companies, the taxman poses an uncomfortable threat.

It’s not just formal business that’s targeted. In a focus group discussion that we held market women said that they were subjected to 22 different sorts of tax, many of which seemed to have no legal basis.

I recently witnessed a woman at the airport, obviously a trader, who was organising porters to carry her boxes from the car park into the terminal building. A blue-dressed official – a conventional sign of authority here – caught sight of her and pounced. I don’t know what he said, but guess it was “you’re only allowed three pieces of baggage, you’ll have to pay a fine for the other ten. That will be” (and this bit I did hear) “6,000 francs” (about $6). Let’s be clear: this was nothing to do with overweight baggage, he was in the car park, a small official who had spotted a gap. Her choices: to fight, and be kept by him until she had missed her flight, and risk being arrested for something; or just pay up. Obviously, though very reluctantly, she chose the latter.

To revert to formal business, I had been tasked with opening a bank account which was to be jointly managed by a firm of consultant accountants. I had their address: it was an office building entered from a courtyard. Once I found the building, I could see no sign of them at all; I checked the address again and started asking people. No one knew. I tried upstairs – nothing doing. Eventually, I thought of asking the little old watchman who was standing at the street entrance. He knew exactly, and proudly showed me to a small, unmarked door, underneath the stairs. At the time I couldn’t understand why a firm which would, one would expect, want to advertise its name, and make life easy for its visitors, choose to operate in such obscurity, if not squalor. But now, of course, it’s clear. They are hiding from the taxman.

We were talking to a colleague who had been working on a democracy project. They had quite a big team and opened offices in a bright new office block somewhat out of the centre. She said that every month the taxmen would come round and demand payment. Sometimes it would be a small routine payment – a sort of protection money – but they could suddenly change and demand to see the books. This would be the pretext for some outrageous demand which then had to be negotiated down to a reasonable amount.

This imposes huge burdens on small business, not just in terms of the amount that must be paid, but in terms of the need to have accounts updated daily so that one could never be caught out. I was talking to an old-timer who has many Congolese friends who operate businesses in a small way. He said that if you are comply with the tax laws to the letter it is literally impossible to make a profit. Thus you have to keep two sets of books: one for the tax man. OK I know there’s nothing new in that, but the gap here is huge. Even more damning, a Congolese lawyer who works for a huge company here told me that taxes for their business amount to 360% of the profits. The rumour is that they are pulling out shortly, but we’ll see.

In principle one applauds efficient tax collection. It has certainly made a huge difference in South Africa. But here, it’s different. The incentives are to exploit, without a fair legal system to keep the exploitation in bounds. It was possibly to try and achieve results like South Africa’s that the Congolese Government introduced a commission system, under which the tax department retains a percentage of their takings; the collector receives his percentage, and the rest goes to the central treasury. The rate for the collectors’ commission is highest for penalty payments, so if they can find an excuse to charge a penalty for under-declaration of earnings or late payments they will. And since they know that no one, literally no one, can possibly comply with all the regulations – because if they did so they would be out of business – they can always find something with which to penalise the businessman.

So, tax avoidance, typically the domain of the wealthy, has a totally different meaning here. It’s hide, duck and dive in their most literal sense.

DIY Congolese-style

Next to our kitchen is a small store – very useful in principle, but some shelves would make it much more useful. We consult the manager of the building: just state what you need in our maintenance form, he says, and we’ll do it.

A carpenter arrives, takes measurements, and three days later arrives with a quotation for $1,700. Five shelves, a total of six metres in length for $1,700??? He explains: “Since you’re paying for it (news to me) I’ve designed it so that you can take the shelves and supporting framework with you when you leave.”

My money-saving instincts spring into life. I would have thought that a few screws in the wall, and five planks should cost no more than $30, so I decide to do it myself. Easy peasy as Jamie Oliver would say.

That’s where the fun started. Where do you buy the wood? I call an old-timer friend. “You’re joking,” she says, “this isn’t Europe or South Africa. You can’t just go into a shop and buy wood. You have to get a carpenter who will cut it to size for you.”

We don’t quite believe her and when next in town check in several shops which proclaim “EVERYTHING YOU NEED FOR CONSTRUCTION” etc. But when you ask for wooden shelving their eyes go blank, and they look at you as if you are deranged.

In the less posh parts of town there are many roadside timber yards selling rough-cut planks and beams in large sizes. But they don’t offer cutting or planing services. The obvious question is why. A lack of electricity could be one reason, and a lack of turnover to justify the investment could be another. So you must go to a carpenter: “You want a piece of wood of this size? – I’ll cut it for you.”

There is something positively mediaeval about this, which could be charming if it wasn’t so much trouble. 1: Find your carpenter; 2: He does research and gives you a quotation; 3: Give him money to buy the wood; 4: Collect shelves; 5: Pay.

But when you think about it, the logic is inescapable. Carpenters have realised the insidious impact of DIY on their trade and conspired to kill the concept before it spreads. That’s why things are organised so that it’s easier to just get the guy in to do the job from start to finish. He can justifiably claim to give a personalised service: Shelves made and fitted to order, just for you.

But we chose to buck the system. We measured up, then sent the driver to organise the cutting and planning of the shelves: they are nicely finished and varnished. They cost $40 which is really over the top, (because the smart car spoke of an employer with lots of money) but considerably better than $1,700. It takes about an hour to fit the shelves, and voila! it’s done. Besides the money saved, there’s another reward: the simple satisfaction of making things.

Advertising agencies's nightmare

We are so used to elaborately designed billboards that we take them for granted. If one reflects on the process by which they are created it is complex and expensive: ad agency does design, gets client’s approval, finds the right place for it and pays the fees, gets it printed, gets it erected, etc etc.

The DRC has a few such billboards. They advertise soaps, beer, skin cream and cell phones, and that’s about it. Instead, especially for public events, the hand-painted banner, stretched across the street is the medium of choice. What’s fascinating about these banners is the craftsmanship that goes into preparing them. All lettering and decoration is done by hand. When the project I’m working on uses them to advertise workshops the sign-writing team arrives at the office to do it there and then. They lay out the fabric on the ground, you give them the text, and they paint it. It’s all done in an hour or so. Not perfect but neat and eye-catching.

These banners are undoubtedly effective. Even if one has no interest one cannot help noticing, as one drives around, what is going on. Some of them are really puzzling. “Conference to Support President Kabila.” “Conference of Haemorrhoid Sufferers.” Recently a new campaign has hit the streets. Government banners have sprung up everywhere. “The Campaign for Good Citizenship,” they read, “Pay your taxes.” The irony of this is that the only efficient part of the government is zealous tax collectors: the problem is not that people don’t pay but that the money gets, so to speak, lost.

NGOs and development projects use these banners all the time to proclaim an event: “Findings of the research into the transport of carrots into Kinshasa”, “Workshop to evaluate the teaching of French to children 10 – 12 years old.”

Whether the conferences and workshops are productive is an open question, but at least the banners generate employment.

Why does it cost so much?

If you are an official visitor, at the expense, for example, of the UN or the World Bank in the Congo, you will be told about the per diem allowance. For a hotel it’s between $150 and $300 per day, and for meals between $60 and $120 extra. Unbelievable.

But, ridiculous as these rates sound – that is what things cost. A small room – just large enough for two single beds and a tiny desk, with a bathroom with plumbing that can only be described as erratic, is $150 per night. That’s probably the maximum allowance for the place concerned, so if you want a better room, with a bathroom that works, for example, you might have to pay the difference from your pocket. For meals a standard dish is between $20 and $30, and $40 is not unheard of.

In an apparently fertile land in which many of the population have no gainful employment apart from agriculture, why is everything so expensive? Of course there are problems of getting food to market, people are scared of leaving settlements because of the bandits, and there is corruption all along the food chain which reduced the value anyone gets from producing food. But does that explain everything?

I was sitting at Kinshasa airport the other day: not an obvious pleasure spot with its crumbling plaster, broken stairways and lack of lights. But it has one feature that most airports abolished a long time ago in this age of security concerns: a viewing platform from which you can watch planes arriving, wave to passengers or exchange final shouts to departing friends. As it happens the space has now been allocated to the Grand Hotel which provides quite a smart – if very expensive (one proper espresso = half demi-tasse black coffee, $5.00) – place from which to watch goings-on.

The airport is a machine which works tolerably well in spite of a terrible shortage of equipment.

(On the subject of equipment I couldn’t help laughing as I watched one of those stairs for passengers being driven across the tarmac in the rain. The windscreen wipers didn’t work, so a man was standing on the front bumper, himself clad in a yellow raincoat, wiping the windscreen with his hands as the machine drove across.)

There are as many cargo planes as passenger ones. We all know what is typically sent by airfreight – high value goods such as TVs, medical equipment, specialised parts for machinery, etc. But not here. The freight consisted of sacks of flour, rice and other bulky heavy staples.

I watched as men lined up to carry the produce from the plane: one sack per person, carried on the head, in a long procession that looked exactly the same (were it not for the location) as anything Dr Livingston might have witnessed. They don’t dawdle – in fact they’re almost running. Within no more than 10 or fifteen minutes the entire plane was emptied, and a similar procession of similar looking bags would fill the plane up. Within half an hour it would be off again.

Why send this sort of thing by air? It is simply because there are no roads on which to transport stuff. Even the river transport has broken down to the extent that it is no longer the main form of transport. So, air it is. That must have something to do with why everything is so expensive.

Pomp and circumstance

What are the ethics of having a good time? Is it wrong to enjoy an extravagant party given by a family with great wealth? Would you go to a Royal garden party? Would you go to a party in Kinshasa given in a house that is more like a palace than a house?

We did – thanks to a curiously circular set of coincidences. Friends from South Africa announced that they had been invited to a birthday party, and would be coming to Kinshasa for the week end. We met them at their hotel. Their host was there also and it emerged that the mother of the woman whose birthday was being celebrated was an acquaintance of ours. She had been very friendly when we first arrived and made many introductions for us. So we were immediately invited too, the only injunction being that everyone was supposed to wear white.

Finding the house was tortuous, but once we were near one had only to mention the name of the family and everyone knew it. Discretion prevents me from giving more details, but suffice it to say that the head of the family, now dead, had been a big friend and later big enemy of Mobutu (but one of Mobutu’s sons was there, so no hard feelings . . .). He had, like so many people in this country, made and lost millions.

The house sits on the top of a hill. We are greeted at the grand entrance doors at the top of white marble steps by a butler, and then handed over to a young woman who takes us through a grand courtyard to greet the hostess. Things are already buzzing in the main reception room which can best be described as a ballroom. It is about 40 metres long with end-to-end windows leading onto a marble terrace. The back walls of the ballroom have Aubusson tapestries (or what look like Aubusson tapestries), set between double height beautifully carved wooden doors. Below the terrace is a more than Olympic size swimming pool, and below that are formal gardens and terraces.

The terrace overlooks the vast city. The twinkling lights, stretching into the far distance, mask the squalor and decay of reality, and allow one to have an almost romantic view of the vast urban mass.

One of the highlights was a performance by a Congolese singer. He lives in Brazil where he is a massive star, but had got together a local band for the event consisting mostly of his family members. A small stage and fancy lighting has been set up, and they even added theatre smoke to make it more dramatic. But the real joy was the music: rhythmically african, but with haunting, goose flesh melodies.

The food was delicious, and very sophisticated. But in case anyone got too serious about it, was interrupted by dancing between the courses. The drink was, of course, champagne; followed later by a selection of highly regarded French wines.

The splendour of the house and catering was in complete contrast to the informality and friendliness of the hosts and the guests. The majority were old friends of the birthday girl, now in middle age. Many had flown in for the event, from Brussels, Paris and Johannesburg. There were two other people we knew, which reinforces the idea that in a city of 8 million people there can still be village communities.

Nagging thought – how much had been spent? When you add it up, with probably a third of the guests having flown in specially for the event and staying in hotels; the band and stage; the catering and drink . . . it becomes mind-boggling. Out, damned thought: relax and enjoy it!

1+1=3

To me it is nothing but an irritation for someone to do things for me which I am perfectly capable of doing for myself. As a case in point, the receptionist in the office insists on getting up and opening the door for me every time I go into the main building. (I work in an annex).

I know I should not be irritated. He takes pride in being punctilious in such matters, just as an old-fashioned butler would take pride in making sure that his master’s suit was properly pressed.

You see it in the supermarkets. People who are perfectly capable of pushing a trolley have someone to do it for them, and like to stand back and tell the person what item should be taken from a shelf. I would hate it if I had to do that, just as I would hate it if I was the person who pushed the trolley.

But wait a minute, would I mind pushing the trolley? If this was the difference between having a job and not having a job, I might be very happy to be a dogsbody hanging around my master or mistress and saving them the trouble of taking a jar of jam from the shelves.

The point was brought home to me when I had my hair cut. I was welcomed to the salon by a smiling receptionist who then passed me to a man I assumed would be the hairdresser. The man sat me down, put on a sheet to protect me and then left.

A few minutes later he returned, tidied up my covering sheet, picked up the scissors and gave them to - a Frenchman who had just emerged, and who was to cut my hair, and who was suitably flamboyant to fit the caricature role of a French hairdresser. The young man who had sat me down was nothing but the assistant.

Hairdresser’s assistant? That’s a new one, at least for a hair cut.

His job was straightforward. After each snip the assistant would brush my face with an oversized shaving brush, presumably to remove any stray hairs. Snip, brush, snip, brush. I couldn’t help smiling at this elaborate charade. Was this supposed to be the sign of a sophisticated establishment? Were they trying to elevate hairdressing to the professional level: was the assistant supposed to be like the dentist’s nurse who hands him the right tools and operates saliva-sucking machines and the like?

Then the penny dropped. Here was a case of making work. I’m quite sure that the French hairdresser employed the man in an act of sympathy for the unemployed. The young man clearly had no real job to do, but to salvage a little self-respect he had this job which he did with some of the same flourishes as his master.

And at some levels that is how the system works here. Wages are so low that there is a moral duty to employ two people even where one will do.

The only problem for me is that I can’t do it. I hate having half employed people hanging around: it make me feel guilty. It’s bad enough having a driver who usually works for less than two hours a day. So to the unemployed of Kinshasa, I have to say: I’m one of those horrible selfish do-it-yourself foreigners.