A new life

The airline industry in the Congo has the worst reputation of any in the world. A recent crash caused the government to ban the biggest operator from the skies. Another, apparently too successful one, operated by South African Airways, was closed down on a technicality. This has left one operator with a monopoly which it is enjoying all the way to the bank, with ticket prices rising daily in response to the huge demand.

Since the risk of a crash by all of the commercial operators is so high, none of us aid and diplomatic workers are allowed to use them, and must fly by the UN systems which were primarily set up by the peace-keeping force. Due to the loss of the SAA planes (which we were allowed to use) the pressure on flights to Lubumbashi is huge, particularly as it is not a town that needs either humanitarian or peace-keeping support. Thus it is that the journey from Kinshasa to Lubumbashi takes 1½ days, and about seven hours flying time as we wander around the country in little planes designed to deliver good works to villages.

The scene in Kinshasa, as we are checked in at 6.00 a.m. is tense. There are always more people than places. The passengers include the genuine and few peace keepers, pen pushers from the UN bureaucracy, who have to be seen to be doing something by travelling, and development and NGO types who are working for international donors. We eye each other slightly suspiciously, as if to say, why are you on this flight?

There are problems with the weight. One person who attracts a lot of interest has two large bags and a guitar. From the look of his youthful beard, the weak smile that he uses to disguise his fear, and his obvious uncertainty about what is happening, he is obviously a newcomer. The man operating the scales allows him through, even though he is almost 20kg over, as an act of sympathy.

We disembark at Kalemie, a place in the middle of nowhere, while the plane continues to Goma with most of the passengers. Our lank person with the guitar gets off. We have to stay overnight as our connecting flight to Lubumbashi is not until tomorrow morning.

The next morning is crisis time. For us, it was partly because (as recounted elsewhere) we arrived just as our seats were about to be given to desperate standby passengers. But worse was to come. The genial Moroccan soldier supervising everything told us that due to certain circumstances, they had to limit the luggage to 20kg including hand-carried stuff. No exceptions were to be made, not even for tools of the trade (my laptop).

Our lank hero, carrying everything he was to need for the next two years, had the dreadful job of choosing what to take and what to leave. He had been joined by two colleagues. One, an older Japanese man who insouciantly carried a satellite phone, but whose luggage was little more than a back pack; and a blue stocking French woman in her thirties. Between them they managed to share some of his excess, but after 30 minutes of sorting he was still fighting an unwinnable battle of dividing important from unimportant. The guitar was, of course, the first to go; but what about some books, spare pairs of shoes, shampoo? Where was he to get shampoo from, where he was going? My Congolese colleague was in a similar position. She had a veritable army of handbags and assorted luggage, probably mostly containing eatable bargains from Kinshasa.

The Moroccan explained that that plane was only half way through its biannual service, so wasn’t very powerful . . . so it was for our own safety that they had to impose these restrictions. They promised to send the excess baggage by the next plane, two days later. And not to worry – they promised nothing would get stolen.

The plane was very small: ten passengers, with the luggage strapped down on the floor at the back. No loo here, and no drinks service either. On the bulkhead was a placard proclaiming that the service was funded by the US, the UK, Canada, Spain and Mexico.

As the plane lumbered down the dirt runway, the Moroccan’s warning about the uncompleted service was ringing in our ears. It took forever to take off and I wasn’t the only one whose knuckles were white. Just in time the nose lifted off, and I’m still alive to tell the tale.

Two stops later we arrived at the tiny aerodrome of Bukama, pictured above, and our lank young man got off with his two colleagues. A pick-up truck was there to meet them: Soladarité International, proudly proclaimed the logo on its side (it describes itself as a humanitarian organisation based in France which aids war victims through emergency relief and rehabilitation).

As he hopped in you could see his relief at being transformed from being a helpless pawn in the game of UN flights, into a saviour of people’s lives.

The Village

We are in Kalemie, the once thriving port of Albertville on Lake Tanganyika that has been marginalised by the lack of roads and a collapse of the railway system, and which I referred to as an impossible destination in a much earlier blog.

We are in the house of a colleague’s friend, and are offered a drink. The Coca Cola comes from across the lake in Tanzania, in a strangely different bottle. The beer is from Lubumbashi, and arrives by the once-monthly train. We start to discuss the geography: how far is it to Lubumbashi? No one knows. Distance means much less than time – 4 or 5 days, we think. No, someone says it’s less than that: now that the road is so good it is 3-4 days if the ferry over the lake is working. Finally someone comes up with an actual distance: 600km.

The isolation has contradictory economic impacts. Beer is double the cost of what it is in Lubumbashi or Kinshasa, but electricity, at only $10 per month on a fixed tariff, is far less. Housing is ridiculously cheap. To take a case in point, we are sitting in a three bedroom house which, though very rough at the edges, is quite spacious and fairly solid. The rent? $150 per month. One tenth of what it would cost in central Kinshasa.

I had previously admired Kalemie from the air, as it acts as a sort of hub of the UN air system. From up there it looked neat, if somewhat empty. On the ground it it’s a bustling, run-down, overgrown, village. Only the cathedral and railway station (now enlivened by the arrival of a goods train) speak of prouder times.

The hotel we have been sent to looks excellent. It has a welcoming courtyard, and the external verandahs have hacienda-style arches. But as it gets dark, I try to put my light on. Nothing doing. Same in the bathroom. I ask someone to mend it, and though knowing that it was something bigger than a bulb, sit patiently while the staff balance chairs on top of tables and try a succession of bulbs with no effect. After nearly two hours of debate, and fruitless waiting for the manager to appear, they agree to change the room. What I didn’t know was that the room I was moved to was empty for a reason, but by that time I was so fed up with the delays I didn’t really care.

It wasn’t long before the full horror of the plumbing sank it. Shower: no water. Wash basin: no water, no plug. Loo: no seat, water trickling through full-time, so the cistern never fills up.

The management had thoughtfully (knowingly) supplied a little barrel of water, and a small bucket which I could use to wash in. After a wash I did the normal thing and emptied the bucket into the basin. Mistake! The drain from the basin wasn’t connected to anything, and the water simply drained out onto the floor.

The next morning, we were supposed to leave for the airport at 5.45, but when I went to check with my colleagues they told me that since the airport didn’t open until seven they had changed the pick up time to 6.45. This was odd, because when we had arrived yesterday one of the UN staff had told us to check in at 6.00. I could only hold my tongue as the arrangement had already been made.

The long-lost Manager turned up at 6.30, and I took him to one side and complained about the lack of light and the plumbing. He had an unlikely story about how a motorbike had crashed in to their electrical connection the previous evening, which had caused my problem. Then he went on to explain how difficult it was for him. The problem with the toilets seats, he explained, had started when a very large man had squatted with his feet on the seat, village-style, and had broken it. After that he had been ordered by the proprietor to remove the seats from all the toilets.

“You can go and look at them,” he said, “they are all piled up at the back”.

He went on to complain about the lack of good plumbers and the fact that they lie about their capabilities. The complaints went on so long I began to feel sorry for him.

Meanwhile there were more pressing problems. Our car was late: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes – now it turns up.

“Why are you so late?”

“Sorry, sir. We had a problem with the petrol.”

It seemed that not only that the car had run out of petrol, and the owner had only managed to beg or borrow enough to get the car to the hotel. So our first stop had to be at a typical local petrol station consisting a few 5 litre plastic bottles standing on a wooden table. We lent the driver enough money to buy 5 litres and then were off at truly crazy speed, sending bicycles and motorbikes hurling into the dust in terror. To take our minds off the driving, some conversation seemed appropriate.

“What’s going on?” I asked, “Can’t they even organize petrol in time?”

“This,” my colleague replied, who had recently lived here for about a year, “This is a village. You have to get used to doing things the village way.”

Meanwhile we were getting frantic messages from Kinshasa and Lubumbashi who had very efficiently been contacted by the UN air service to the effect that our seats were about to be given to standby passengers.

We made it with no more than a minute to spare. Ten standby passengers sloped off in misery at the prospect of having to wait two days until the next flight.

Just to confirm the fact that we were leaving a village there was a notice I had never seen before in a UN air terminal. “NO LIVESTOCK ALLOWED ON UN FLIGHTS”

Good God - Governance?

From time to time the Congolese government has hand-wringing seminars on what has gone wrong. There’s some rather attractive about such transparent discussions of failure, but it is also very depressing.

There was a recent event called “The Role of the State” which was attended by all the major Ministers, donors, civil servants and NGOs. Closely woven into a wonderfully abstract theoretical framework – as only French speaking people can do – were details about the status quo, and what we are going to do about it. One by one the Ministers took the podium to share their problems and their plans.

One couldn’t help thinking how much easier it is to make plans than it is to implement them. For example, the Minister of Health admitted that almost half a million children die before the age of 5, that there are about 100 million cases of malaria annually (for a population of 64 million) and the ratio of doctors to patients was between 4 and 5 per 100,000 inhabitants. However, this, he said, they planned to change: by 2015 they would have 50 doctors per 100,000. Malaria would be reduced by 80% by the same year. How? Better not to ask . . .

Sticking to health, of every $18 spent per person annually in a recent survey in RURAL provinces, $5 was provided by international aid, $7 by the households themselves and only $4 came from the state. Remembering that most patients come from truly poor households this is bad news indeed. The situation in agriculture is worse. The government used to provide seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, veterinary services and technical assistance. Now, 90% of the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture goes to pay salaries, so they do virtually nothing. Without government support, combined with the collapse of roads and lack of commercial suppliers of agricultural inputs, peasants have a hard time.

The GDP has gone down from $380 at Independence (51 years ago) to $175 today. In the UN’s Human Development Index the DRC now stands at 168 out of the 169 countries covered. On the commercial front, in the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings, the DRC is 175 out of the 183 countries included, while the DRC is ranked 164 out of 180 countries by Transparency International in terms of corruption, having slipped two places during the past year. Not a happy picture.

But to give credit where it is due, the report of this event is elegantly written in the form of lessons. Each section is a numbered lesson, totalling 29 in all. I don’t think I have ever seen an official report quite so interestingly and well formulated. So the obvious question is this: will the lessons be learned?

Unfortunately, history suggests that they probably won’t be. Here’s an example.

Last month a Boeing 727, with 112 passengers on board sets off from Kinshasa for Kisangani, the third largest town in the DRC and location of VS Naipaul’s “A Bend in the River”. The pilot was told that there was no meteorological information available about conditions there, as the weather station was out of order.

Manning the control tower in Kisangani was an apprentice air traffic controller. Nearby, but not present at all times, was a qualified one, though his licence had expired. When the pilot (with 7500 hours of flying, and 5300 hours with the Boeing 727) radioed for information, being particularly worried about the weather, he was given the all-clear to land, but was given a routing which took him right into the heart of a violent storm. A much calmer route was available, but it was not mentioned.

Not only was he directed into the storm, but he was given the wrong information about the flight path, as a result of which the plane crashed into a forest.

The response of the emergency services was, in the words of Jeune Afrique, (the best magazine in Africa about politics and economics), typically Congolese. The fire engine had no capacity to put out the fire, and first-aid workers only arrived much too late to be much help. About 80 passengers were killed, of whom 14 were travelling on fraudulent identity documents, so have not been identified.

Airports are managed by a state agency, with over 5000 employees, which receives substantial landing fees from airlines, and collects departure taxes from all passengers. In spite of this substantial income most runways are potholed, none of the systems such a radar work, even in Kinshasa, and the buildings are in a state of total disrepair with plaster falling off the walls, lights not working, and stairs chipped and broken. It has never been audited, and where the money goes is a mystery.

As evidence of the risks to aviation there have been 83 air crashes since 2000. Have repairs been done? New equipment bought? No. Some international airlines have installed equipment at their own expense in Kinshasa, but that’s about all that has been done.

Back to Kisangani. Recordings of the conversations between the tower and the plane demonstrated that incorrect information was given to the pilot, and at first the air traffic controllers acknowledged their mistake. Later they claimed they had had no contact with the aircraft. In the words of Jeune Afrique:

Coincidentally these recordings have disappeared. The DRC is truly a land of magic.

Jazz in the dark

It’s easy to be bowled over here when things work. The shortage of skills, equipment and materials is truly depressing. I remember the feeling of astonishment when we went to our first concert at seeing a Bechstein grand piano, one that had escaped the dreadful pillages. It was not pristine, but it sounded pretty good; a rare gem in this world of decay and neglect.

The trouble is that awareness of these difficulties makes one patronising. One’s reactions are coloured by “For the Congo . . .”

It doesn’t have to be like that. Last week end we went to a jazz festival, with bands from Europe and the US, held in a street that had been closed off for the occasion, in a not-very-nice area. Indeed, in the daytime, when driving through the potholes and over dusty stoney bits of ex-road one is a bit intimidated by the sense of decay and desolation that the area exudes. You lurch along the bumpy surface past men leaning against the ex-lampposts, staring vacantly into space. At their side foul smelling smoke comes fires lit in oil-drums. Street kids run past and bang the car.

Tonight that is all transformed: the lights are working and once you’ve paid you $5 entrance fee you’re ushered by ever-so-keen waitresses to a table. They’re obviously on commission, one thinks, but so what. You get the service.

Ahead is the stage – small, but perfectly lit, and a band is playing. The sound is perfect, excellently balanced and loud enough to be powerful, but not totally deafening. As each act ends, the transitions are handled seamlessly. No endless tinkering with microphones and no “1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 testing, testing”.

Apparently the Festival is an annual event which is the initiative of, and managed by a single individual. He gets sponsorship, of course, lots of it, but it is his event.

One of the sponsors is a brewery. Luckily for beer drinkers, a beer war has broken out within the last two months and the two breweries are fighting ruthlessly for market share. This event was hosted by the brewing underdog, and they were selling their draft beer at cost price: $1 for a half litre. There was also a choice of food ranging from barbecued kebabs to crepes and full-on chicken and chips.

One of the oddities of the area is that it houses the most expensive restaurant in Kinshasa. We went there by mistake once, and once you’re in, it’s a bit awkward to walk out again (which we almost did) when surrounded by a bevy of dinner-suited waiters bowing and scraping. The food is typical of what you get at very expensive restaurants everywhere: strange mixtures of ingredients, assembled in a clever and eye-catching way, served in tiny portions. If you eat a normal quantity of food and drink a decent wine it’s about $150 a head. If you don’t mind the small portions it is good, but being stared at by the waiters is somewhat of an appetite depressant.

To revert to the Jazz Festival: this restaurant has a terrace in front of it which is always deserted: the street is much too unpleasant to want to sit outside and look at it. But tonight it was very different. The restaurant had put out tables two deep, and the patrons were really really enjoying themselves, instead of telling themselves that they should do so. Pink Champagne was on offer to add a bit of zest to the occasion – even for non-diners.

The music was traditional jazz and blues, stuff that everyone could enjoy, and because the entrance price was so low, everyone was there.

Kinshasa did its thing, of course: it had to. Half way through there was a power cut and most of the lights went out. Not the stage: the organisers knew better and all electricity for the music and stage lighting was obviously coming from a generator. But the main area was pretty dark. A night club that had opened its doors for people who needed to spend a penny, was in total darkness. Before long candles were lit, but meanwhile a few men missed their targets with messy results. The power cut was such a non-event that no one even commented on it: a big contrast with what happened next.

As if to compensate for the lack of electricity the music stopped and without any announcement a firework rocket/banger went off. Many people assumed that war had started, but then there were more. Soon the fireworks came thick and fast. This was no toy-town display. They were the huge rockets and falling showers of multi-coloured stars etc that you see at the end of Olympic Games and the like. It went on for about 20 minutes, and each batch of fireworks was bigger and better than the previous ones. Then, as suddenly as it had started the display stopped, a band came on, and life continued . . .

Pretty good for the Congo? Much better than that: probably the best jazz show I’ve ever been to.

Epithets

In the days of the cold war the enemy was described in terms of colour which today seem so very politically incorrect. Reds under the bed, the Yellow Peril, the Black Threat (that was South Africa, of course), etc.

In Africa today there’s something similar going on, though no colourful epithet is required. Just one word is enough: the Chinese.

One must admire the Chinese. When we were in Greece a few years ago we came across a huge shop stacked with the typical Chinese products, cheap clothes, plastic flowers, outrageous ornaments, of which the centre-piece was a miniature rocky landscape, with water trickling down the hill into a tiny pond, all powered by a tiny electric pump. We tried to speak to the shop assistants, but it was clear that they had no Greek – less than even our tiny sprinkling, and not even English. How they had managed to penetrate the arcane jungle of Greek bureaucracy to set up and run such a substantial business was a mystery.

The same happens in the DRC. Recently a new Chinese restaurant opened near our office. The Chinese people didn’t speak a word of French, so their only connection with the outside world, so to speak, was the one waiter who had a smattering of Chinese.

But it’s not for restaurants or shops that the Chinese are famous here, (though there are many of them, and the number increases steadily) but traffic jams. If you’re late for a meeting, you can be absolutely sure that your most absurd excuses will be accepted if you just mutter “Les Chinois”, and give everyone a knowing look. Because, the Chinese road builders have absolutely no qualms about closing a main road for several hours to make their work simpler. There are no deviation routes, no signs, no explanations, nothing. They can use the barrier of language to simply shrug their shoulders and walk away. On several occasions we have driven down a road to find it closed at the end, thus making it necessary to turn round and drive all the way back. It would not be difficult to put a sign at the beginning of the road to say that it was closed, but does anyone do it? No. Why bother?

Near us, there’s a road that was designed as a dual carriageway triumphal way leading towards the Presidential Palace. It carries virtually no traffic, but was designated as one of the roads to be resurfaced by the Chinese, as it was important for ceremonial purposes. Obviously, the advantage of a dual carriageway is that you can work on one side at a time, by diverting the traffic to the other side. Obviously, but not so obvious to the Chinese. They closed both sides at the same time and for more than a week there was no access to any properties along it. When I went to the offices of an important donor which happens to have relocated there last month it was a joke: we tried to get onto the road from five different points, and only succeeded when we were beckoned onto a semi-finished portion by a haughty Congolese labourer with wrap-around sunglasses. He relished the helpless expressions on the faces of people desperate to reach their destination. I think he wanted a small bribe from us, as the road was officially closed, but we hardened our hearts and gave him nothing.

Maybe some explanation is called for at this point. The roads of the DRC had deteriorated to such an extent that its motorable network had shrunk to less than 2,000km – in a country bigger than France and Germany combined. China spotted a gap, and offered a barter deal: we build roads, and you give us mines. Originally the deal was worth $9.2 billion, though later it was reduced to $6.2 billion. The deal went through like a dream, and now, all over the country, there are Chinese road builders. It helps China in more than one way. In addition to buying extremely profitable mines very cheaply, they can employ their prison labour. So thousands of non-violent criminals are imported, put into camps, fed on minimum rations, and roads are built. They use Congolese for some of the labouring jobs to put an employment generation gloss on their work, but all the interesting work is done by Chinese.

Kinshasa is the main beneficiary of the road-building programme. All the main roads are getting the treatment and from the traffic point of view the results are beginning to show. Journey times are down substantially, and will be even better when the major routes are finished by the end of this year.

But no gain without pain. Yesterday I had a call from the dentist. He had had to cancel all appointments that day because access to his surgery had been completely blocked by the Chinese road builders. When I went to see him this morning did he swear and curse? No, two words were enough to say it all, through clenched (and perfect) teeth: Les Chinois.

Maybe the Chinese have realised that their behaviour is not encouraging friendship between the two nations, so it was interesting to come across a new development: “The Chinese Congolese Friendship Association”. It is located quite centrally, but in one of the worst roads in the whole capital. Its name is proudly advertised in freshly painted letters two feet high, on a rough and ready concrete block wall. “Multi-purpose Community Hall” it adds (all in French, of course). To prove the bond between the two countries there is a painting of the two flags which merge fuzzily at the centre. Whether this will make any difference remains to be seen, but I suppose one must give them credit for trying.

But no number of friendship associations will rectify the harm that they do to the environment. You know when roads are going to be “improved” when you hear the horrible buzz of chain saws, and the sickening crash as another mighty tree hits the dust. Systematically the thousands of magnificent old trees that used to line the roads are being cut down. They’re still called avenues, but in truth the new roads are concrete deserts. The Chinese definitely are more yellow than green.

The Shack and Salon Apocalypse

The other night we went to a little bar, at a junction with the main Boulevard running though Kinshasa. Nothing remarkable in that, you might think, until you know that the bar is a shack – yes, a rusty corrugated iron shack built literally under a massive 16 storey tower block of offices, raised on stilts in classic 1970s style. Just how the owner managed to negotiate that little corner of the property is something one can only marvel at, but there it is. Inside The Shack – for that is its name – is a main bar with a TV playing in the corner, and bottles of spirits set against a mirrored wall. A couple of posters of Paris give it the necessary sense of chic. Off the main bar are several smaller rooms: some smart – with a wine rack, for example, others just plain, and others more suitable for whispering sweet nothings to your paramour away from prying eyes.

This feat of disguising the pearl of the bar with the sow’s ear of the shack, made me think about the many other little bars one sees. The Congolese have a knack of transforming a grotty space off the pavement into somewhere you want to pass the time. The means at their disposal are minimal, a tree, a beach umbrella or a couple of pot plants, but they have the touch to make it seem special.

I’ve written a lot of critical stuff about the DRC. It’s so in-your-face disastrous in most ways. But in spite of all the adversity and poverty the Congolese have an amazing ability to make the most of a difficult situation.

For example, the poorest women emerge from the mud and grime of their environment wearing the most beautiful, and spotless, traditional outfits: neatly tailored blouses and long bum-hugging skirts.

Main streets are lined with little shops, each of which proclaims its identity with a religious slogan, “Jesus is Lord” or “Lord Bless Us” or “Matthew 3: 14” etc, or maybe the name of a prophet Eben Ezer (always two words), or occasionally something more thought provoking such as Salon Apocalypse. Beneath the name there’s always an optimistic list of what they sell, such as “Clothing, hardware, soft drinks and other goods” but do not be disappointed if the list outside is different from what’s inside. And then, the crowning glory for each shop is the sign-writing. A coquettish girl beckons you into the clothing shop; on the walls of the hardware shop is a rake, each prong painted faithfully, a gleaming shovel, and a hammer which looks indestructible. The pills on the walls of pharmacies, though 50 times life size, look more authentic than the ones for sale inside.

But most amazing of all are the cars and minibuses. A large proportion of them have come from the rubbish heaps of Europe, sold there as being uneconomical to repair. Ten years later, at the hands of untrained, but immensely resourceful mechanics, they still going. How they do it is anyone’s guess. I recently watched in open-mouthed amazement as a pair of grubby mechanics changed the gearbox and engine of a car which one of the office staff had bought. They worked in the office garden, with tools no more special than spanners and screwdrivers – laying the parts apparently haphazardly in the sandy soil – but completed the job in two days. He probably paid them no more than $20 a day each.

Many of the vehicles have had so many bumps that there’s not a flat surface to be found. A lot of them are cast-off tradesmen’s vans, and still have their proprietor’s logos and advertising on the side. There’s something very odd about seeing a German central heating company’s van driving around Kinshasa.

It is truly difficult to understand how people cope. I’ve never been in a place where the basic rules of economics seem so difficult to apply. Where does the money come from and how do people survive?

But a bigger puzzle is how they manage to smile so much.

Peace projects

If you were to add up the total number of donor-funded projects in the DRC it would be in the thousands. Some of them are run directly by the donor concerned, some by consultant firms and some by international or local NGOs (non-government organisations).

Development aid these days is basically supported by fund raising. Everyone has to look over their shoulder to make sure that their work is being recognised, because if it isn’t who’s going to fund it next time round?

Whether it is USAID requiring funds from Congress, or Médecins sans Frontières, or Save the Children from charitable contributions made by little old women, they all need money and to get that money they have to look good. More than ever they rely on cleverly designed promotional material which shows the good work that they are doing. You know what I mean: on the one hand starving, sick, neglected and impoverished people, and on the other pictures of babies getting vaccinated, children getting water from a tap, and bright new classrooms filled with earnest children being well educated. “We make a difference” proclaims the pamphlet/web site/whatever.

There was an interesting case recently in the DRC. The British Ambassador, flanked by the head of the development agency DFID and others bigwigs addressed the National Assembly. He was careful to note that DFID had received a 42% increase for its programs in the Congo – the biggest increase of any country in the world, and in contrast to the cuts being made at home. When the time came for questions, he was revelling in the prospect of grateful speeches of thanks, possibly tinged with a little hint of asking for more. What he got was the opposite. “Why is Britain investing so much here? You want to take over all our mines.” “You are just here to exploit us.” “You are trying to turn us into an Anglophone country – just like you did to Rwanda.” “You are only here to spy.” DFID was established under the leadership of Claire Short. It’s clear that her good middle class Hampstead values under which DFID is basically prevented from advertising its role in projects (we mustn’t boast, that’s not British) is a complete flop.

DFID’s dilemma emphasises just how important it is to communicate what you’re doing, but it’s not enough to simply put out press releases etc. The big problem is always how to distinguish between what you are doing and what the other hundred or so others development groups are doing, so you have to invent a catchy name for your project. More importantly, for fund raising, you have to make it sound IMPORTANT.

But that’s not always so easy. So that while teaching the staff of the National Assembly to keep proper Hansard-type record of debates you can’t call it “The National Assembly Staff Basic Training Project”. That makes it sound unimportant and patronising, as if they don’t know what they’re doing, even though that is perfectly true. Who would give hard-earned money for that? Not cynical members of parliament or congress: they would, with some justification ask why they (the Congolese) need international aid for that. So, instead, you have to call it “The DRC Democracy Development Project”.

When you are running a project on street cleaning you call it the “Kinshasa Peace Project” (true) so that its truly pedestrian nature (giving funds to operate a service that the city authorities used to provide unaided) is given a transformative gloss: employment generation, recycling, etc etc leading to a reduction in the tension being experienced by the poor people of Kinshasa.

Your title has to include key words which will make sure it is picked up in a Google search. Favourite key words are, of course, peace, justice, democracy, participation, gender and development. You need at least two of those in your project title, but to do well you need more. To make it all look politically connect, you dress your unstinting donation to the poor in the language of a “partnership”, and reinforce the message by displaying the national flags of both countries neatly twinned at the top of project documents and business cards.

The problem is that there are only so many titles of this sort, so inevitably they sound incredibly similar which is where the second phase comes in: preparing the before and after video clips and photos, the sound bite from satisfied customers and so on. This doesn’t come cheap – many agencies employ top of the range photographers and cinematographers for their public relations material. UNICEF cleverly uses film stars as volunteer ambassadors, other use royalty and other celebrities. Just to attract these volunteer celebrities can require expensive lobbying and schmoozing.

We on the ground, of course, see it somewhat differently. “You’re on one of those democracy projects? Ha Ha. I hope your pay’s not linked to results . . .”

Your Money or your life

Something a bit more serious. I’ve written about a riot in Lubumbashi which came about when people who had been holding a spontaneous outpouring of anger against some government decision or other, discovered that the man who told them to demonstrate was refusing to pay. Now that, in Congolese culture, is totally wrong. Why would you demonstrate if you are not going to be paid for it?

I had not grasped the full significance of this at the time, but it appears that this is so engrained that it is practically impossible to raise any form of political enthusiasm without paying for it. One can only guess how this started, but clearly it is much easier than it might be elsewhere due to the poverty. And where the elite have fortunes measured in the billions, a few dollars here or there is worth it. So rent-a-crowd, a tradition not unknown in the West, is now the norm.

Recently there was a major clash in Kinshasa when “civil society” was demonstrating against corrupt voter registration. I assumed that the demonstrators were truly expressing their anger, and had unselfishly given up a day’s livelihood to participate. No sir! They got (one is told) $5 each for their pains. What they didn’t know is that this $5 would put them at risk: one was killed and many were severely injured by riot police. That is not to say that they were unprepared for confrontation: that was the whole idea. So some had thoughtfully been armed with Molotov cocktails which they did not hesitate to use when the police attacked.

A Congolese friend of a colleague was in charge of a large construction project. He had to hire a large team of tradesmen and labourer. At the end of each month, after they got paid, they would queue outside his office. My colleague asked him why they were queuing. Without any sense of shame his friend pointed out that each one owed him 10% of their salary for getting them a job, and they were just paying their dues.

It is no different with the police. In a system where every policeman has a godfather, either the person who got him the job, or gave him the promotion, this mercenary behaviour is almost a necessity. At the occasional times when they are paid the policemen queue outside the office of their respective godfather to give him his 10%.

Some would say that the police handling of the voter registration demonstration was inept. They could maintain that if the police hadn’t been so rough, the situation would not have turned violent. But is this the whole truth? Maybe they had an incentive to make it rough. If so, it would not be unusual. Just as the politicians pay the public to demonstrate, so too others pay the police and the military to shoot the demonstrators. You might think that this is a ridiculous invention, but there’s a whole book about it.

After all, if you’re one of the security forces, you too can demand a special bonus for doing what you’re told. You need money to survive, and, like the demonstrators, you are risking life and limb.

Of mice and men

If we lived in Kensington our block of flats would be called Equator Mansions. That’s because it considers itself quite grand. The French equivalent, which doesn’t have quite the same resonance, is Residence Equateur.

But even mansions have problems. Shameful problems.

We must not jump ahead. Our fine flat has a capacious kitchen at the corner of which is a large duct. This duct carries drain pipes and electric cables to and from the floors above. There is an opening at its base about half the size of a normal door, which is covered by wooden louvres to give the plumber access, and a small hatch at the top.

We blame it on the time when we had 10 soldiers living in the yard behind us, because ever since then there has been a bit of a commotion going on behind that louvre door. The commotion that rat families make when they are having a good time. It makes the dogs frantic with frustration that they can hear but cannot reach them.

We complained, of course, and the landlord said it was our problem, not his. “If I were you”, he said, “I would get a cat”. Yes, sure, and the dogs would eat the cat.

I was only spurred into action when she who must be obeyed was getting up very early one morning to catch a flight. Unfortunately she caught a fright as well. There it was, sitting on the shelf, licking its lips after a good snack of the dog food. (Do they have lips? Well, you know what I mean.)

Down to the shop we go and buy a noxious poison called Rattex. It comes in the form of little swiss rolls that rats obviously find irresistible. I lay them carefully on the top shelves of the larder, and I throw lots down the duct from the hatch at the top.

It was a few days later when we reaped what we had sown: a disgusting, truly disgusting smell of rotting rat. Flies suddenly found their way in, even though our windows are covered with mosquito gauze.

But the problem was who was going to (a) open the louvre door to the duct (and possibly let loose a hoard of angry rats) and (b) dispose of the rotting ones?

Naturally, not me. That’s not the sort of thing I’m trained for.

But others in the family insisted it was man’s work. Once cornered into agreeing to do it, I had to insist that the procedure should be left for a day to allow me time to get used to the idea.

That night, when we came back after dinner, we found that hatch from the top of the duct had fallen off. What was more, it wasn’t just on the floor where it should have been, but some distance along the sink half tucked under the wire plate rack. There was mess everywhere, and even the louvre door at the bottom had been dislodged.

Massive rat? That’s possible, but unlikely. Poltergeist? Probably, if you believe in ghosts. Cat?? If so, how did it get there? But maybe if it was a cat, the dogs had chased it and in so doing the hatch had been shoved around. Who knows?

Anyway the next evening I armed myself with a powerful torch, plastic bags with which to pick up the corpses, and a hammer to slaughter any that were still alive.

The first thing was to open the louvre door. At first sight it wasn’t so bad: yes there were all sorts of strange debris and lots of droppings, but no dead bodies. But eventually, after searching every nook and cranny, one hand over nose, I found it. A rather small rat, but big enough to start having babies, I would think. Stuck in the corner, like a naughty child in the classroom. Ever so gently, I grasp its still firm tail and extract it.

The trouble, of course, is where are the rest? There were many. One rat can’t have a party, and they were definitely having rat parties. So the question now is when will they come back? One thing is certain: by the end of our time here, we’ll be inured to the smell of rotting rat and I might even be able to pick up dead ones without gagging.

But is there something more to it that that? Like the Egyptians (the ancient ones, not Mubarak and his friends) are we being subjected to supernatural pestilence? Flood – tick; fire – tick; rats – tick; ghosts - ?? What’s next?