Hunting for the visa

The Congo has a clever scheme to raise money: you have to have a visa to leave as well as arrive. If you’re resident, as we are, this must be renewed every seven months, at a price. This is in addition to the residence visa, which last for three years.

When my residence visa expired in February I sent in my passport for a renewal. It will take two months, they say, so they give you a fancy letter, with hologram stamp on the top and your photo, to prove to whoever might be interested that I have a passport which is currently being held by immigration for renewal of my residence visa.

Two months come and go. I’m assured that everything’s under control and it will be ready soon. But just when I really have to have it because I’m supposed to be leaving to go to a wedding, it becomes evident that nothing has actually been done. Crisis! They say they will only release the passport for an emergency, and the general view is that weddings don’t constitute such. We cook up a perjurious letter about my child being seriously ill in South Africa. The letter is read with deep sympathy, but not enough sympathy to get me an exit visa in less than three days, by which time I’ve had to change the flight at great expense.

Anyway, I make it to South Africa just in time for the wedding. As soon as I get back I send in the passport for the residence visa again. In six weeks I have to leave again, this time for an important work assignment, and as the departure approaches tension builds up. Our expediter makes regular visits and seems confident that things are happening, but with three days to go there’s still no passport. This time I insist on coming with him.

An official points us to a pile of forms – “you’ll find the form in there”, he says, and sure enough we do eventually find it. It shows that the money we paid has been received by a certain clerk, but has not yet been banked, as is required, three weeks later. Obviously the said clerk is taking advantage of the system to use my money before banking it. Deep gloom sets in, not to mention tension. We even think of paying the fee again, $400, just to make sure I get the visa in time.

The next day things look better: the money has now been banked so the passport can go “upstairs” which is where the big boss sits. Without his signature, the visa is useless. Two days later, at 4.45 p.m. on the eve of my departure early the next morning, I get the passport.

When I got my passport, as a matter of interest I looked at it carefully: the visa had been stamped in the passport fully three weeks earlier. The Congo sure works in mysterious ways.

A tale of two cities (2)

We are in Kikwit, famed for being the location of a terrible outbreak of the Ebola Virus back in 1995 which killed 245 people. It is a large, sprawling town built along the banks of wide, slow flowing and navigable river, the Kwilu. A market town which attracts custom from hundreds of kilometres away. As we drive in we pass a man pushing a bicycle, with a massive sack strapped onto the carrier. The bike was wobbling with the load, and he was struggling to keep it upright. It was four in the afternoon. “You see that?” said my colleague, “It looks like cassava roots. He’s probably been pushing that load all day to get here. The prices are much better in town, so for him it’s worth the effort, even if it’s only an extra ten dollars.”

Kikwit’s got the advantage of being on a tarred road to Kinshasa so the shops can get their supplies by road. Other goods come by river, a journey which takes at least two weeks. There’s no doubt: it’s an important place.

But is it a happy place?  The next evening, after work, we take a walk. The roads are lined by shops and little stalls predictably selling ridiculously cheap Chinese goods. Wherever possible people have laid out goods for sale on the ground. We shove our way through the crowd, wondering what everyone is doing. There don’t seem to be many people buying, but some obviously must do so – otherwise there wouldn’t be so many people selling. And that was when I was struck by the fact that everyone’s stressed and wears a frown of irritation or anger as they push through the milling throng. No, it’s not a happy place.

The noise, the people, the dirt, the frowns – they all get on one’s nerves. We escape for a walk along a minor road parallel with the river. The road is churned up and a lorry is totally stuck. Our guide used to live in this area in the old days (under Mobutu, that is). He says it is very sad to see how everything has deteriorated so much, and what used to be smart housing overlooking the river is now dilapidated and forlorn.

Likewise the hotel. We are staying in the poshest place in town, but does it have running water, electricity? No. The floor of our enormous room is gritty with dirt, and the windows don’t quite fit. To make up for the lack of water in the taps they provide a vast dustbin-like barrel of water, from which you can fill a bucket. But it is pitch dark, so if you don’t have a torch you’re literally feeling your way. It’s not quite fair to blame the hotel for the lack of water and electricity. These are nationalised industries and don’t work in lots of places. For some strange reason electricity is only turned on from six in the evening until midnight, so at night we can see inside the bathroom, and observe that the light fittings have mostly been removed and all that remains of them is bare wires sticking out of the wall.

The next evening we are invited to have an early supper at the home of a relative of a colleague. We’ve all put money into a kitty and she has prepared the food. This is the other city: her house is out of the centre, in an area of large plots typical of all Congolese towns. Each family has built its own house. We sit outside, sharing the space with some hens and their chicks and a skinny kitten. We’re surrounded by other houses, but are hidden by a half finished house in front and the old house behind. A table is brought out and a mass of pots follows. As we eat, the sun sets and we realise how quiet it is, in total contrast to the mayhem of the city centre. A small tree grows in the corner onto which the hens and their chicks cleverly climb and prepare to nest on top.

Unlike the posh hotel this area is not connected to any electricity, and soon we are sitting in total darkness. Nature decides: it’s time to go.

The next day we go back to Kinshasa. On the way to our privileged abode we divert to leave a colleague at his house. Approaching it we hit a massive traffic jam. It transpires that a huge truck with a trailer is stuck in a pothole. This is literally almost a metre deep and about three metres wide and the truck simply cannot get the power to pull itself out of the hole. Eventually, and we’re not sure how, it succeeds and traffic moves again. With a four wheel drive car, we’ve nothing to fear from the hole, but cannot help getting a bit anxious as we plunge into it. And then, only about 50 metres further on there’s another one, almost as big.

We drop off the colleague – the Chief Accountant – at a neat house set in a muddy lane full of rubbish, then drive back to our place.

The contrast couldn’t be greater. Our street is an avenue with majestic old trees on generous verges. Street sweepers and gardeners, one every fifty metres or so, and all paid by the same city of great potholes and muddy lanes, work seven days a week to sweep up any falling leaves and tidy the verges. Not only is the contrast between our two neighbourhoods, two cities united in name only, unconscionable, the misallocation of resources is positively ridiculous. One can only ask: “why?”

A show to remember

A show to remember

Every year Monte Carlo holds a Spring Arts Festival, but this year is different. The Princess Caroline of Monaco decided that instead of holding it in the city itself they should do so in Kinshasa. Yup, Kinshasa, that jewel of central Africa which resembles Monaco only in so far as gambling is big. The gamble to make enough money every day to feed your children.

Be that as it may, when word got around that the Princess was coming, society was in a twitter. Who would get invited to meet her? And when and where? We were brought into the net by a social-climbing friend who said she thought she might be able to swing a ticket to a special performance for Her Royal Highness by the Kimbanguiste Orchestra. They are the self taught orchestra with home made instruments (for more about them see “School of Hard Knocks” and “Rumble in the Rubbish”). Tickets duly obtained, it was a bit of a let down (socially speaking, of course) on the night when we found that the concert was, in fact free and open to the public. It was held at the open air amphitheatre that Mobutu had built in the grounds of his palace, and where James Brown had given a famous concert in the 70s.

The programme had three warm-up events, local tribal dancing shows, and we arrived late in the hope that we would miss them. No such luck: we sat through two extraordinarily bad performances and one, by a new youth group, quite exciting one. The events were introduced by two MCs at a level of decibels that was truly deafening. The princess, sitting in a VIP section at the front, clapped politely at the end of each performance.

While the dancing was taking place a man climbed onto a wall behind the stage to set up a projector. It was clearly not an easy job to balance on top of the wall, focus the projector and aim it at the back-projection screen, but he did it.

The serious part of the evening then started with a performance by the Monaco String Quartet. There were no programme details so we could only guess what they were playing. It sounded like Strindberg. The problems were (a) how was a tiny quartet to be heard in such a huge amphitheatre, and (b) the very cerebral music was way above the heads of the audience. Of course there were microphones, but by this time the sound engineer seemed to have slipped off for a drink because although the microphones were definitely working the sound was so low that we couldn’t here the music. All we got was the squeaking high notes of the violins. People soon stopped trying to listen and a low murmuring of people discussing who was who soon took over from the music.

After the Strindberg there was some Schubert, so at least one could pick out something of a tune, but only just. The string quartet ended its performance with the customary bows and much shouting from the crowd. The Princess looked round in delight at the enthusiastic response to the music. What she didn’t pick up was that people were saying “enough”. Anyway, the normal encore was duly played, followed by more clapping and shouting. The leader of the quartet asked whether we wanted more. “NOOOOO” came the rowdy reply. The Princess looked round again, he face alight with pleasure at the happiness their performance had brought. The quartet played another jolly piece and asked again whether we wanted more. “No, No, No” the crowd roared. Thus encouraged, the quartet played a final piece and was about to start another when the MCs (who had definitely understood what the crowd was saying) politely ended the performance and and introduced a film about the Kimbanguiste Orchestra’s trip to Monaco the previous year.

During the string quartet’s performance the projector had been turned on and was showing ads for the sponsor of the event – a local bank. Now we understood what it was really there for. But fate was against it – the film was showing but there was no sound. We dutifully watched the first five minutes in silence until it was ignominiously stopped. The Princess tried not to look disapproving.

This was followed by a choral performance while the seating was being arranged for the orchestra, who finally took their seats to huge applause. The highlight was a cello concerto, with one of the Monaco players as the soloist. At last, something to enjoy.

A show to remember, for several reasons.