Back in Kin

It’s a funny feeling coming back to Kinshasa. Superficially not much has changed – a new supermarket, a massive furniture and household goods shop and two little shopping malls are the only obvious things in the centre. Fashions have changed, though: the wigs that almost all women were wearing have been replaced by the real thing, and now it’s quite unusual to see women in traditional dress.

And there are still a lot of people we know. Walking to work from the hotel takes me past our old house. I’m greeted warmly by a boy who makes a living washing cars at the corner; outside the block of flats we used to live in there’s the curio seller who not only remembers my name, but has the phone number of our previous maid: “she wants to work for you again” . . . The little gardener is still there, but they have taken down the little fence and removed the hedge that we had made to give the dogs a secure place. Fifty metres further on the Gurkhas guarding the British Embassy greet me warmly. It seems that they are the only ones there whom we know. Then there’s the flower seller, not much further. More friendly greetings.

Indeed the atmosphere is really peaceful, and in the mornings and evenings this stretch of road is full of joggers and makeshift gyms where a few women do their stuff on rugs laid out on the verges, always accompanied by strict count-downs, “un, deux, trois, quatre etc”. This used to take place along the banks of the river: that’s impossible now as president Kabila has closed it ostensibly for security reasons.

One still gets the feeling that this, for a city of 11 million plus, is like a village. Two people we knew had had contacts with our old driver; the staff in the office are almost the same, many of Nicky’s women friends are still here. When you go to a supermarket you are quite likely to run into someone you know. You go to a jazz concert at the French Institute and there are two couples you know.

But beyond this there are bigger changes. When we left the economy was doing well, and even though people at the bottom didn’t get much of a share there was an optimism. That’s all gone; the economy’s going through a really bad patch, triggered probably by the political uncertainty around Kabila’s attempts to stay in power. People are much slower to smile and there’s no talk about the future.

In contrast to the lovely shaded avenues where we live, the threat of horrible policemen is constant if you drive. “Never drive yourself until after dark” was the advice we got. The next day after getting this advice, a German, who’d lived her for 20 years, was driving on the main boulevard and was pulled over by three predatory policemen. They demanded a $120 dollars “fine” because he had strayed outside his lane. He was so angry at this absurd charge that he walked away from the car, leaving it in the road where he had been stopped. They responded by towing it to the pound and he had to pay $150 to get it out that evening.

So we’ve employed a driver, (who by pure, village style coincidence, was the driver of a South African women we had been friendly with in 2009/10) but at the week ends and evenings, in spite of the risk of roaming street gangs and military road blocks, we drive ourselves.

While on the subject of bad things I keep bumping into another old friend who’s into bike racing.

“How’s Claudette?” I ask. She was his girlfriend, a colonel in the army, full of good sense and fun. We did quite lot together, and seeing him brought back some happy memories.

“Last year she was made a General, the first woman general in the DRC army," he said, "Kabila made a big point of congratulating her. Two weeks later she was dead.”

Cause and effect?  A lot of people say that she had been poisoned.

For all that life is easy and pleasant. Welcome to Kinshasa!