Kinshasa la belle

I had hoped to be able to check in before now, but for a variety of reasons it just hasn’t happened. Nor do I have anything earth-shattering to report at the moment, since I don’t really feel ‘stuck in’ yet. I have spent the week in a strange sort of holding pattern as I wait for the move from Kinshasa to Goma. I’m really here to work in the east, so Kinshasa has in some ways felt like an extended layover. I think this sense of being ‘in transit’ has contributed to my not feeling like I have much to say.

What I can tell you is a little bit about the city itself. Overall, it’s a lot like I expected. It reminds me more of Port-au-Prince than anywhere else I’ve been, though I suspect that’s more to do with the physical landscape than any profound resemblance. Like PaP, the city is a crumbling, dilapidated mess of concrete structures warring it out with the rainforest – and losing. The trees are really lovely, with foliage so dense and luxuriant that they manage to conceal a lot of the city, which is no bad thing. They’re really the only hint of beauty in this place, though one has the sense that twenty years ago, Kinshasa was a stunningly fair city. Its nickname – Kinshasa la belle – would certainly suggest so, and it’s not hard to imagine, especially if you look down at the city from an elevated viewpoint. The trees are so tall that relatively few buildings interrupt their canopy; views from the office or apartment window reveal miles and miles of gently rolling hills in a thousand shades of green, the only scar cut by the lazy progress of the Congo river. Down on the ground, though, the scene is harsher. Kinshasa is in some ways more like Johannesburg in the nineties than like modern Niamey, N’djamena or Ouaga. Rather than simply being underdeveloped, it looks like it was once a thriving, functioning city that has since self-destructed. I’ve never seen any place so ramshackle, not even PaP. The roads are pocked with potholes the size of Volkswagons. Where the pavement has given way entirely, there are great troughs of mud that trap cars like flies in resin. Mould and moss creep over the crumbling concrete. Elevators and air conditioners have long since ceased working (except for the elevators in my colleague’s apartment building, which function by way of an attendant who responds to someone rapping on the elevator shaft and calling out their floor number. He opens the door with a screwdriver, and he has placed rocks in the car to act as counterweights. The faint of heart are invited to climb the twenty floors on foot.)

If I want to make another comparison to PaP, I suppose the Congolese are loosely analogous to the Haitians in their rich culture – their love of art, food, and especially music. If the Congolese could dance all day, they would. I’ve been here less than a week, but already I have the impression that one of the first questions a Congolese will ask you in a social environment is whether tu sais dancer – if you know how to dance. Whatever you answer, you will get teased, which is a good segue to another big feature of the people here: they are always joking. The Congolese love to laugh, and they manage to be genuinely funny about their pitiable situation. I am told that the people of Kinshasa, and of the west more generally, are very different from the people in the east. I guess it remains to be seen whether I’m sensitive enough to appreciate the difference as a foreigner living here for only two months. Other than the obvious difference in language, will I be able to perceive the cultural divide? On vera.

Tomorrow I finally take to the air. Here’s hoping for a smooth landing in Goma!