The (Mis)Education of a Journalist in Kin La Belle

Also published in the Business Daily on 25 February 2014 at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Kinshasa-has-a-seductive-aura-and-lessons-for-Nairobi-leaders/-/539548/2219988/-/nvdrviz/-/index.html

There is no doubt whatsoever that Lingala is the most beautiful language in the world. (At a somewhat distant second is Dholuo, but that is not the point of this column today). Lingala, when spoken, sounds like music. That may be because our typical encounter with it is through the mouths of the best musicians on the continent. Because it is a lingua franca, it contains smatterings of Kiswahili, and there’s always the feeling that you can catch the meaning if you really pay attention, but you never quite manage, and an understanding of it is always just out of reach. You cannot wrap your mind around Lingala (as a native Kenyan), so you simply sit back and let the music of the words wrap itself around you.

And that is the exact same case with the city of Kinshasa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I spent a week in ‘Kin la belle’ at a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) conference, and just when I thought I had wrapped my head around the concept of Kinshasa and the DRC, I had to begin all over again. I had to restart this column so many times that I decided that, for my sanity, the only thing to do was to write it at the departure lounge of N’djili International Airport. Let me explain.

When I told my mother that I was going to spend a week in the DRC, she reacted as any mother would (even one whose son is in his mid thirties with a family of his own): ‘isn’t that the country at war? Is it safe?’ My expectations were set sufficiently low, and were promptly blown away upon landing.

Kinshasa is a city which, in a certain light, puts Nairobi to shame. In many parts of the city (and not just the smart bits) there are six- and eight-lane highways. Almost every street is superbly lit, and the roads are smooth, wide and properly paved. What strikes you is that this is not some recent project, but is the result of long-term maintenance. There is still the expected decay endemic in many coastal African cities, and Kinshasa is a city that sits at low altitude next to a massive body of water (the legendary Congo River), but the thought that strikes you is a desire to buy Evans Kidero a ticket and ask him to learn how to keep a city well-lit and paved.

And it is not just about the tourist-pleasing stuff in the upmarket sections of town. On one of the nights, a few fellow conference attendees and I decided to go and see the ‘real’ Kinshasa, and catch a bit of Champions League football while we were at it. That’s how we ended up at Le Dancing Club Cheetah 2, deep in the heart of downtown. It is an open-air, street-level nyama choma and beer joint. We were surrounded by hundreds of football fans who chanted and sang along, which created the surreal effect of being in a European stadium in the middle of a sweltering African city. The Lingala exhortations shouted at Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany (whose father is Congolese) were in contrast to the young man shouting in my ear that Kinshasa was ‘cent pour cent (100%) pour Barcelone’. Nairobi, whether because of our fear of crime and terrorism, or our natural reticence, has nothing close to offering that sense of communal entertainment and fraternisation.

At the conference itself, I met the CEO of a company named Gecamines. The company (General des Carrieres et des Mines in full) was once the world’s largest producer of copper. Its most successful year was at the height of Mobutu’s rule, in 1986. The company had undergone some difficulties, including the collapse of its main mine and that of its finances. It has now undertaken a $3 billion reorganisation plan, with the intention of getting back to the big leagues of copper, zinc and cobalt production. The plan includes the development of a 500MW coal-fired power plant at Luena.

A further conversation with the Industrialisation Minister (with me engaging him in broken French) brought further sincerely-worded expressions of ambition, and the determination by the government to finally put the DRC on the road to the economic path that can match up to its riches.

Kinshasa and Congolese companies and the government may thus lull you into a sense of the unfairness with which we have understood this vast country for so long. They are trying their best, one thinks, and maybe we need to re-calibrate our estimations of the place.

That is until one gets to the airport. The road there is full of monuments to past heroes of the country’s tragic past (Joseph Kasavubu’s and Patrice Lumumba’s are just two that I noticed). But the departure area is your worst nightmare of an African airport – full of confusion and arbitrary checks. The experience, while not particularly nasty, does leave you with a sour taste before departure, and detracts from what was a surprisingly positive experience.

The conclusion, then, is to treat Kinshasa like Lingala – like a mysterious, strangely seductive experience that you cannot quite wrap your mind around.