More gems from Kinshasa’s taxi-buses (third in the series). Mystery prize to anyone who gets a picture of the ‘Voila Kinshasa’ taxi, which I’ve now passed twice in Limete.
Zeka lu zeka – shake your hips (Kikongo)
Sous sol – underground
Selon classement – according to type
Muana ya bansango – child of catholic fathers (Lingala)
Bakala ya ngolo – strong man (Kikongo)
Bebe sagesse – baby wisdom
Je suis vainqueur – I’m a conquerer
Mabe na yo eteya yo – Your misdeeds will teach you (Lingala)
Leon du tribu de Judah – Lion of the tribe of Judah
Ndeko kolela te eza makambo eyaka – My brother don’t cry, these things happen (Lingala)
Where are you going?
La serie continue – The series continues
Pharmacie
L’eternelle est mon berger – the eternal is my shepherd
Photo: Mokonzi means ‘chief’, ‘king’ or ‘president’. (It’s one of Koffi Olomide’s many nicknames, but it’s also used for Jesus, as the Star of David implies in this case.)
In his book, Kinshasa, Signes de Vie, Lye Yoka saw an evangelical spirit and a fascination with oracles in the slogans on taxi-buses: “These oracles are a manifestation of the exorcising and cathartic power of the word in the face of poverty and paranoia. This fascination and propagation of the written word is coupled with the headiness of speed, which constitutes another way for the marginalized to appropriate time and space…” Which is nicely summed up by Expresse parole, (see below).
Back in 1999, Yoka was worried by the appearance of smaller, commercially produced stickers, fretting that they might eventually replace hand-cut stencils, but the stencils (made to order and paid for by the letter) are very much in evidence to this day. Lingala bumper stickers are something of a niche business, after all.
To add to Thomas‘s list, here are some slogans I noted with the help of fellow passengers in the course of a single journey from Ndjili to Gombe yesterday evening. It’s not a bad way to pass the time in heavy traffic. If you can improve on the translations (asterisks signal uncertainty or unknown words), or can help with hidden inferences – ‘pasta’, in particular, is crying out for expanation – please leave a comment. And if you can send in your own contributions, even better.
Pasta
Elevation
Revelation
Responsable
Chegue Vara – Che Guevara
Chasse a l’homme – Man hunt
Nanu esili te – Not finished yet
Bolamu zoba- Stupid happiness
Expresse parole – Word express
Mola mokonzi bien – Good king*
Pourquoi pas moi – Why not me?
Coeur de grand – Heart of a giant
Pourquoi pas nous? – Why not us?
Temps de la grace – Time of grace
Source du travail – Source of work
Paix du coeur – Peace of the heart
D’ici 45 mins – 45 minutes from here/now
La ligue du champion – Champion’s league
Nzambe nasali nini? – God what shall I do?*
Nionso makambo? – Is everything a problem?
Buaka patcha jesu alokata – Jesus will harvest*
C’est l’etoile du berger – It’s the star of the shepherd
Sepela kozua ya moninga – Enjoy taking from your friend
Boseka ngai te nanu esili te – Don’t laugh at me, time’s not up
Soki oyini ngai okozua nini? – If you hate me what will you get?
Tozali kosandela kasi bolingo eza te – We pray but there’s no love
It’s been too long, for the simple reason that I have been keeping busy with some fairly intensive work involving lots of travel in eastern Congo. Time to reach out to you the reader to ask for your contributions. Some call this crowdsourcing. Anyway, if you or your Kinois friends have any photos, links or snippets related to life in Kinshasa, please send them in for consideration. (Contact info is on the About page.)
Specifically, it would be nice to start a collection of the enigmatic slogans in Lingala, French and occasionally English, adorning Kinshasa’s taxibuses. If you can note them down or snatch a photo, please do so. To start us off, and to illustrate why these slogans merit attention for their humour and philosophical insight, Thomas sent me this selection of his favourites (to which I can add have added rough translations in due course). My own shorter list will follow shortly.
Another fine, fine video from Baloji: Le Jour d’Après/Siku ya Baadaye (Indépendance Cha-Cha), from his album, Kinshasa Succursale. In an interview with Ouni, Baloji (a Mikiliste/’Afropean’ who has Congolese origins but lives in Belgium) described how the album was recorded in just six days here in Kinshasa:
There are approximately 35 musicians involved, a band, a fanfare… It was a very hectic process. I wanted to be spontaneous, old fashion way, no professional studio tools, nothing clean, basically a sound with a rawness to it and a real feeling. Also, I wanted to emphasize the sound of the guitar. Guitar is not often or rarely associated with ‘urban’ music and more used in ‘white’ music. But in Africa, for example for the TINARIWEN (guitar poets and soul rebels residing from the Sahara deserts) , the guitar is a standard in their music. Basically it’s just the way you play it that makes the ultimate difference.
(For those who prefer interviews you can listen to, Cedric Kalonji has an audio clip just for you.)
A word about the original Indépendence Cha Cha. While Congolese delegates including Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasavubu negotiated the terms of independence with Belgian officials and drafted a provisional constitution, Joseph Kabasele and African Jazz recorded three spontaneous, joyous musical salutes to the process: Indépendance Cha Cha, Table Ronde and Vive Lumumba Patrice. The first of these was a huge hit at home and abroad, and became the popular anthem for independence struggles across the continent:
Indépendance cha cha tozui e
Oh! Kimpuanza cha cha tubakidi
Oh! Table Ronde cha cha ba gagné o
Oh! Dipanda cha cha tozui e
(Independence cha cha, we’ve won it
Oh! Independence cha cha, we’ve achieved it
Oh! The round table cha cha, we’ve pulled it off
Oh! Independence cha cha, we’ve won it)
[the word for independence is given in French, Lingala and Kikongo]
It was almost as if the band had helped seal the deal. A new recruit to the band, Charles Hénault, told Gary Stewart about their overwhelming reception on return to Kinshasa from a European tour:
cars were waiting for us. And we rode around all of [Leopoldville], oh la la!, the modern city and the old city. People were screaming, they threw flowers at us. It was crazy. It was crazy. It was almost like a president’s motorcade. It was incredible. And the horns, and the noise. The noise as though there were some big wedding going on.
For his part, Kabasele was proud to tell a Congolese newspaper, “I assure you that, to some degree, we confirmed for the other nations that the Congo was old enough to enjoy its independence”. (Both quotes are from Gary Stewart’s highly recommended book, Rumba on the River.)
Tresor, a supermarket checkout assistant, wore his fancy $20 shirt to work yesterday. It was the first time he’d worn it, so he was pleased that I noticed the faux diamonds on the collar, and happy to pose for a photo.
These boys are part of Kinshasa’s informal recycling system. I found them taking apart an old television, stripping and separating plastics, glass and metals for resale.
Unfortunately, these old TVs contain poisonous fire retardants and heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, mercury, beryllium and cadmium, which is why it’s illegal to dump them in more regulated countries. (According to Wikipedia, as well as being toxic to the heart, bones, intestines, kidneys, and reproductive and nervous systems, “lead interferes with the development of the nervous system and is therefore particularly toxic to children, causing potentially permanent learning and behavior disorders”.)
On a more cheering note, here are links to articles about makeovers for VW buses and a company called Congo Salubrité that makes PVC tubing fromplastic bags collected by garbage pickers.
There are plenty of towns in Congo where the only way to get around is on foot and by bicycle. In such places, it’s well worth a few Congolese francs to travel by toleka (a bicycle taxi with a cushion over the back wheel).
Not so in Kin, where I would sooner swim the Kinsuka rapids than cycle on some of the main roads. Indeed, pedaler (to pedal in French) is slang for ‘to die slowly’ in Kinshasa.
Yet these days you do see some brave/foolish souls on bikes, ducking and weaving between the unpredictable taxi-buses. I fear for for them, but I cheer for them too.
So I cheer for Rob Forbes, who made it through Kinshasa unscathed on his bike ride from Cirencester to South Africa. (He’s currently in Luanda, Angola.)
A friend is looking troubled. I ask him why, and he shows me a crumpled page of A4. It looks like some sort of extravagant shopping list, scribbled in a mixture of French and Lingala. I look more closely at the heading: “Facture ya libala ya muana na ngai” (“Invoice for the wedding of my child”). The list has nothing to do with the wedding celebration itself, it’s an opening bid from the bride’s family, setting the price of their consent.
My friend hasn’t had a regular job for over a year, but he does a little bit of informal business as a ‘mechano’, fixing cars and trading parts. He and his partner have a child, and they would like to have married a long time ago, but they haven’t been able to afford it.
In some countries (i.e. those which consume rather than produce diamonds), the groom is expected to put a couple of months’ salary into the engagement ring, which at least goes to his bride-to-be. Bearing in mind that my friend doesn’t have a salary, this might translate into two or three hundred dollars. So how on earth is he supposed to scrape together the following? (Wait until you get to the stinger at the bottom of the list.)
a suit, shirt & tie
a pair of shoes
a watch
a bike
a lamp
a bedspread
an iron
two wax pagnes
a radio-cassette player
a machete & a hoe
coffee & milk
a billy goat
a magnum of wine
a bottle of whisky
soap
30 cases of beer & soft drinks (OK, this part might be for the ceremony)
Oh, and US$2500 (this part is negotiable, apparently)
But that’s not all. That was just for the family of the father of the bride. Her mother’s family requests/expects:
5 women’s suits
a bedspread
a goat
a gold necklace
a headscarf
sugar
soap
a catering-size cooking pot
a large serving dish
a sack of salt
My friend is dedicated and phlegmatic, though, painstakingly ticking off the items on the list as he acquires them one-by-one over weeks and months. He must really want to get married.
(Last week I linked from my post about the minister’s goats to Amelie’s post about ‘la dot‘, Congo’s bride price practice, with a similar list from 1983.)
The other tenants have been complaining about the smell in the hallway, so now the goats are tethered outside on the street. (After all, to call someone a billy goat in Lingala – ntaba mobali – is to say that they stink.) Their neighbour, formerly a senior civil servant, has just become a VIP, winning a ministerial appointment in the latest reshuffle.
Instead of sending cards, the new minister’s better off friends and relatives have brought gifts. Some bring whisky or champagne, others bring live chickens and goats (five, to date). A goat (worth $70-120 in Kinshasa depending on its size) is the most prestigious of these, symbolising wealth, and being the essential ingredient for a good feast (to which the giver might hope to be invited).
Clearly, the minister isn’t in desperate need of extra food, and nobody’s getting married, so why the lavish generosity? The message is quite simple, yet a little devious: “Don’t forget about me”. No favour will be requested on the spot, but when the time is right to cash it in, the hope is that the minister will feel obliged to help his friend out, perhaps finding a nice post in the ministry for a younger relative, or bypassing some of that costly red tape.
I’m told such tributes are occasionally refused, not so much to escape the attendant obligation, and certainly not for the sake of the neighbours, but out of superstitious concern that the animal may bring trouble. A more common solution to this problem is to invite a féticheur to carry out a discrete cleansing ceremony to dispense with any malign or mischievous spirits.
So what will happen to this goat? Most likely it will be slaughtered and turned into brochettes when the Minister next throws a party, or sent to his family for the same purpose. It might be passed on to another important person to pay off a debt, to bank a favour for a rainy day, or to say (more or less) ‘I haven’t forgotten you’. Or in case of real surplus, shortage of grazing space, and intolerant neighbours, it might simply be chopped up and put in the freezer.
Graphic of Brazzaville and Kinshasa by Humerto Sarabia and Marion Bouchard for the Fusion Cities project (Creative Commons license). The section suggests the ferries that ply the Congo River as a ‘common downtown’ of the two cities.
Separated only by the Congo River, Brazzaville and Kinshasa are the two closest capital cities in the world (unless you count Vatigan City and Rome). Founded in 1880 and 1881 respectively, they have grown together and influenced each other along the way through various forms of commercial and cultural exchange.
In 2005, a group of researchers treated ‘Brakin’ as one urban environment in which Kinshasa is a mirror image of Brazzaville, mapping such diverse phenomena as street children, trade, land disputes, colonial architecture, mobile phone advertising, roundabouts and UN presence. I have a copy of BRAKIN: Visualizing the Visible, the book of their findings and quirky maps.
Last year, a group of architecture students in Germany worked on new maps of several pairs of ‘fusion cities‘, including ‘Brakin‘.
Here are some of the interesting observations made by the students in their presentation:
Long before the colonial era, the area surrounding Malebo Pool was an active trading zone for grains, fish, ivory and other goods.
From 1960 to 1966, the population of Leopoldville/Kinshasa grew from 400,000 to 2 million.
Demarcation of the border along the river is uncertain, leaving some of the islands in Malebo Pool free of legislation and attractive for illicit trading.
Around 3 million people cross between Kinshasa and Brazzaville each year. However, many do so just to trade in informal markets on ferries, on islands and around the ports. Young people cross to Kinshasa to study and for the nightlife. Radio stations, TV channels and bands who gig on both sides of the river help music to transcend the frontier.
The two cities were officially twinned in the 1980s. The idea to construct a road and rail bridge between them was first explored in 1991, but has faced various political and financial difficulties.
(A couple of footnotes about the bridge: After further delays, feasibility studies are underway again with financing from the African Development Bank. The 4km bridge would complete road links from Capetown to Tripoli and rail links from Pointe Noire to East Africa. Somebody caused a fuss on by posting images of the bridge on Google Earth.)
