Update Gabon to Congo to DRC:Part Eight. Cornered in the DRC, still no end in sight on the visa saga.

Guess what – this time, in the town of Matadi, the gate guard is a youngish woman and there was NO way past her – and, sadly and surprisingly enough, the same old lie – “the consul is away in Luanda at a meeting.” Five minutes later she contradicted herself and said that they are currently waiting for the new consul to arrive as this is the time when they change consuls. She blanched as she realised she had contradicted her initial (standard Angolan) lie, turned on her heel and went through the steel gates never to be seen again.

What now? There was only one more consulate to try before the Angolan border – in Kinshasa. So Randy, Elisa, Graham and I set off on an 8 hour journey in a wonky taxi to Kinshasa – burst tyre on the way, a few hair-raising moments sliding around blind bends in the mountains, finally arrived at the terminus in the totally 'wrong' part of an already dangerous city way past sunset where we were supposed to take another taxi to get into the centre of the city, when even the taxi driver insisted we stay in the car while he called his brother in law to come accompany us into town – his brother in law being a senior DRC policeman! The two of them drove us into the centre and stayed with us whilst we went from place to place to look for accommodation (Kinshasa closes down completely at around 4pm and before sunset as it is simply too dangerous to be out on the streets) and finally saw us safely booked into a hotel which is way above our budget!

I was infinitely grateful to this unexpected and very considerate treatment from two complete strangers. Isn't life amazing – when least expected there is always a random act of kindness that restores your faith in people!

Kinshasa – Locally know as Kin, apprarently previously know as Kin la Belle (Kin the beautiful) and now more often as Kin la Poubelle (Kin the trash can). How to describe this place?

The stories I had heard from visitors to the city added up to something like this: “A big mad modern city with two sides: the haves and the have-nots. High walls with security around the extremely affluent people and right outside those walls, the most abject poverty, slums and dirt you will find anywhere.” In the group we have talked about these preconceptions some of us had of places we then discover for ourselves, and we have pretty much come to the conclusion that, because we have been travelling for so many months and through such a big part of West Africa – and probably because we have come from the north, and not from the much more developed and westernised south, our whole perception of what is “abject poverty, slums and dirt” is vastly different from everyone else's idea of the same concept. Kinshasa is a perfect example of this – but we could also be talking about Brazzaville, or Pointe Noire or Yaounde or about Nouakchott or Layounne or Bobo or Lome or Bamako – we could be talking about any of the big cities we have been to and spent some time in – or even simply driven through. All of these have these two opposing sides – the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor, the big houses with their walls and security, and the backstreets with their open sewage, piles of dirt and their shacks. And yet, when we talk about this, we all agree that we yet have to see the 'abject poverty'. I am generalising of course and I can almost already see the bristles rising and the backs going up. Don't get me wrong – you have read about my observations of the people in the villages who have nothing.

But what I am saying is that what we see are the slums and dirt and poverty, but we don't see the suffering associated with the conditions generally expected and assumed in Africa ; what we do see as well, are mud villages – where the houses are well built and usually re-plastered with cured mud after every rainy season, where the central yard is swept every single morning and kept clean and tidy with not a stray dead leaf lying about; where the area around the well is kept neat and tidy, where the roofs of the houses are renewed every year with either the banana leaf covering they sit and weave in the village at this time of year, or re-thatched with the elephant grass that is now being harvested, or with new strips of corrugated iron where the old has become too rusty to be of any use. What we do see in the cities are, I suppose, what you would call slums and what we would have called slums before this trip – but now we see them differently. What we see now are shacks built of every kind of scrap material imaginable, narrow alleys where there are puddles of dirty water and rubbish lying around, smoke and pollution and piles of litter set alight at the end of the day and burning every night – but somehow these houses and these alleys and backstreets have changed in our view. We have now gone down some of those alleys, and visited people we have met, in their homes. We have seen that from the outside the house might look like a shack in a slum alley, but step inside the door and there is order and comfort and a warm welcome no different from what you would give in your beautiful pristine home. The water that is offered might come from a large barrel with a cotton cloth over it standing in a cool, dark corner, rather than from a tap in a white ceramic sink in the kitchen. The seat you are offered might be a mat on the floor against the wall or a wooden bench that is pulled up for you, the honoured guest, instead of a leather couch or a Louis VI reproduction antique. The light in the room might be provided by an oil or a paraffin lamp rather than by electricity. The toilet might be a squat toilet out in the back yard behind a flourbag screen rather than the flush toilet in avocado and burnt orange that you are used to.

But the environment becomes unimportant because it is the people that make a shack a home, and a slum a neighbourhood. No sooner will you be welcomed into a home and everyone will be popping in to come say hello. Friends, neighbours, family – they all must come and talk and ask questions and make sure you are welcomed and comfortable. And you can understand why we maintain we never see “abject poverty”. These people may have no money, no worldly comforts, no access to first world medicine and education and consumer goods, but yet they are rich compared to so many of us. Their attitude to life is what makes them rich. They have their values, their customs and traditions passed down though many generations, their hard work, their integrity. And what they have, they are willing to share. Their friendship, their homes, their families and friends. There is always food on the table – albeit fufu with a sauce that has only a smattering of dried fish or a whiff of meat sauce, and they do not seem to go hungry. Malnutrition is not always evident although we know, from statistics, that it is prevalent. The cassava is so low in nutrition and yet it is the staple of millions of people. As there are no animals left -- other than the occasional bushmeat they manage to trap an kill, and as they do not keep the beautiful cattle herds we have seen in every other country, nor do they grow maize or any other crops, one "sees malnutrition levels here as if this place was suffering from fulkl famine", according to a local.

And yet -- these people are always well dressed – no matter how little they have, they are well dressed, neat, tidy and clean -- and that is probably the one main reason one finds it difficult to asses the true situation just by general observation. We have so often stood in wonder at how clean they keep themselves – even in the muddiest times or the days with the most dust, their clothes never seem to get dirty. Even the women bent double hoeing the fields wear beautiful cloth wraps or dresses that are always clean and crisp and and neat.
It is indeed difficult to make any kind of informed impression of this country, of what is poverty and what is the true situation. We drive through and see what we see. We talk to as many people as we can – never many – and ask endless questions, and even then the answers are too often what they wish us to hear. We most certainly become somewhat immune to inured to the visible hardship. I know when we reach South Africa we will most certainly not be spending time or money to go to one of its most popular tourist attractions – the slums and squatter camps of Kayalitcha or of Soweto. Not after having driven through much worse for seven months in the rest of northern, central and western Africa. Do we sound callous when we say we do not see the 'abject poverty', the people dying of starvation? What is this conclusion we have come to? Sheer ignorance or stupidity or is it the reality of Africa which has made us accustomed to that which would have horrified us at first encounter?...............