Congo, Day One

So I'm in the Congo.

What I'm doing: I'm part of an assessment team, looking at problems of economic governance.  There are five of us, and we're led by a former U.S. Ambassador.

Why: well, the proximate cause is that Secretary of State Clinton visited back in August and promised the Congolese government some help.  A lot of foreign aid has flowed into the Congo, but not very efficiently There's not much coordination among the different donors, so some sectors are getting more aid than they can absorb, while others that could provide real benefits with a modest bit of assistance are being ignored.  Meanwhile the Congolese government has a limited capacity for determining needs and priorities in a methodical, objective sort of way.  So an overview by outsiders could, perhaps, be useful.

The larger cause is that China is moving into the Congo in a big way.  They recently inked a deal with the government to build all sorts of infrastructure -- roads, rails, hospitals -- in return for the output of several major mines.  But that's a long complicated story, and deserves a post of its own.

So there will be several assessment teams coming here over the next few months.  Ours is the first, which means we're the shakedown cruise.  Under the circumstances, the State Department and USAID folks seem to have done okay -- it's not the well-oiled machine of the private sector assessments I've been doing, but it's not bad.  (So far.  We haven't actually started any assessing yet.)

How: the usual -- lots of meetings, lots of reading.  The plus side is that, because this is run by State, we have easy access to a higher level than we usually do; if we want to meet Ministers, we can.  The minus side is that State doesn't have the administrative machinery to set up many meetings for a bunch of us very quickly, so they're trying to have us do group meetings, which is bad -- I have no reason to sit through the meeting with the Minister of Mines, while our mining expert has little interest in my meeting with the Central Bank.  We'll see how this plays out.

Otherwise, my first day has been... pretty quiet.  My hotel has a pretty standard hotel breakfast buffet, of the sort that (I now know) is likely to become a bit dreary after the first few days.  (Of course, I'm in the Congo, so noticing things like "the croissants are burnt" or "the fruit salad looks a day old" brings an immediate riposte from my internal human rights monitor, who points out that I'm having a better breakfast than 90+% of the population outside the hotel. )  In the late morning I went for a walk, then quickly realized this was a bad idea -- Kinshasa between 11 and 4 is very hot, very humid, and very sunny.  I trotted back to the hotel, dripping with sweat, just as the first premonitory prickle of sunburn started to kick in.  (I did see a spectacular black-and-yellow lizard, long as my forearm, dart across the road.  He paused to bob his head at me a couple of times -- don't mess with me, intruder!  -- and then darted into a drainage ditch.)

I went out again just before sunset.  Much better!  The hotel is in Gombe, west of downtown, and I'm given to understand that it's the nicest corner of Kinshasa.  It's all ambassadorial residences and mansions of the rich, set at a bend in the river.  The streets are wide, not too potholed, and shaded by flame trees.  The view across the Congo river is quite something.  It's not as wide as I thought it would be, but the current rips along quite swiftly.

The sun was setting in one of those brief but spectacular tropical sunsets, all orange and gold, with massive towers of rainy season clouds swirling up to the stratosphere.  The esplanade was quite busy, with a mixture of Congolese and foreigners; in ten minutes I heard French, Italian, English, Arabic. The heat of the day was fading to a mellow warmth. It was really peaceful and pleasant...

... there were some jarring notes.  All the nice houses and ambassadorial residences are behind high walls with razor wire on top.  At one point I noticed a small metal staircase descending to the river bank; when I strolled over to look at it, a soldier with a gun rushed up.  Qu'est-ce-que vous voulez ici?  Umm... une vue?  Pas!  Pas ici!  I didn't argue.  People were strolling to the top of the river bank just fifty meters away to watch the sun set, so apparently it was not the view, but this one staircase.  A Minister's secret dock, where he smuggles diamonds across the river to Brazzaville?  Some local drug lord's private pier?  I wasn't that curious -- arguing with armed soldiers is a bad idea in most places, and especially so in Congo.  So I just said "Okay!" and strolled on.

And now I'm going down to the hotel restaurant for dinner.

Comments

[The New York City Math Teacher]

Were you walking along the Avenue de Fleuve Congo or the Avenue des Nations Unies?

[Doug M.]

Nations Unies, over at the west end.

Doug M.

[Black Mage]

Something I am curious about...

How do the Congolese refer to, uh, the other Congo (Congo-Brazaville)? Do they say 'I'm from Congo' or 'I'm from the DRC' or 'I'm from Zaire'? Do they refer to the other nation as 'the Republic of Congo' or 'Brazzaville'?

Does confusion arise?

[Doug M.]

Nobody uses "Zaire" any more. I guess it's politically incorrect now?

The other Congo seems to be "Congo-Brazzaville", "Brazzaville" (most common), or just "Brazza".

Doug M.

[Tzintzuntzan]

About that dock...it might not have been owned by someone as important as that. There's a huge smuggling business in Kinshasa and Brazzaville, consisting of everything from mom-and-pop smugglers to international cartels. Every time either government taxes something, the arbitrage boys step in. Some of them have contacts with the Congolese expatriates in Paris and Brussels, too. There's more smuggling on those docks then there is legitimate business in all of Congo.

There's a great book on this (which unfortunately is written in dense academese): "Congo-Paris: Transnational Traders on the Margins of the Law" by Janet MacGaffey and Remy Bazenguissa-Ganga.

[Tzintzuntzan]

As to why nobody uses "Zaire," the name was Mobutu's personal choice, so it became tainted by association. When Mobutu allowed more press freedom in 1990, people began demanding the name revert to Congo almost immediately.