“We live in paradise,” one of my new friends told me, a day or so after I arrived in Bukavu in early July. He was right, in a way. The sprawling city–home to an estimated 1 million people–hugs the gentle shoreline of Lake Kivu, and is tucked high into the mountain regions of eastern Congo. The high elevation of the city means that the weather never strays much beyond the mid-60s-70s. It is not hard to see why the Belgians selected this spot as a kind of holiday outpost during the early and mid-twentieth century, displacing local people from paradise and setting up the infrastructures of unequal power that would eventually plunge the city into “darkness”–or so some of my friends here describe the wars and conflicts–from the mid-90s, up to today.
[Above: Lake Kivu]
Today, Bukavu gets along “par la grâce de Dieu”–by the grace of God. That saying can be heard across the city, spoken by traders setting up their wares on the side of the road for the day, hoping for a sale; or painted onto the windows of the ubiquitous taxi-vans that transport people around the city for a few Congolese francs. For the past two decades (and even longer), this part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been surviving–“enduring”–without the support of government institutions, at least not in an obvious or meaningful way. Most of the roads, once paved, have long since disintegrated into uneven (and that is being generous) dirt tracks; there are not enough medical institutions to serve the population, and those that do generally charge too much for people to pay; there are schools, but the government wage provided to teachers is not enough to live on, and so students must either pay an exorbitant amount to attend (and, in turn, teachers must extort them); police officers, also on an inadequate government wage, are in short supply. Large white landrovers are the only vehicles–apart from the ubiquitous taxi-vans and moto-bikes–that pass with any predictable regularity on the roads, and always they are emblazoned with the logo of one or another international humanitarian institution–the UN, MSF, IRC, NRC, and so on, and on. Young people long to marry, but cannot afford to do so. Older people long to rest, but the impoverishment of their family makes it impossible to do so. “Insécurité” is a way of life here; corruption is a livelihoods strategy.
Yet, when I speak to Congolese people themselves, the story is–of course–more nuanced. How do people get by, materially and existentially, in such circumstances of indefinite insecurity? What are their hopes and dreams for the future? Why do so many of my interviews erupt into giggling, and thinly veiled crassness? Is it normal for 50 year old women to gather together at 11am on a Sunday morning, after church, with large bottles of Prima beer?
[Above: a shopfront that sells “pombe” — beer/alcohol]