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Made of Stone: a lion in Oxfordshire There always seems to be a degree of unseemly disorder and crush around the boarding gate for the flight to Kinshasa, whether in Brussels, Paris or Nairobi. Perhaps it’s a hangover from the not too distant days of lax hand luggage rules, which led to urgent competition for space to stow all those TVs, fridges and bags of vegetables. Or it could be an expression of distrust in the reliability of airlines such as Brussels Airlines (formerly known as SN Brussels, and before that Sabena) and Kenya Airways, not to mention the Congolese domestic airlines, most of which have been banned from international routes. Otherwise, I don’t know what the rush is about. In our case, we were delayed by an hour (once everyone was onboard) so some vital part...

Masisi, North Kivu: Women fetching water, shortly after dawn on Wednesday I have been off-grid for a little while, visiting North Kivu. In that period, I think I have accumulated enough unusual experiences for a couple of hundred blog entries. For now, though, I’ll just relate a relatively mundane episode from the beginning of my journey, which has somehow stuck in my mind: At the airport, a week-that-feels-like-a-month ago, a wizened old papa with a sticker on one lens of his spectacles looked up from his handwritten register of comings and goings. -Where are you from? -Grande Bretagne. -In Europe? -Yes. Just West of France. -Do you think you could get me a watch next time you go there? I can’t remember the brand… (takes off his watch, which has stopped long ago,...

One form of optimism Did you hear about the Week of Positive Blogging? I did, by chance, when Global Voices mentioned Omodudu’s optimistic letter to Mother Africa. (An extract: “…The Sudanese, a funny bunch, there is no divisiveness amongst the Arabs and the Blacks anymore, as a matter of fact I attended a mixed wedding on a boat at the banks of the Nile the other day. Oh yes the Americans are still there dancing to country music at the international club, but now the Sudanese are allowed in, sans bomb detectors at the entrance. Isn’t that wonderful ma…”) In that spirit, I have three bits of good news in relation to earlier posts here at Extra Extra: Firstly, do you remember the family who mounted a legal challenge to evict an army Colonel from their...

Farewell to a legend Sometime last year, I was listening to a rhumba band in a Kinshasa pizza restaurant. Reacting to the opening chords of the Franco classic ‘Mario’, a fellow diner of impressive girth stood up and gestured for the microphone. I didn’t recognise him, but an awestruck waiter told me that the big man had once been part of Franco’s TPOK Jazz. As he sang, he danced with one arm around the waist of a somewhat slimmer woman, like this: He was Bialu Madilu, also known as Multi Système, Grand Pharaoh, Grand Ninja, Sa Majesté and Grande Baleine. Born in Matadi, in the province of Bas Congo, he sang with Simaro and Tabu Ley Rochereau before joining TPOK Jazz. Sadly, he died on Saturday, and all of Kinshasa is in mourning. Radio stations have been...

Roll up, roll up! Mundele visits tailor’s workshop! Expats who venture beyond their habitual haunts tend to attract a lot of attention. Yesterday I visited a tailor (couturieur) whose workshop is a converted shipping container with chipboard walls decorated with myriad chalked measurements and an array of colourful bolts of cloth. Within minutes, the place was full of curious onlookers who took turns to interview me on all aspects of my life. This sort of thing can be bothersome for those who prefer to be left alone, but it’s much more fun for everyone if you play along and engage in a bit of repartee....

Happy Birthday, Alan Johnston. 1. The BBC’s Gaza correspondent turns 45 today. This is his ninth week in captivity. Reporters without Borders say 14 journalists have been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip since January 2005, but this is the first time that any of them has held for more than two weeks. 2. Arriving in the UK, I found the headlines dominated by one of Britain’s periodic outbreaks of mass sentimentality, last seen on this sort of scale in the period following the death of Princess Diana. Urged on by the press and a growing constellation of their favourite celebrities, the public - or at least that part of it which most avidly consumes the news, and in turn (symbiosis!) helps to direct its attention - is alarmed about a pretty young girl called Madeleine McCann who...

Geneviève, a trainee waitress, with freshly made strüdel. (More photos on Flickr.) While still besieged the other day, I mentioned my fear that ‘a casualty of the conflict has been our new Viennese café, so badly needed, which opened only on Monday.’ This prompted a few concerned enquiries and even a suggestion that I might have succumbed to stress-induced delusion. Gun battles are not good for business, unless security’s your game. But I am happy to report that Café Mozart has survived its turbulent opening week and is up and running again. There are a few bullet holes in the smart yellow façade, but luckily nobody was hurt and the place was not looted. Café Mozart is run by a group of Salesian nuns, with funding from private donors in Austria, and Caritas. Profits...

A year in the Congo It’s time for a short break. Imagine Kinshasa, the Congo, Central Africa, the tropics. Whatever comes into your mind. Now picture the diametric opposite. What do you see? Antarctica? Japan? Well, I see the Alps. So, things may be a little slow around here for a couple of weeks. If you sign up to the RSS feed, you’ll know as soon as the next post is up. (Or if you prefer email, look for the little yellow icon on the right.) In the meantime, newcomers are invited to check out the editor’s choice of highlights from the archives, and to visit the links page. As for the rest of you, I highly recommend taking a look at what may be the only two Congolese blogs written in English (Diaspora excluded - if I’m wrong about that, please let me know)....

Stanley’s expedition shoots the rapids 130 years have passed since hot-tempered Welsh-American Henry Moreton Stanley navigated the Congo River, his newspaper reports piquing the interest of King Leopold II. Visiting in the 1920’s, Grace Flandrau may have been unimpressed by the cuisine, but she had fewer difficulties getting around Ituri than she would if she could return today. The likes of Joseph Conrad, Mobotu, Mohammad Ali and Franco may have helped keep the Congo/Zaire on the map internationally, but it has never been much of a tourist destination. However, things appear to be improving in the wake of last year’s elections, even in Ituri. Much depends on the behaviour of the new government, but improved security may attract some adventurous travellers as well as...

I have just finished reading Then I Saw the Congo, a 1920’s travel memoir by Grace Flandrau, a novelist from Minnesota who shared an editor with F. Scott Fitzgerald. (It happens that her biography is being published this spring.) I had misgivings about the title (see below), but found Flandrau’s writing pleasantly unburdened by the conventions of the adventure travel genre, and she disparages - even mocks - the then-fashionable pastimes of shooting large animals and ill-treating ‘the natives’. Since the book is long out-of-print (Nayembi discovered it in an antique book shop in Lilongwe), I’ll spare you a review and transcribe some of the more memorable passages instead. First impressions of Kinshasa: At first glance Kinshasa gives one the rather...

In Kinshasa, services come to you, whether you want them or not. The vendors and touts follow the money, day and night. By day, they line the busier streets, proffering everything from hard-boiled eggs, phone cards and ice cream to live rabbits and malachite kingfishers. Or they sell knowledge, finding what you seek in the market, for an arbitrary commission (quite useful, this). By night, apart from the usual array of seedier services, hustlers gather outside restaurants, bars and clubs, selling cigarettes and guarding cars from imaginary threats. I’ve never seen a rose-seller here, but we do have good old-fashioned photographers. They seem to do OK, although I fear their days are numbered as digital cameras get cheaper, and more and more people take snaps with their phones....

‘Playtime is over,’ declared President Kabila at his inauguration (’J'annonce la fin de la recréation sous toutes ses formes’). The phrase has reverberated around Kinshasa ever since, and interpretations are diverse. Optimists hope this edict will prove applicable to the members of the new government, but time alone will tell. This week, though, playtime’s extended: we have a five-day weekend, due to the coincidence of three nationwide days of mourning. Monday was for Cardinal Frédéric Etsou, Archbishop of Kinshasa, who popped his clogs on 6 January 2007, at the ripe old age of 76. Yesterday’s holiday was for Laurent Désiré Kabila, assassinated by a bodyguard on 16 January 2001. Although the facts remain remarkably obscure, this looks to have...

Koffi Olomide (in blue) exhorts his dancers to shake a leg Rhumba star Koffi Olomide, locally known as Mopao, is playing a series of Sunday night gigs at Chez Bibi, his local bar. If not quite in the league of Fela at The Shrine, this is nonetheless not to be missed. In defiance of predictable consequences for Monday morning, three of us went along last night to pay our respects. Olomide started out as a songwriter, joining Papa Wemba’s band in the 70’s before going solo in the 80’s. With his band, Quartier Latin, he had huge international success reviving and updated Franco’s languid, soulful approach to Congolese rhumba. He calls his style Tcha Tcho, which he explains is essentially about singing from the heart. (Extending the lineage, a fellow by the name of...

The founder of Grameen Bank joins the exalted company of Kissinger. As Marginal Revolution notes, he'd never have won the prize for economics, although surley he's helped create more sustainable livelihoods than Phelps (not that he was a bad choice).  Here's an earlier post on microcredit, and here's a recent (doorstep but good) book on scaling up microcredit institutions by turning them......