DEBROUILLEZ-VOUS! The Hustler’s Code

 Everything I ever knew about hustling and negotiating was recalibrated, redefined, and refined in Kinshasa. This megacity did not come to play, a city that takes only herself seriously, and devours her inhabitants forcing us into habits that we never thought we would have, creativity we did not know was possible, and contradictions we do not want to mention.  

The kinois move to the beat of ‘Debrouillez vous!’, the hustler’s code that dictates a drive, a cycle, a quest to ‘make it’. Kinshasa is the world’s fifth most expensive city, where a fifth of the population wakes up in the morning not knowing if they will eat. Such needs drive the daily quest for capital and creates a force of deep hustle – one that requires the human mind, body and spirit to be resilient and endure with sometimes to clear end result.  

The first thing we hustle for in Kinshasa is transport. Depending on your budget, you brace yourself for a certain level of discomfort. If in the comfort of your own car, your main concern is other drivers and concerned regular irregular tax (bribe is not a la mode) offered to traffic police at almost every intersection.  On rainy days, which sometimes is every day, there is not near enough transport to go around for this city booming with 12 million hustlers. 

While you are busy hustling for transport, the person providing the transport is negotiating space on the road. Your driver shouts at the driver squeezing past in the line, ‘Why do you always need to be first in Kinshasa? As if being first in traffic is like entering inside your wife, you race so you are the first to enter.”  You giggle internally at the obscenity, and hand 500 CF to the young man standing outside the taxi for a bottle of water. Once in the taxi, Papa Wemba’s soothing voice is drowned out by the very vocal pastor preaching his Judgment Day sermon for the twentieth time that morning, he is on that eternal hustle (it is a whole different level).  

It does not matter what you are hustling for or on which level, everyone has time for la pause. Lunch time is like holy communion – open to all, but the quality of the wine differs. That elegant bank man will throw his tie over his shoulder to devour liboke with chikwang, catch up with his boys working in other places in town, throw some suggestive eye glances at that consistently well dressed lady in the corner. The best fish is not found in any of the high-end restaurants where the diplomats spend 25 dollars for a Caesar salad, but in Matonge in a small outdoor street restaurant. None of this is advertised, those who know know, and those that ask, are advised by Les Connaisseurs.  

The hustle has many faces – children grabbing at luxury cars to ask for money, a man selling strange cactus trees at traffic lights, a young girl working at a bank during the week and making sure her sugar daddy is kept satisfied during the weekend, the civil servant who can manage to get away with tapping into the budget of the ministry, or the teacher who works 250 % in order to cover for medical costs for his family and his family in law. In Kinshasa, everyone is hustling. Even those who are trying hard to avoid the hustle and negotiation, are inevitably pulled into its grip.   

All of this in a city where there are obscene amounts of cash circulating. Money generated from less than clean activities and being laundered in creative ways maintaining wealth in the same circles, and leaving everyone else to hustle on their level, just to get by. The contrasts in terms of class and wealth are not unique to Kinshasa, but in their extremity and perhaps naked appearance they do stick out more here.  

As the sun begins to set, the hustle changes gear. The masses start moving to return to where they eventually spend the night. For some, this is home. For others, it means finding an alcohol infused corner that provides poulet mayo – a concoction of grilled chicken, mayonnaise and chili served with grilled plantain. The outfit you wear is pieced together by going to six different shops, in six different neighborhoods. Clothes and shoes and accessories are bought in bulk in other (often European) capitals and sold in outlets at smaller shops spread out across the city. To get from one quartier to another usually requires three to five taxi changes, making any outfit the result of hard work spread out over many days. The importance of appearance cannot be understated, it is an obligation. And at your service are the shoe shining stations that exist at every intersection. If you let her, Kinshasa gives you every opportunity to shine.  

As the sun rises, masses rise with it and walk towards their daily hustle. Watch the elegant bank man with pride in his stride, the elderly woman going to pick up bread from Pain Victoire to sell, the tired young boy barely awake after another sleepless night, the two young women on their way to buy hair extensions for a client who needs to get braids for a wedding. All moving, walking, hustling in tune of the rhythm of that given day.  

Au rhythme du pays.  

 words. Sarah Bitamazire - photos. Nizar Saleh

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