Congolese Bureaucracy

First, there is a trash truck that won’t start so people are pushing it down the street. A few hundred meters down the road there is another truck that runs but the problem is that it gets lost in its own cloud of emissions. Also, it is missing a tailgate. Every time is goes over a bumpy (which is quite frequent) it loses several kilograms of garbage. Then you have the 15 passenger van with 30 Congolese, plus or minus 15 (always plus), hanging from the doorless frame. Right behind them is a rusted out Mercedes that is two jars away from seeing its last pothole, and again there is way to many people in that car.

Then there is us: two white guys being chauffeured around in our Mazda SUV – not perfect, but worlds better than our fellow commuters. I had just got done thinking, “It sure is nice that we have a nice vehicle to ride around in!” One thing I have learned about Congo: never get too comfortable with your environment because there ain’t nobody happy unless your are unhappy.

A greasy ole’ police officer steps out into the middle of the busy road, blows his whistle, and nearly gets run over by our aggressive driver. Apparently, he thought that there was not enough tread on our rugged, oversized tires and that it was in the best interest of safety to get our vehicle off the road. This allowed him to do a thorough inspection of our death trap, but first he wanted us to find our reflective triangle to warn all the other traffic of our stopped vehicle. Oh, I almost forgot, we don’t have one of those! Yet another problem with our vehicle. What were we thinking when we got into the car? Further inspection found a burned out taillight. This vehicle definitely should be grounded, and that is exactly what the police did. We were not allowed to move until we had paid the fine. Alan and I decided that if we were going to get our errands accomplished that we were going to have to walk to our destination and let the driver take care of the penal formalities.

This is why I hate bureaucracy, especially Congolese bureaucracy! They had no problem with our car. They were not worried about safety. They saw two white people and thought that they could get money out of us. In the Congo a uniform gives officials the right to make people’s lives difficult in order to extort a bribe. Much of this warped ideology finds its source in the philosophy of Mobutu who told his soldier that the population was their supplier and their gun was their salary. It is no wonder that the officials of Congo are corrupt. They make a meager living of the backs of the poor. It is a legalized system that allows the poor to steal from the poor. It is not wonder that this country cannot get on its feet!