I once lived in a concrete ghetto for foreign students in Tokyo. It was a miserable place, with every kind of bored foreigner stalking its disinfected corridors, looking for an American to swap addresses with, a Russian to drink with, a Korean
to sleep with. But there was one highlight: the longing songs that Samba — a lawyer from Congo — used to sing about his home town, Brazzaville.
I tried looking Samba up in Brazzaville not long ago, but without success — which wasn’t surprising. Most Brazzavillois spend more time leaving their city than coming back. During the three civil wars that have engulfed Brazzaville in recent years, at least a million have fled — and most to meaner quarters than Samba, to hunker in the bush at the mercy of rampaging ninja militiamen.
Brazzaville does not make the news very often. Its main problems — civil war, crushing poverty, corruption, Aids — are those of its country’s bigger and better-known neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, just a quick canoe ride across the surging Congo river. In fact, since the Democratic Republic of Congo changed its name back from Zaire, Congo (Brazzaville) has been hard to distinguish at all. But, now, at last, Brazzaville is in the spotlight — having been officially judged the city with the worst quality of life in the world.
As may already be clear, there are one or two obvious reasons for this.
And a recent invasion by the ninjas’ press gangs has probably done
little to entice Samba home. But it also seems likely that the surveyors didn’t brave one or two of Brazzaville’s regional neighbours: places such as Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu — a likely spot to get taken hostage — or Bangui, in the Central African Republic, where their visit would most probably have coincided with a coup. In fact, compared to these hot spots, Brazzaville’s not such a bad place at all.
Sitting on the border between West and Central Africa, Brazzaville enjoys the culture of both.
At Bataclan’s nightclub, Lebanese diamond dealers dance with the cream of local prostitutes to pulsing Congolese dombolo. At Chef David, weary French and Belgian residents enjoy arguably the best pizzas in Central Africa. And where else but at Les Rapides bar can you watch street boys rafting down the Congo river on great beds of water hyacinth, while taking a little precautionary gin against the virulent local malaria?
No, Brazzaville isn’t such a bad place: it’s much more relaxing than Kinshasa, whose lights twinkle —when it has power — across the darkening river; and certainly a lot more interesting than Tokyo. — Â