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Les Kinois

Shooting from the hip in Kinshasa's colorful Limete district

By Crystal Stafford

March 30^th, 2016

A RARE LOOK AT LIMETE

Friends and family often ask me to photograph Kinshasa. Unfortunately Les Kinois don’t like to have their photos taken. It is taboo to take your camera out and just start shooting. People yell at you and point their fingers. At least that is what I heard. Recently I had the opportunity to go for a walk in Kin’s famed Commune de Limete. A couple colleagues had recently finished a solar installation in a health center that our organization, IMA World Health, built. They needed to go to the site and make sure that everything was working properly. I took the opportunity to get away from the desk and into the world. This is what I found.

A carpenter repairs a door, most likely one of the many jobs he has to make ends meet.

BRIGHT COLORS AND HARD WORKERS

If I had to sum up Kinshasa in just a few words, those would be the words. This city is full of color. The blue and yellow Espirit de Mort buses, painted in the image of the country’s flag, line the streets and carry residents from one end to the other. Everyone is on a mission to make it in this world. The unemployment rate among the young is 90%, but many work in the informal sector selling gum, cables, puppies, monkeys or just about anything else you can think of on the streets.

A street vendor sells manioc, the powder that is used to make the country's staple starch, Fufu.

Chickens lines the streets of this urban village.

A maman sells manioc, homemade beignets, braise (charcoal) and vegetables.

TAMBOLA MPE MOKOLO NA BONGO OYEBA MOKILI.

Walking, you will know the world.

Most of the city is made from left over materials found in the trash, like this patchwork shanty made of steel, wood and concrete.

This year’s rainy season brought several torrential down pours. The trash riddled roads cannot sustain the rain they receive each year. The rains had dug deep craters into the roads leading to the health center. So we had to park and walk a half an hour through the neighborhood to get there. This gave me the perfect opportunity to know THIS world that I have so rarely seen up close.

Two children play chess with old bottle caps as their second hand clothing dries in the sun.

Curiosity brings these timid children from their makeshift compound.

A young woman naps as she waits for her next customer.

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IMA Architect, Antonio Nevada Martinez, falls into line with the local children.

shooting from the hip

Because of the rumors I had heard about Kinshasa’s distaste for photographers I had to keep my camera low on the waist. No time for framing or focusing, but I low the raw nature that this style brings to photos. No one is posing. No one is caring.

The capital city

Kinshasa is the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. With a population of over 11 million, it is the third largest urban center in Africa. The majority of its inhabitants live in make-shift communes such as this one.

A young child cries alone on the street.

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BA YEBAKA SOKI OZA NA NZELA YA MALAMU TANGO POSA YA KO TALA NA SIMA ESILI.

You know you are on the right track when you become uninterested in looking back.

The last hand markets

The majority of the clothing items found for sale on the street have been sold many times over from one continent to another, until they finally find their resting place in the streets and villages of Africa.

The color of chaos

There are no formal trash collectors so much of the trash ends up on streets like this one, providing a colorful texture to the commune.

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The architects and the photographer

IMA Architects, Antonio Nevada Martinez and Hugo Kalemba pose for a few portraits. And of course I had to jump in too. These architects, together with the IMA Construction team, are building 200 health centers across the nation, which will be completed by 2018. All of these centers are in the most rural, hard to reach parts of the country. It was a rare opportunity to visit a health center built by IMA that was located in an urban setting.