Public transport operators on strike: Kinshasa pedestrians without Spirits-of-Death

Millions of Kinois pedestrians had to walk today, the start of the

strike of public transport operators.



(I had to walk close to 5 miles from my house to Place Victoire this

morning. By the time I go back home, if there are still no taxis, I

would have walked 10 miles today.)





The striking transporters are complaining about the "tracasseries"

(hassles) they are subjected to.





Typical daily tracasseries involve:





1) Paying 500 Congolese Francs (about 50 cents) to each one of the

highway cops encountered at jammed intersections on the bus route;





2) Paying fines (without receipts of the fines paid) to agents of

public transportation authority or to any other agent in uniform, lest

the bus is impounded;





3) Paying more "fines" to agents of SONAS, the national insurance

company that has a countrywide monopoly on insurance;





4) Buying the expensive new biometric driver's license; and, last and

not least,





5) Compliance with new safety requirements being imposed on owners of

the imported second-hand Mercedes-Benz delivery vans of the model

series ranging from 207 to 308 with cargo box bodies, used here as

buses, and which the Kinois have nicknamed "207 esprits-de-mort"--or

spirits of death, due to the grim death tolls they continue to reap on

Kinshasa thoroughfares.





Esprits-de-mort Mercedes-Benz delivery vans are stifling clungers

retrofitted with between 6 to 8 rows of wooden benches.





With each bench sitting 4 passengers, a typical van crams up to 32

people--plus the lucky 2 persons sitting on the passenger seat by the

driver.





Oh, I forgot to count the 6 non-paying passengers clinging for their

lives on the outside of the van: 3 on the side where there's the door

to the cargo box; and 3 on the back.





No one knows whether this strike would be sustainable enough for

public transportation operators to stretch it for days on end.





Kinois pedestrians, on their part, are angry at both camps: at the

authorities for the daily tracasseries of drivers by uniformed and

plainclothes goons, as well as for not providing decent public

transport to the "residents of the Republic"; and at public transport

owners for grounding their Spirits of Death in a city that has spread

far and wide beyond the narrow imagination of urban planners--bloated

before blasting into an anarchic monster.