Wasn’t me

Last night, the whole of Kinshasa’s jet-set was on the parking lot of the Grand Hotel waiting for Kinshasa’s event of the year: a concert by the world-famous Jamaican dancehall singer Shaggy with his Congolese mate Werrason, aka “King of the Forest”. The concert was meant to start at 6pm, but I had been warned by my friends that concerts in Congo never start on time. It’s a matter of cachet: no self-respecting star will appear before his or her audience until at least four or five hours after the scheduled time. At the last minute however, a rumour went around that this time the Grand Hotel had insisted that the venue be vacated by 11.30pm, so the concert would start within a reasonable delay. At 7.30pm, F. and I were happily watching the penultimate episode of the first series of Lost (despite repeated warnings that we would be left with no answers and a frustratingly unquenchable desire to know how the bloody story ends), when we were called by a friend who warned us that the place was thriving and the concert about to start. Call it lack of experience, but we rushed over.

We spent the first half hour negotiating a table in the VIP area. “Why do we need a table,” I asked naively, “since we’ll be dancing in front of the stage the minute Shaggy comes on?” My friend laughed. At 8pm a few technicians came on stage and unconvincingly played with the connections, tugged on a few cords, moved the mikes around, and disappeared again. Everyone was keyed up, eager for the show to start. At 9pm a sound guy came on and tested the mikes briefly. Already people were beginning to groan – glasses were empty, and at $10 a pop we hesitated to get any more – but the excitement was still palpable. At 10pm the show was ready to start. Phew! For the next couple of hours we watched with decreasing attention a series of Congolese hip-hop and rap bands trying and basically failing to get anyone interested, suffering the usual unhappy fate of a warm-up band: everyone was there for Shaggy. Still, they kept the mood relatively upbeat, and they did their best to attempt to conceal what was only too obvious, that neither of the evening’s stars was anywhere to be seen. We knew we were in trouble when the M.C. embarrassedly recalled on stage one of the early bands; the poor guys clearly hadn’t prepared for a second impromptu appearance!

At this point a Congolese friend of mine, who had definitely dressed up for the occasion, decided that if Shaggy wasn’t coming to her she would go to him. She went inside the Grand Hotel and tried to bribe the security guards $300 to be allowed to knock on his room door. They refused. When she insisted, they said that Mr. Shaggy was sleeping, that they had received clear instructions not to wake him up. My friend was close to tears at this missed opportunity to rub with stardom, and on hearing the tale I started to panic, wondering whether maybe we should go get some dinner. No, come on, it’s midnight; surely the guy will come on any minute now!

To cut a long story short, Shaggy finally came on at 2am. Werrason had made a brief appearance for 3-4 songs, just enough to get spirits soaring once more before letting them drop again like a soggy cracker with an hour-long unsuccessful sound check; an hour of “one, two…two, two…two” and Jamaican accents stating the obvious, “Na, som’ting definitely wrong dere man”. Hey, it’s Congo, som’ting always wrong in da Congo, but that don’t stop the show! So Shaggy the world superstar came on to a screechy mike, correctly judging that after waiting seven hours his public’s patience was at its end, and the ever-forgiving and good-natured Congolese instantly changed their nascent booing into cheering and happy shrieking.

The concert was a good one, complete with enamoured groupies in tight miniskirts clambering onto the stage to steal a quick hug before being roughly chucked back into the crowd by angry security guards five times their size. It’s all part of the show, of course, but I reckon our friend Shaggy got a little more than he bargained for on a couple of occasions: he was limping pretty severely after one guy with a Jamaican flag jumped onto him out of nowhere (suspiciously, I could swear I saw him backstage for most of the preceding song), and the overzealous security guards took Shaggy out along with the guy.

The show was good, and all things considered worth the wait methinks. But for all the excitement it offered, the most memorable bit for me was watching the pick-pocketers in action, working the crowd, sinuously making their way from one pocket to the next, one hand bag, one wallet… One guy in particular (easily recognisable because of a big, ugly lump on his neck) was especially aggressive, shamelessly sliding his hand in the pocket of this huge Congolese right in front of me. Luckily, just as I was building up the courage to warn the man whose pocket was being picked, another Congolese shouted out and a scuffle ensued, with the guilty pick-pocketer shouting angrily that he hadn’t done anything at all. In fact there were quite a few minor punch-ups – and one rather more ferocious one – as people felt something brush against them, realised their money had gone missing and tried to get it back. From Shaggy, “Na, na, na. No fighting here man. Only peace and love.” The crowd started swaying again, and less than 10 minutes later the very same guy with the lump was back in a different outfit – you have to admire the sheer brazenness!

So in short, what do you get after waiting seven hours for a 45-minute concert? A crash course in pick-pocketing Congolese style, i.e. with attitude.