Just another day in Kinshasa

The main victim of our move to ‘the suburbs’ has been our tennis. So on Monday evening, full of good resolutions, we made our way to the nearby Cercle Portugais, a sports club that has seen better days, for our first game in almost 3 months. The lights were pretty rubbish, making for a bit of a blind game, but hey, we were having fun, it was all good.

So we’re halfway through our first set, and I’m about to make an extraordinary come-back, when suddenly I’m stopped mid-serve by what sounds like dozens of mangos or coconuts falling to the ground. We all look uncomprehendingly towards this great big tree right next to the tennis court, which is shaking and shuddering, and for a second I wonder whether, incongruously, there might be a family of monkeys in there. And then the tree comes thundering down, taking the floodlight with it in a spectacular explosion of glass, obliterating the net and plastic chairs, and covering about half the court.

The manager and a couple of his mates, who’d been enjoying a quiet drink at the bar, sauntered over to look at the damage. “Lucky you weren’t playing at the net,” he said to me impassively, before heading back to his drink.

While we retrieved our effects from underneath the branches, a handful of Congolese stood about, arms crossed, staring mournfully at the fallen tree, and commenting that it had been ‘foutu’ for a while now, that just earlier that day the manager’s friend had predicted that it would fall. Except it then turned out that he had meant a different tree altogether, one in the car park. When I asked what type of tree it was, I got three completely different answers, but eventually all agreed that it was a Flamboyant. “These trees never last more than five years, no, never more than five years,” declared the elderly ball ‘boy’ knowingly.

Extra from Extra Extra: As we recounted this story at dinner yesterday, F. reminded me of the best part. As we were leaving the club, we commented that the manager was bound to be cross about the damage caused by the tree. Not so, said the tennis coach, the manager didn’t give a damn because his lease was about to expire. And that’s when the coach turned a hopeful, eager face towards us: “Don’t you want to buy the lease?” “This used to be an amazing place,” he added wistfully.