Four pairs of black legs are dangling from underneath the half open rear door, which is tied with a piece of rope. Two passengers' heads are sticking out of the frayed holes on both sides of the minibus. I have plenty of time to check out this typically Congolese form of public transportation, because the traffic is jammed, as always on a Saturdaynight in Kinshasa. Seven million people are living in the overpopulated capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a city once built for some tens of thousands. It is November 2006. As watch in amazement how the apparent chaos in this enormous town manages to organize itself, the idea for my new book on urbanisation in Africa is born. The coming year-and-a-half I'm going to live in six different African cities, starting with Luanda, the Angolan capital where I arrived a couple of days ago. The making of this book you can follow in the Dutch national newspaper nrc.next. If you read Dutch, that is. But of course I'll also update this blog in English regularly.
