hey there, Anyone live in, or been to, Kinshasa? My old man is a pilot and he's been contracted to go over there and train some new pilots. I was just wondering what the hell he is going to do with any free time there. So, I was just wondering what y'all think about the DRC and Kinshasa. Can you swim in the Congo there, I mean, is it common?? Or is it polluted or have crocodiles or something?
Kinshasa (formerly French: Léopoldville, and Dutch: Leopoldstad (help·info)) is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as Zaire from 1971 to 1997. The city is located on the Congo River. Once a site of fishing villages, Kinshasa is now an urban area with a population of 10,076,099 inhabitants in 2009. The city of Brazzaville (about 1.5 million inhabitants in 2007 with its suburbs),[2] capital of the Republic of the Congo, lies just across the Congo River from Kinshasa. Together with Brazzaville, the combined conurbation of Kinshasa-Brazzaville has thus nearly 12 million inhabitants--making it the most populous transborder metropolitan area in the world. Because the administrative boundaries cover such a vast area, over 60% of the city's land is rural in nature, and the urban area only occupies a small section in the far western end of the province.[3][4] Kinshasa ties with Johannesburg for the status of the second largest city in sub-Saharan Africa and the third largest in the whole continent after Lagos and Cairo. It is often considered the second largest francophone city in the world after Paris. If current demographic trends continue, Kinshasa will surpass Paris in population before 2020.[5][6] Residents of Kinshasa are known as Kinois (French) or Kinshasans (English). second largest francophone city after paris.. pretty sore being bored will not come up!
@Fawkes: I've been there. It's very poor and lots of people have guns, hence not very safe. The few times I went there, the company I was working for arranged all transport and we were always accompanied by an armed guard. I'm not sure if this is totally necessary, but it did feel like it. Some of my colleagues at the time have also had to be evacuated from time to time due to violence erupting (as far as I'm aware this still happens every once in a while, say once every 3 or 4 years). Infrastructure is shoddy at best, road rules either don't exist or are very loosely interpreted, so driving yourself is not advised. Kinshasa is situated on the northern bank of the river and there's plenty of pollution flowing into it. I don't think you'll encounter crocodiles there (too many people...), but it won't be clean. From what I've seen, swimming in the river is definitely not very common (in fact, I don't think I've ever seen anyone do it). If you go higher up the river (this will be a challenge in itself) you might escape the pollution, but then you might well encounter crocs.
