A walk around Monkole, although it could be in any neighborhood of Kinshasa, with Antonio Villalonga, an anesthesiologist and volunteer of Amigos de Monkole, who has been working and collaborating in Monkole for more than a year

In a singular place, starting a graphic walk around Monkole
In a singular place, starting a graphic walk around Monkole

The neighbors: about 10 families live in the bunker. That’s how your house is known. I call it the one with clean teeth: every morning as I pass I find someone brushing their teeth, while some old man sitting on the porch shouts “bonjour docteur”.

Women and men are always selling things on the street. They’re saying out loud what product they’re carrying

Barefoot kids play soccer, while I continue with this graphic walk around Monkole

We are in the dry season until July 15 and people are crowding in to collect water wherever they sell it. When it rains it is less painful, because you can collect rainwater for washing and you have to go to the fountains less often.

Soon after walking the streets become narrow and only pedestrians and wewas (motorcycles) pass by.

Some passages offer a strange beauty…

Suddenly the great erosion. The torrential rains have eaten up a large road. The hole is now about 15 to 20 meters deep and over 500 meters. long.

We arrived at UNIKIN, the old Lovanium, which was built by the Belgians. In its time a jewel, today totally deteriorated.

In the Kindele Valley a large hospital that operated for only 2 or 3 months was closed. The valley is very exotic but it’s where the poorest people live. It’s difficult to get there.

These girls have bought 100FC (5 cents) of sugar. One tomato 100FC, one onion 200FC, dried fish are 100 and 200FC. Sometimes two neighbors buy a tomato, an onion and one or two fish between the two and split them so they can each cook something.

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134 births, 49 infants, 52 operations of rickets in 2019Monkole EN