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Leopoldville 1930s – Postcards from the Art Deco (V)
This post continues the earlier Art Deco tour of Kinshasa. Click on the link below for the previous post.Leopoldville 1930s - Post Cards from the Art Deco (IV)25). Cie Industrielle Africaine Building....
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Leopoldville 1930s – Postcards from the Art Deco (IV)
This post continues the earlier Art Deco tour of Kinshasa. Click on the link below for the previous post.Leopoldville 1930s - Post cards from the Art Deco III(22). Bralima. From Avenue du Commerce,...
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Leopoldville 1952 – Message in a Pepsi Bottle
While walking around the American School (TASOK) campus on Mont Ngaliema a few months ago, I turned up a glass bottle embedded in the soil. It was a Pepsi-Cola bottle, but Pepsi-Cola is no longer...
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Leopoldville 1943 – Diamonds and the War Effort
In the summer of 1943, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA, placed an agent code-named “Teton” in Leopoldville. In real life a Michigander of Belgian descent named...
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Leopoldville 1922 - Office du Travail Created
Kinshasa’s city hall, the Hotel de Ville, is getting a new annex. The four-story building on Ave. Ebeya, launched in November 2014 with a 9-month construction time frame, includes interior parking for...
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Leopoldville 1944 – Cape Dutch Houses
This photo by J. Costa for Congopresse in 1944 shows a Cape Dutch-style villa facing Ave. Tombeur de Tabora (later Tombalbaye, now Tabu Ley). It was built as a set of four for Otraco’s European...
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2018 Kinshasa - Mwana Mboka at large
Remember, you first heard from Mwana Mboka at this site. Pretenders will be dealt with gently.
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Leopoldville 1943 – Diamonds and the War Effort
In the summer of 1943, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA, placed an agent code-named “Teton” in Leopoldville. In real life a Michigander of Belgian descent named...
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Kinshasa 2018 – Former US Consulate Identified
In a post a few years back (Feb. 2, 2012), I reported my surprise at finding a photo of the first US Consulate in Leopoldville, located in a well-known landmark building on Place Leopold (aka Place...
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Leopoldville 1928 - The Royals Visit
Ninety years ago, at the end of June 1928, King Albert and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium visited Leopoldville. The city was selected to replace Boma as the capital of the Belgian Congo in 1923, but the...
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Leopoldville 1959 – Martyrs for Independence
On December 30, 1958, leaders of the Kalamu Section of ABAKO (Alliance des Bakongo, an early political party) wrote to the Premier Bourgmestre (Mayor) of the City of Leopoldville advising of their...
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Kinshasa 2019 - Where does a New President lay his Head?
On January 24, 2019, Felix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo was sworn in as fifth President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The grand event, an unprecedented peaceful transfer of power, was the...
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Kinshasa 2019 – Overpasses on Blvd 30 Juin
In January 2011, I wrote a piece about Boulevard du 30 Juin when the expansion to 8 lanes of the original four was nearing completion (Jan. 23, 2011). During the last three years I’ve lived here, this...
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Leopoldville 1958 – Le Plein Vent restaurant
Colonial Leopoldville was a creation by and for Europeans. Notwithstanding the presence of numerous Congolese settlements on the Congo River at the time of Stanley’s arrival in 1881 (May 22, 2017),...
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Leopoldville 1958 – Le Plein Vent restaurant (suite & fin)
Gentle readers. For some reason, Blogger won't let me complete the post that follows this one. I will try to revise it into one posting, but in the interim, please find this conclusion helpful in...
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Kinshasa 2016 – Legacy of the Baobabs
One of Kinshasa’s sobriquets is “Kin Malebo”, named for its location on the “Pool Malebo” widening of the Congo River, but which in turn takes its name from the Lingala word for the Borassus, or Sugar...
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Leopoldville 1958 – Le Plein Vent restaurant
Colonial Leopoldville was a creation by and for Europeans. Notwithstanding the presence of numerous Congolese settlements on the Congo River at the time of Stanley’s arrival in 1881 (May 22, 2017),...
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Leopoldville 1923 – Place de la Poste
On July 21, 1923, the elite of Kinshasa, European and African, gathered to inaugurate a bust of King Albert 1er at the Place de la Poste. Only 3 weeks earlier, a Royal Decree established...
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Leopoldville 1962 - "Le Twist a Leo" by Manu Dibango
Manu Dibango, legendary Cameroonian saxophonist, known for his fusion of rumba, jazz, funk and traditional music, died in Paris on March 24, 2020 of Covid-19. Before he rose to fame on the African and...
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Leopoldville 1918 – “La Grippe Espagnole”
I recently heard a piece on U.S. National Public Radio about Brian Melican's article in the New Statesman entitled, “A tale of three cities: the places transformed by pandemics across history”...
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