金沙萨的街头智慧

 

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西尔维 · 阿伊姆潘

Sylvie Ayimpam

一个人若是本已生活困窘，又陷入无休无止的社会危机和经济危机，那么他该如何谋生度日？答案是你得学会撑下去！这是刚果民主共和国首都金沙萨居民的座右铭。在金沙萨，人们善于把握一切机会创造新的职业，并时常展现出令人钦佩的聪明才智。私货贩子、“充电商”和其他小贩成群结队地涌入这座大都市的街道和市场，填补了经济系统的空白。

How do you survive when you’re poor and caught up in an interminable series of social and economic crises? You learn how to get by! This is the motto of the inhabitants of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Showing great ingenuity, they never miss an opportunity to invent a new job. Romains, chargeurs, and other gaddafis swarm the markets and streets of the megacity, closing the gaps in the system.

刚果民主共和国首都金沙萨市中心，三个擦皮鞋的男孩坐在学校大门旁的石头上，随身带着木凳、脚凳、刷子和海绵。在他们旁边，一名年轻人支起了摊子，摆出了一套设计精巧的充电系统。他在一小块木板上装了几个插座，从一处破损的路灯基座下面扯出几根电线，连接到自己的插座上——这当然是非法行为。这名男子自称“充电商”。

We are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The scene takes place in the city centre of Kinshasa, the capital. Three young shoe-shine boys sit on rocks at the entrance of a school, equipped with stools, footrests, brushes and sponges. Next to them, a young man has set up a stand and watches over a cleverlycrafted electric charging system. On a small wooden panel, he has mounted several electrical outlets which are illicitly connected to electrical wires emerging from the ground, where they are attached to the base of a defective street light. This man calls himself the chargeur (charger).

擦皮鞋的男孩一直以来都是城市景观的一部分，电池充电商却是与移动电话同时出现的。在20 世纪七八十年代，金沙萨城里随处可见小规模的生产单位——制鞋厂、涂料厂、木匠铺、钟表铺、纺织作坊和染色车间，它们如雨后春笋般涌现出来，大多设在经营者自家后院。然而，自20 世纪90 年代中期以来，小企业和服务业逐渐兴起，并取而代之。

While shoe-shine boys have long been an integral part of the urban landscape, battery chargers have emerged at the same time as mobile telephones. In the 1970s and 1980s, the city was full of micro-production units – shoe or paint factories, carpenters or jewellers, weaving or dyeing workshops sprouted like mushrooms, mainly in backyards. Since the mid-1990s, small businesses and services have taken over.

金沙萨约有1100 万居民，生活在这里的人必须知道如何自谋生路。经济陷入危机，国家日渐衰落，公共服务系统瘫痪，带薪工作稀缺，金沙萨人迫于生计，不得不从事各种形式的自营职业，主要是小本经营和便民服务。

You have to know how to fend for yourself if you live in Kinshasa, among some 11 million inhabitants. The economic crisis, the failures of the state and public services, and the scarcity of salaried jobs are forcing city dwellers to earn their living through various forms of self-employment made up of small tasks and expediencies.

在失序和赤贫的环境下，金沙萨人最擅长的生活方式是“la débrouille”。这是一个法语词，意为“头脑精明、维持生存、随机应变”。这是所有经济生存策略的核心，对占城市人口半数以上的年轻人来说尤其如此。

In a context of anomy and extreme poverty, la débrouille – the French word for resourcefulness, making do, getting by or improvising – has become a way of life at which city dwellers excel. It is at the heart of all economic survival strategies, especially among young people, who make up more than half of the city’s population.

为生活所迫的创造力

Creativity born of necessity

随着移动电话的普及，“充电商”填补了民用电力分配系统的空白。其他金沙萨人也不甘落后，纷纷以非凡的创意开拓多种渠道，争取不错过任何一个创收机会。他们白手起家，不断发明新的方式来满足人们的各种需求。

Like the chargeurs, who fill the gaps in the home electricity distribution system now that mobile phones are hugely successful, other inhabitants show remarkable ingenuity by inventing diverse sources of income, taking advantage of every opportunity to make themselves useful. Starting with next to nothing, they launch new activities to meet different needs.

一张桌子、一条长凳、几副炊具，外加木炭，就可以开一家便宜的小餐馆，价格仅为其他饭店的十分之一，只是卫生状况时常堪忧。嫌公共汽车太挤？没问题，欢迎乘坐摩托出租车（wewa）。下雨后马路上有积水？不要紧，有人愿意背行人蹚过去。除此之外，二手闲置物品经销商、手机维修商、瓶装水供应商等也可以随时提供服务。

A table, a bench, some cooking utensils and charcoal are enough to set up a malewa, or cheap restaurant where you can eat for ten times less than anywhere else – even if hygiene is sometimes compromised. Are the buses overcrowded? No problem! The wewas (motorcycle taxis) are there to transport you. Are the streets flooded after the rain? All right, back carriers will ferry pedestrians across. Others, like secondhand spare-part dealers, mobile-phone repairers, or bottled-water vendors, are also at hand to help you out at any time.

人们正在寻找一个通俗易懂的术语来描述这些新型中介活动。形形色色的代理、中介和分包商或是单独经营，或是通过网络提供服务，填补了公共和私营基础设施混乱溃散造成的缺口。

A colloquial terminology is developing to keep up with these new activities, characterized by intermediation. The gap left by the lack of organization of public and private infrastructures is filled by all kinds of agents, brokers and subcontractors who offer their services individually or through networks.

卖走私货的（romains）、卖旧衣服的（bana kwatas）、批发商代理（chayeurs）、无照燃料贩子（gaddafis）、为出租车和公交车跑腿的小贩（chargeurs）、街头换外汇的（cambistes）和港口食品买卖中间商（mamas manoeuvre），他们在大街小巷和市场里交易，不放过停车场、主路交叉口、公交车站和港口等任何一处可以进行商业交易的地点。

Plying their trades in the streets and markets, but also in any place of commercial transaction, including car parks, major intersections, bus stations and river ports, are romains (dealers in smuggled merchandise), bana kwatas (touts dealing in second-hand clothes), chayeurs (wholesalers’ agents), gaddafis (informal fuel-sellers), chargeurs (touts working for taxis and public transport, not to be confused with battery chargers!), cambistes (street money-changers), and mamas manoeuvre (middlemen trading food products in river ports).

第十五条

Article 15

20 世纪80 年代中期，刚果音乐人佩佩·卡莱（Pépé Kallé，1951—1998 年） 创作的歌曲《第十五条：Beta Libanga》红遍了非洲大陆，这或许是因为它在许许多多非洲人心中引发了共鸣。刚果民主共和国宪法第十五条是一条虚构的条款：“要努力，求生存！”

In the mid-1980s, the song “Article 15, Beta Libanga” by the Congolese musician Pépé Kallé (1951-1998), was a big hit across the continent, probably because so many Africans could identify with it. Article 15 is an imaginary article in the DRC Constitution that says: “Make do to survive!” All the Congolese know it and refer to it on a daily basis. “Beta libanga” literally means “Break the stone”. “Making do is not easy,” Kallé warns us.

卡莱用林加拉语唱道：“第十五条，亲爱的，要努力，求生存。看看河港，码头工人担重担；看看汽车售票员，从早到晚大声喊；看看城里到处都有小摊小贩；看看出租车司机和公交车司机，从早到晚开车不停息；看看我们这些音乐人，靠唱歌赚钱养家；看看学生们，学好文化为将来作准备。”

“Article 15, my dears, make do to survive,” he sang in Lingala. “Look at the river port: the dock workers carry heavy loads. Look at the bus conductors: they shout from morning to night. Look, there are stalls all over the city. Look at the taxi and bus drivers: they drive from morning to night. Look at us, the musicians: we sing to earn our living. Look at the students: they study to prepare for the future.”

梦寐以求的未来往往是遥远的，而现实中的此时此刻，在金沙萨和其他许多非洲城市，众人勉强为生。头脑灵活、机变百出已成为一种生存方式，是金沙萨社会空间中俯拾皆是的城市身份标记。由于长期的物资短缺、贫困和政局动荡，非正规的经济体制得到发展，虽然其中不乏阴谋、骗局、风险、冲突和暴力，但也包含着欢乐、团结、尊重、忠诚等价值观，最终将有助于社会形成自我调节模式。

But the future we dream of, often remains distant, and in the meantime, we get by in Kinshasa, as in many other African cities. Resourcefulness has become a way of being, a marker of urban identity that spans the entire Kinshasa social space. The informal economy, which proliferates mainly due to chronic shortages, poverty and political instability, is far from being free of schemes, swindles, risks, conflict and violence. Nevertheless, it also includes social values, such as conviviality, solidarity, respect and loyalty. Ultimately, it contributes to a form of social self‑regulation.

诚然，这片土地正处在停滞的现代化进程中，机构破产、政局动荡、民间社会散乱无序、传统毫无价值。但是，挣扎在生存边缘的金沙萨人永远不缺聪明才智和创造力，他们总能让自己，乃至整个社会焕发出新的生机。

Admittedly, in the midst of an incomplete modernity, institutions are bankrupt, administrations shaky, civil society unstructured and traditions worthless. Yet what never ceases to amaze in Kinshasa is the resourcefulness and creativity of the people struggling to get by, reflecting the inventive spirit of individuals and the community.

作者简介：西尔维·阿伊姆潘（Sylvie Ayimpam，刚果） 社会科学家，就职于非洲研究所（IMAF，法国，普罗旺斯艾克斯）。她的工作重点是非洲城市的非正规经济问题，著有《金沙萨的头脑经济：非正规、商业和社会网络》（2014 年）。

A Congolese social scientist affiliated with the Institut des mondes africains (IMAF) in Aix-en-Provence, France, Sylvie Ayimpam’s work focuses on the issue of the informal economy in African cities. She is the author of Économie de la débrouille à Kinshasa. Informalité, commerce et réseaux sociaux (The economy of resourcefulness in Kinshasa. Informality, commerce and social networks), 2014.

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