The Miracle-de-Dieu boat has left Kinshasa and is slowly going up the Congo River. On board, passengers compete for space with goods and play checkers to kill time, hoping to avoid the all too frequent damage and collisions.

The boat is a “metal whaleboat”, slower but reputed to be safer than its wooden equivalent. Whalers are long barges, generally overloaded and dilapidated, whose shipwrecks cause an unknown number of deaths, because we never know how many people they are carrying.

To travel the 520 kilometers separating Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), from Lukolela, a fishing town in the province of Equateur, the Miracle-de-Dieu, on board which traveled between the end of March and the beginning of April a photographer from Agence France-Presse (AFP), took a week.

This is more or less usual weather if you count an engine failure en route and a few episodes of tropical rain. According to the crew, during the previous trip, an accident caused two deaths when a mooring line came loose and violently mowed down passengers.

Collision

In the DRC, a large central African country of 2.3 million square kilometers, good roads are rare and air connections serve only a limited number of towns. Many traders have no other choice than the river route to transport their goods.

Eric Ndungu, a 41-year-old trader, married with five children, almost lost his life in November 2023, when the wooden whaleboat he was traveling in collided with another from Congo-Brazzaville. The accident left at least 48 dead, he said.

Every year, Eric makes three return trips for his business between Kinshasa and the province of Mongala, upstream of the Equator. For his safety, this time he opted for a metal boat, even if it is a little more expensive. This type of boat is considered “luxury”, but very relatively comfortable.

Luxury is having a place with the captain, the manager or the sailors. And those who have rented space in some way take turns to sleep, hoping to wake up to find that the whaleboat has come a long way. The “rooms” are largely occupied by goods, the transport of which brings in more revenue than that of passengers.

Dieudonné Mokake, 43, also a trader, estimates that this type of boat offers “80% assurance of human safety”, but “with 10% comfort”. He immediately adds: “To be honest, I would even say 0%. »

Anyone can become a shipowner

“I sit on the ground and sleep in the same conditions, under the stars, exposed to the elements. Sometimes I find shelter in a canoe attached to the whaling boat,” he explains. “Goods make a lot of money, but our lives are still worth something! “, Dieudonné gets carried away.

Like many other passengers, he regrets the heyday of Onatra (National Transport Office), created at the beginning of the 1970s and a victim a few years later of the liberalization of river transport, which allowed everyone to become a shipowner. There, travelers say, comfort was assured, there were rooms for two people, each barge had a restaurant…

On the Miracle-de-Dieu, as on the other boats, everyone makes do with their provisions. At the start of the trip, it’s a can of sardines and bread. Then the “moms” cook on board. Porridge for breakfast and, for dinner, river fish accompanied by foufou or chikwangue, traditional dishes from the Congo Basin made from cassava or corn flour.

In October 2023, according to a report from the council of ministers, the president, Félix Tshisekedi, asked the government to develop “an action plan” so that the Congo River plays a “driving role in the economic development” of the country .

Once again, it was a question of doing everything to avoid shipwrecks with “heavy human tolls”, of requiring carriers to have insurance contracts, of “fighting against makeshift boats” and of strengthening the surveillance of river traffic.