, the Congolese call their capital, and I’ve looked for Kinshasa’s beauty. The Congo River, pulse of a planet, fifteen miles wide as it courses past? Abdim’s storks wheeling overhead, hippos lolling in the rapids below the café where I had lunch under the gaze of giant orange-headed lizards? All beautiful, I thought, but was gently corrected. Beasts and crawling creatures don’t really belong here. Kinshasa’s is human, and modern, the unquenchable, rowdy hustle in this city of 15 million souls. Never mind that its vast shantytowns are the only option for most new arrivals. They still come. Every year, Kinshasa absorbs 400,000 more people,
