Scooters in the Congo | Case documentaire | Odyssee

In the Congo, in Kivu district, the scooter is not a fashionable Christmas gift for spoiled kids or avant-garde executives. They aren?t made of polished aluminum but of Eucalyptus wood. And they aren?t toys but represent a means of transport two meters long and weighing fifty kilos! An essential machine for the survival of the inhabitants of the country. In Goma, the three city markets are supplied two times a week by the chukudus, these giant scooters loaded with from three to four hundred kilos of merchandise. Mostly vegetables but also cooking pans, women?s clothes, and Jerry cans. Bahait, Gilbert and Patrick earn their living thanks to their chukudu. But it?s no easy street earning a living this way. While there is certainly some cruising downhill (which they take at about 60 kilometers an hour), asphalt is rare and falls can often be fatal. Every year, the chukudeurs lose two or three of their colleagues in highway accidents. The region is also regularly under the menace of an eruption of Nyiargongo, an active volcano which has devastated the whole region. The last eruption, in January 2002, resulted in more than a hundred deaths, and totally disrupted the world of the chukudu drivers. Their houses were destroyed. Everything had to be reconstructed. Even worse, the road they usually take was cut off in three places by the torrents of lava. They can therefore no longer earn the money they need for their and their families? survival. The specter of famine menaces them.