Christmas check-points

I wondered where I was last year during the Christmas holidays, and I realized just how far from me, just one year ago, the perception and the idea of spending this Christmas in a place like Brazzaville was. Here I perceive few the arriving Christmas. I could also say that the only source of awareness is the calendar because, to my western eyes, all the typical signs that characterize it in my town, here are virtually absent, except that here, these two-week holiday, use other symbols to be recognized. In the streets lights and decorations are rare. Fake firs around are few and tiny, what’s more. The most plentiful is Asia, a big shop managed by Chinese people, who are colonizing Brazzaville, like the Congo, like the rest of Africa. The only place where I saw an unusual crowd and queues is Casino, a French supermarket of the homonym chain, the only European supermarket in town, with prices that reach even to be five times higher than in Europe. Then, the hot humid climate of equatorial Africa has none of the western symbolism of cold Christmas, whitened by snow. Next to the items missing, however, there are others that exist only here, and they can probably help a bit in understanding this country, or maybe even more than it seems. From mid-December, in fact, in many areas of the town, police checkpoints spring up like mushrooms. I asked the cause of this to different categories of people: whites, Congolese, the taxi drivers who carry me here and there in my trips in town. The funny thing is that I have collected at least five or six different versions, some quite fanciful, others appear to be off-the-record, another one I could define official (and came out directly from the mouth of a policeman, the least credible one) and yet others simply dictated by common sense. Without batting an eye, a taxi driver who seemed knowledgeable (but seemed only) explained to me that the problem would be created by the removal of the chief of police after a dodgy affaire that he would have had with a minister. Such removal would create a power vacuum, and the policemen do what they want until they can. Yes, because the controls are not aimed to nothing, but often end in a request for a small sum of money (if all goes well, a thousand francs, just over a euro and a half) to let it pass. And with the coming holidays, an extra salary is good. Another interesting version is the one according to which the checkpoint are in place because the Ninja rebel group, which is located in the South of the country, might have evil intentions in this period, and then it would be necessary to have strict monitoring. The official version, linked to it, is the most obvious, and not worth telling.
The question is ultimately quite simple: a simple policeman earns 40 thousand francs a month (less than 70 euros) and around Christmas is exploiting its minimum power, with the clear approval of his superiors, to supplement their income and afford a little celebration. One consequence is that taxi drivers try to avoid areas where they know there are check-points and another one is the unending queues and traffic jams. To go around in town these days, therefore, is not the simplest thing. But beyond these considerations, I find it humanly difficult to blame the cops, who commit abuse but they are part of a system in which certain definitions are quite slippery and in any case contain a sharp boundary between theory and practice. Also because then I discovered that most of the taxis in town (and you should consider they represent 80% of the chaotic traffic in the capital) are property of senior police officers in high levels, and, paradoxically, for this reason they licensed to drive (crazily) as they wish during the rest of the year (who would want to stop the taxi of his boss?). To want to look cynically, in the end the superiors give their subordinates a supplement of salary ahead of the celebrations, a bit to defuse tension, a little to boost the mood, a little because at Christmas we are all better people. But go and explain to taxi drivers.