Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/18/amazing-photos-from-kinshasa.html
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The thought of all that material and technical expertise going to waste makes me a bit sad. There are so many useful, even profitable things that could be done with all those people and pieces.
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This reminds me of the yard surrounding The Museum of Pre-Plastic Junk.
Back when it existed.
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The thought of all that material and technical expertise going to waste makes me a bit sad. There are so many useful, even profitable things that could be done with all those people and pieces.
Aside from being used as spare parts? The auto industry has been making landfill-filler since… the auto industry.
The people, of course, likely just do what they can.
There is plenty of profit to be made from used car parts. If you wander down Recycle Road in Rancho Cordova (near Sacramento) you’ll see one thriving dismantler after another. The problem is having economical shipping to get the parts to the people willing to pay for them. I think that if the DRC government brought some subsidized internet and China-style subsidized post to the area it could turn into a tidy profit center.
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Oh, you know: micro wind turbine arrays; odd-part vehicles; dystopian, cast iron infrastructure; meat rendering systems; tanks for revolutioning.
Something, anything. That’s tons of mostly working car parts.
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Precisely my point.
There is a beautiful film, one of the most beautiful films called Kini und Adams by Idriss Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kini-Adams-Vusi-Kunene/dp/B000E8RGNW about two men somewhere in rural Africa trying to build a car from parts bought from a peddler who passes the village every month or so. The most touching moment is when they buy and install the windshield wipers… the excitement of it.
The film is about dreams and perseverance and the human spirit.
Kini and Adams are hoping to take their car to the city and run it as a taxi.
Life has other plans. Utterly heart wrenching–these pictures reminded me.
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