In the commune of N’Djili, a suburb of Kinshasa lies a small but engaging theatre, called K-MU Theatre. Whom the founder, Toto Kisaku, invited us officially to head over to Kinshasa. The theatre happened to be there to stimulate art and to encourage people to take initiatives so they can evade people hoping that God or the lottery will bring them money. Concluding we, Les Oiseaux de Merde, found the theatre an inspiring place, but their wall didn’t really match that atmosphere. We, as designers from origin, decided to make a change and revamped the whole wall.
The wall was funded with the donations of people and businesses in the Netherlands. In exchange, their name was written on the wall of the K-MU theatre. Who else can say they have their name written on a wall in Kinshasa in the Congo?!
So we created in fact a win-win-win situation for all parties!
First, we had to arrange a painter. The artist first had to see the wall before he could know how much time and money it would cost to paint the wall. One big setback since he said that the wall first had to be plastered first befor he could start with the actual painting. This would take two days, we only had two days left. But the coordinator of the ‘project’ or ‘the garnaal’ of the K-MU theatre said us that everything would be all right. It would be in the end, but not because of him.
So the wall had to be plastered. One guy was assigned to do this task, preferably in one day. Since this was impossible (the poor fellow had worked for 8 hours straight while the others were watching him do the job) he continued the next day. Alone, of course.
After two days of hard work (not for us, we were only allowed to sit and watch like two old emperors who lived in the colonial era), the wall was plastered. In time (!). The next morning the painter arrived with a team of five (actually four).
In the beginning there were some difficulties explaining the design, since our design was made loosly with illustrator and the painters worked with a grid. Therefore the design turned out to be a bit smaller then we wanted. But the team worked incredibly professional and after a day of hard work, the wall shined like a diamond!
So in the end everything was allright and everybody lived happily ever after! And we created a win-win-win situation: talking about doing business in Africa!
Sincerely,
Les Oiseaux de Merde
