Lubumbashi Photos

Merry Christmas from Lubumbashi!

Jambo Mart is the only department store in Lubumbashi with 5 levels of goods from groceries to car batteries. English-speaking, South-Asian appearing managers walk the floor while purchases are rung up by Congolese cashiers.
They have an excellent selection of Indian spices, snacks and mixes.

Another picture of the robot traffic signals. Lubumbashi has three but Kinshasa only has two!
You can see "Made in DR Congo" below the robot.

Lubumbashi has a very nice museum which we visited on Halloween. Karen took these photos.

The lower section of the museum is a series of trilingual French, Swahili, and English photo displays from an exhibit put together several years ago that made the rounds to museums in and out of the DRC and is now housed here. The displays cover the natural history, industry, and culture of Katanga. Very interesting. 

Upstairs were artifacts from the necropolis at Sanga.
Below are close-ups, mainly for the benefit of my uncle, the archaeologist.

Note the copper crosses in the back -- these were used as money, and are on modern-day Lubumbashi's city seal.

A vessel. On the right you can see reflected the case in which a skeleton from the necropolis is laid out. On the left is the reflection of my paisley skirt.

More vessels.

This was a surprise -- in the passageway between wings of the museum was an area devoted to Laurent-Desiré Kabila, the opposition leader who overthrew the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and served as president until his assassination in 2001. His son is the current president. There were no labels or interpretive information in this section, which included a couple of other items related to the DRC's liberator.