Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo, is a propitious place for petty trading, the most prominent of which is selling coffee.
If you do not see coffee sellers on street corners, crossroads and major arteries, you are most likely to meet them, pushing a cart containing a thermos bottle filled with hot water, cans of coffee, milk, a frying pan and eggs.
In these mobile coffee carts and trolleys pushed on by 10-year-old boys or twenty-something year old young men, there is everything required for a good breakfast before heading to work.
This is well understood by drivers, apprentices, shopkeepers and laborers, as well as other public servants forced to leave their homes early in the morning to get to work.
Civil servants, who are the main customers of the coffee vendors, gather in small groups in front of the carts to take turns placing their orders.
The orders range from simple black coffee to coffee and milk, and scrambled eggs.
For regular customers who know the prices well, there is no bargaining: they order and wait for their turn.
Thus, for black coffee served hot in a disposable cups, you pay CFA100, and CFA150 when its laced with powdered milk and CFA300 for scrambled eggs.
Galikira, a bus driver found sipping his coffee, says between two sips: “We go out early in the morning and we do not even have time to take a piece of bread at home; these coffees relieve us and give us comfort, especially these days when it is cold in the morning.”
Allassane Sané greets the words of one of his clients with a nod in agreement.
Aged 16 and from a West African country, the teenager claims he had attained his financial independence from the sale of coffee.
This activity, he adds with a hint of pride, “gives me daily what I need to live decently on.”
André Moutou, a Congolese, also sees progress in vending coffee, an activity he ruefully says he discovered rather late.
“At first, I was ashamed, but in the face of my family’s difficulties in helping me because of my age, I decided to take the plunge,” he says, adding that by it he now helps his loved ones get by.
Pushing his trolley, he says he learned, like taxi drivers, how to throw circular glances so that he would not miss any solicitation from customers eager for hot coffee or an omelette.
Like Moutou, many Congolese resort to this trade, which was initially considered as the preserve of foreigners because they were the first to be involved in it.
In this regard, Isidore Mbala, a national of the DR Congo, who very early, became familiar with the coffee business, has built up a solid clientele that usually finds him near a bus stop where he plies his trade.
Aged and no longer able to push his coffee trolley, he waits patiently for his customers where he knows they will find him.
“I am here and I start my day very early in the morning when it’s still cold (…) in the middle of the day, when people are tired, they always come to ask for a small coffee. Thus, they will have the strength to finish the day,” says Isidore, demonstrating knowledge of customer inclinations.
Working until 21h, he can return home with CFA15,000, part of which goes into his savings and indulging his personal needs.
The other is reinvested in the purchase of the necessary ingredients (coffee, milk, sugar, egg, etc) to continue his business.
LCM/cat/fss/as/APA