'The Elephant' by Matongé (Kinshasa, Congo)

At the request of 'Les Machines de l'île' in Nantes (FR) and Sfinks Mixed (world music festival) (BE), I traveled to Kinshasa in 2021 to build a mechanical elephant together with several Congolese artists. They had a great idea but were looking for technical help to develop it: that is how Olivier Rago (from Les Machines and Royal de Luxe) and I ended up there.

Their idea: Foufou is the 'national dish' in Kinshasa. A kind of edible 'dough' made from ground corn, water (and spices). Because ground corn is more expensive than regular corn, people in the lively Matongé district wanted to go out once a week with a noisy artistic procession. Central to that procession is an elephant: a mechanical machine that can walk/ride through the streets of Matongé and accept corn with its trunk when people hand it out on the sidelines. The elephant puts that corn in its mouth. His big belly grinds the corn, and at the end, the elephant lets out a big fart and the cornmeal flies out. That way, people can take their bowls of ground corn home again. Great idea!

For a month, we toiled away on a working model, scale 1/3 so that the elephant's movements were accurate: his head, his trunk, the way he walks, and how to operate it (with cables). I was often left speechless by how incredibly strong and beautiful the connections they make with wire were. There were some real tough guys among them! We learned a lot from each other. We built the model using recycled materials like old mobile phones for the face, slippers for the ears, corks and bottle caps for the crown, and tin cans for the trunk. It moves very beautifully, by the way...

The model is finished. It shows what is possible. Now we hope that one day it will actually roll through the Matongé district at full size, because let's be honest: it is a great idea.