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Bombé puts users in a kind of trance
Photo: Arsène Mpiana Monkwe / DER SPIEGEL
Suddenly these videos appeared, they were mainly circulating on WhatsApp and on social networks.
What could be seen on it quickly got a name: the Zombies of Kinshasa.
Because the recordings show people who remain in shock for minutes or only move in slow motion.
Investigators now know that there is a new drug behind it, Bombé.
"It's an epidemic," said a senior official of the responsible investigative authority in an interview with SPIEGEL.
A crisis that has long since reached the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
President Felix Thisekedi recently summoned his ministers to discuss the new drug.
He wants to radiate energy.
But the rapid spread of Bombé is also the symptom of a sick country and a mega-city that has become downright hostile to life for many residents.
Statistics regularly show Kinshasa as one of the least livable cities in the world, just ahead of Damascus or Baghdad.
In one of the wickedest neighborhoods in town, in Selembao,
four young men are sitting in a hidden backyard.
In front of them is a pane of glass with a brown powder on it.
Next to the powder, crumble white tablets, then mix the two substances.
“The tablets have to go in, they stimulate the appetite.
If we don't take them, we wouldn't eat anything for two days, ”the young people explain.
Then they use a razor blade to shape the powder into three short thin lines, like cocaine.
Most of it is drawn into your nostrils, the pane of glass moves in a circle.
The rest is crumbled into cigarettes and smoked.
After consuming it, the youngsters get euphoric at first, then move more and more slowly.
The four young men know what the powder presumably contains: deposits and ingredients of a car catalytic converter. Scraped out of old vehicles, then made into a drug. "We're not worried about it," they say. After all, they had nothing to lose. “Bombé helps us forget everything. In the west they have bank accounts, I have nothing. Everything is easier with Bombé. «It is like a veil that covers you, says one of the consumers. And for just a dollar a trip.
In Kinshasa you don't get much else for that amount.
A meal in a mid-range restaurant can easily cost $ 30.
The rents in the better neighborhoods easily depend on Munich and Frankfurt.
Kinshasa is one of the most expensive cities in the world, at least for foreign workers.
There are many super-rich people who are driven through the wide streets of the business district in their huge SUVs.
At the same time, the economy is down, the country's wealth of natural resources only reaches a small elite.
There is hardly any middle class.
Most of the estimated 15 million inhabitants of this metropolis have no permanent job, no regular income.
The corona pandemic has made it even more.
So it is probably no coincidence that Bombé is becoming a mass phenomenon right now.
At the very edge of society are the Kulunas, literally translated as hooligans.
A huge army of young people who stay afloat with petty crime and gang crime.
The absolute bestseller among them: the gray forgetful drug.
For the kulunas it is the state of absolute happiness: the "pication", the phase of being completely stepped away, while sitting, lying or standing.
“At this moment I am not available.
It's the deepest sleep you can imagine, «says one consumer.
Others report a change from euphoria and periods of rest in which they do not have to think about anything.
Bombé does not cause hallucinations or colorful trips like other drugs.
The users say that it is simply nothing.
That's enough for them here in Kinshasa.
Countless videos of this state, a kind of zombie mode, are circulating on Facebook and Twitter.
Some Kulunas say that they also use the drug before gang fights - indifference helps on the street.
"This drug is extremely dangerous," says the head of the Congolese addiction program, Patrice Kapia.
"It causes heart and lung problems, and in the long term cancer too." There have already been reports of deaths after bombing.
Above all, the components from the catalytic converters are possibly very toxic, warns Kapia.
The car parts contain deposits such as zinc oxide, but also platinum and rhodium.
Which individual substances work and how is currently being investigated in a laboratory in Antwerp, Belgium.
The experts are still puzzled by many.
According to experts, it is possible that the substances from the auto-analyzers trigger a chemical reaction with the rest of the drug mixture.
A colonel in the National Police, who would rather remain anonymous, holds up an initial chemical analysis from a laboratory in Kinshasa: "Catalyst" is written there.
In addition, the mixtures contained various substances such as tramadol, dolarenes, nitrile, ampicillin, and sometimes traces of heroin, he says.
“The investigation revealed more and more, step by step. Consumers have led us to dealers and manufacturers. And that's how we found out that powder was added from exhaust systems, ”explains the lead investigator. Four weeks ago, the police proudly presented their catch: Almost 100 people were arrested, including the supposed masterminds of the catalyst trade, Tunisian citizens. In plastic barrels, the investigators found the grayish chunks that had been scraped from the inside of the car parts.
According to the police, the accused defended themselves to have been exported to Germany for recycling.
One thing is certain: in the Congo, traders can get up to 200 US dollars for one kilogram of the coveted powder.
In other countries, too, the trade in catalyst contents is flourishing, mainly because of the coveted precious metals such as platinum and rhodium.
However, the investigators were surprised that drugs are now apparently also being made from it.
A mechanic in Kinshasa shows how the thieves work.
He's holding up a catalytic converter that he recently had to remove from a car.
Because instead of the usual honeycomb inside, it is filled with fine metal wires, and weld seams can still be seen on the underside.
"Mechanics are often involved in the trade," he says.
“You unscrew the catalytic converter while the cars are parked for repairs in the workshop or in front of hotels. Then they take out the contents and then fill the catalytic converter with metal wires so that you don't hear the difference right away. ”The mechanic says that he himself has now received several cars in this condition. It is an almost perfidious side effect: In addition to the serious damage to health for consumers, there is also the environmental damage caused by defective catalytic converters.
Samy Moyo from the National Youth Council no longer wants to stand idly by. He is leading a project that aims to offer alternatives to those addicted to bombs. Dozens of former kulunas crowd into a kind of classroom, some have found no more space and are trying to catch something from the outside through the windows. Inside, a teacher tells how to till fields and sow seeds. "We train the young people in agriculture, in the end each of them gets a piece of land from the government," explains Moyo. There is no shortage of arable land in the huge country of the Congo.
The idea sounds tempting: The bomb addicts should get out of the city and be allowed to keep 75 percent of the harvest, 25 percent they have to pay to the state.
So all sides should benefit.
The young people are already receiving some kind of pocket money.
"I stopped taking Bombé because I now have a perspective," says 23-year-old Plamedi Lama.
But none of them has yet seen the promised piece of land.
"If that doesn't work, we'll go back to Bombé, what else should we do?" Say Lama and his friends.
He has a wife and a child at home.
Most of the kulunas here have committed serious crimes - robbery, murder, rape.
She seems to be surprised that they should now get a second chance.
In fact, the government runs large public campaigns, prints anti-bombé T-shirts, and wants to convey the image of tackling the problem. But the practice is a little more complicated. "We did get land from the government, but no seeds or tools to cultivate it," says project manager Samy Moyo. "How should we start like that?" He even camped with the young people in front of the responsible ministry to put pressure on them. So far it has done little. Some participants are now dependent again, one even died.
At the same time, the authorities are relying on hardship in the fight against the new drug. Detected users and manufacturers are to be jailed for years. When the 100 arrested people were brought before the press four weeks ago, they were sitting on the floor, exposed to the cameras. On the other side, the city authorities took their seats in chairs, sheltered by parasols, and looked down at the delinquents. There is hardly a better way to describe the gradient in Kinshasa. One MP has even promised to pay whistleblowers $ 100 out of pocket if they catch bomb dealers.
Olga Kithumbu tries a different approach.
In a loud voice she commands a group of women on one side and young men on the other.
The social worker has learned to assert herself with the Kulunas, who otherwise only listen to their gang leader.
Olga Kithumbu works for the program »Sober Communities«, she supervises the exit of the bomb addicts.
250 users have already been taken away from the drug, she says.
Today they collect rubbish from the streets of Kinshasa and get a small wage for it.
Beatrice * is one of the dropouts participating in the program.
“I sold my wares in the market and took Bombé.
Then I fell asleep soundly and didn't notice anything.
My son woke me up at some point, all my belongings had been stolen.
Then I decided to stop, «she says.
Her whole body was itching during withdrawal - a symptom that many former addicts describe.
But: »Bombé does not only affect street children and young people.
Police officers and business people have also reported to us who want to get out.
They all use Bombé to forget their problems, ”says Valentin Vangi, head of the“ Sober Communities ”program.
And there are enough problems in the Congo, he adds.
In a complex conflict in the north-east of the country, militias are waging fierce battles against the government and attacking the civilian population; there is an official state of war.
The economic effects can also be felt in the capital Kinshasa.
The best breeding ground for a cheap drug that will make you forget everything.
Collaboration: Steve Wembi
* The name has been changed to protect the protagonist
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