Dames en attente

Taking in wives of the unemployed, of unpaid government employees, the Kitambo maternity clinic in Kinshasa has to cope with the patients’ lack of money. And negociations are tough between the administration and the women. As long as the bill remains unsettled they are kept at the clinic, which only increases the cost of their stay. And here everything has its price, even a birth certificate. The women’s protests against their poor accomodation conditions or their claim that their husbands’ pay is overdue can change nothing. The female administrator won’t budge an inch. If you’ve no money, you stay put. Unless, of course, you leave an object behind to guarantee the debt. In her office, music centres, video players and televisions are piling up. The idea very quickly comes to mind that this maternity clinic can only be filmed from one vantage point: not the treatment or examination rooms, or the wards, but at the billing office with the women queuing up in front of its door.

Yann Lardeau