These photos show a mat maker from the province of Bandundu, which is immediately to the east of Kinshasa, along with the fruits of his labors.   We used to obtain these nice colored woven mats from Bandundu in the local markets, but when I tried to find them this time around I was told that they were now much harder to locate on the market because of their being undercut in price by colorful mats imported from India (globalization at work!).   Then one day while driving to campus I noticed the colored baskets you see in the top photo, stopped to chat with the guy who made them, and ended up putting in an order for a big mat for our kitchen, with yellow and blue in it.   I gave him money for the materials up front, with the expectation of paying for his labor when the job was completed.  

The top-left photo was taken after I stopped at the mat-maker's place of work (by the side of the road) on another trip up to campus, only to discover that he hadn't been able to find enough blue and yellow and had decided to add red and black to the mat.   Unfortunately, Sharon needed blue and yellow for the kitchen, not black and red.   So I paid him for the 1/2-sized mat he'd completed (the one he's holding in the picture), and gave him money to start on a second mat with only blue and yellow mixed in with the off-white base.   The mat is about 5 feet high, as is the mat maker (remember, that's one of the reasons I like going there, because I'm a tall person in Kinshasa...).

The top-right and bottom photos show the mat we finally got from him for the kitchen.   It was pretty and handy, but unfortunately too big and bulky to bring home.