Primus

It has been brewed in Kisangani since the colonial era, and across the Congo it enjoys the status of a national institution. During my research most people with any direct experience of the Congo mentioned Primus. During the various wars and periods of turmoil here, just about the only thing that remained open in the city was the brewery, churning out Primus lager in large brown bottles that bore the name not on a paper label, but on a stencil of white letters glazed direct onto the glass. There were legendary stories about bottles of Primus being opened to reveal human nails inside, or insects, or other detritus too gruesome to go into. But the point was: while every other factory in Kisangani collapsed, the Primus brewery plodded on, filling, recycling and refilling the bottles, time after time, year after year, crisis after crisis.

Each bottle I drank seemed to have its own story. The tiny chinks on the lip or missing letters on the stencil told of boozing sessions and bar fights through the city’s turbulent past. Drinking a bottle of Primus made me feel more in touch with the country’s recent history than almost anything else I did in the Congo. And another thing – it tasted great.

Extract from Blood River: a Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher, pp. 266-267

Primus is over-rated. By any measure it is a mediocre lager. The fact that is comes in a 720ml bottle and tastes like beer might appeal to some. If I had never tasted beer before, or if no other beer was available, Primus might be worth mentioning. Certainly, after the author’s overland journey through hundreds of miles of mosquito and Mai-Mai infested jungle to Kisangani (a feat which I have tremendous respect for), any beer would taste amazing. That said, after all he had been through, the fact that the intrepid Mr Butcher deemed Primus to be the best connection to the Congo’s recent past seems a sad indictment on his profound exposure to the human suffering and developmental regression (in Western terms at least), which he experienced first hand like no other in recent years. One would think that cannibalised skulls from the massacre of villagers near Kindu would have made a deeper impact and connected him in a way that no beer ever could. I get his point about the enduring nature of beer production in the place he was and how every bottle tells a story of the murderous rapist or proud new father supping in satisfaction. It’s just not the conclusion I would have reached. Or so I’d like to believe. That section of his book sounds like the romantic musings of an inebriated, homesick adventurer.

My first Primus was warm and came with a sticker over the white stencilled label. It tasted piss poor. Mind you, if that’s all you’ve got, even a warm beer starts to taste alright by the end. Thankfully, Primus is not the beer of choice in Baraka – Amstel is. Maybe the locals have shifted allegiance to dissociate themselves from recent Congolese history. My guess is that something much better came along and they were only too happy to leave Primus to the corrupt, oppressive and exploitative thugs, officials and outlaws which have plagued the DRC since King Leopold claimed this land as his personal dominion. Not that I’m a huge fan of this Dutch lager, but it’s a definitely an improvement. I wonder how things might have been different had The Netherlands colonised this part of Africa instead of Belgium. Probably only this – the Congolese would speak Dutch and have much better beer.