Concentrated tomato, onion, milk powder, soap are cut into small volumes on the markets in Kinshasa: the face of rising prices, sellers Congolese have invented the "miniaturization".

"I n'écoule more my boxes of tomatoes, nor my vegetables. This is expensive now and people can not afford to buy them. So I cut into small pieces to sell," said Wivine, a saleswoman at Livulu market, a district east of the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On his table, cans of tomato concentrate cut into two or packed in bags and soap cut into cubes, are spread.

On a shelf, onions and cucumbers, also cut.

"A quarter of this onion costs 20 Congolese francs (0035 USD) and a small soap costs 30 FC (0053 USD)," said the saleswoman filling milk powder in a tiny glass of barely 3 inches high.

This ingenious response to soaring prices has become commonplace in Kinshasa. It allows many Congolese families to survive.

More than 75% of 60 million people of the DRC live in effect with less than one dollar a day, in a country with rich land and the basement is full of minerals.

Nzumba, 18 years and mother of four children, says she is the market each day with about 500 FC (0.90 USD).

"Today, I bought a small bunch of matembele + + (local vegetable), squash, maize flour, oil palm and a piece of cucumber for a total cost of 450 Congolese francs (0 , 80 USD), "said the young woman bitterly.

"This is unfortunately what we eat, my children and me," she says. She wakes up every day at 5 o'clock in the morning to fetch water because water arrives at her home, then sell part of oranges. She earns 600 FC or just over 1 U.S. dollar per day: She miniaturization is a "lifeline".

A few steps from the house Nzumba, a mother of a family living bicoque two pieces cooked chicken.

"With the meager salary of my husband (20 USD per month), we can not buy a whole chicken. I just took two pieces for me and
small, "says Nlandu, who admits that his grown children, boys as girls are doing for food.

"The miniaturization helps us but we fear of contracting diseases," she says.

The fear of Nlandu is shared by several other families.

"When you take milk sold in a small glass and exposed to open air, it (milk) becomes obsolete and contaminated. We know but what can I do?" Asks Jean official who consumes all the day a tiny glass of milk powder "miniaturized".

The lowest wages in the public administration is about $ 20 per month. The government has to raise the minimum wage by one to three dollars with the application no later than 1 September 2009.

The miniaturization of foodstuffs also extends in cosmetics. Some hair gels and powders are sold in "miniature".

"With this little frost, I'm fine low cost," says Esther, a girl in the neighbourhood.

In the DRC, bread and cereals increased by 27.6% and the price of oil has surged by 32% in six months (from September 2007 to February 2008), according to the Department of Statistics.

Inflation, which neared 10% at the end of 2007, rose to 15% annualized rate in March 2008, according to the Central Bank of Congo (BCC).