Adventures with Julia

It is now April 3rd.  Mark and I are at the Protea Hotel in Entebbe, betting ready to leave Africa and head for Amsterdam.  I have nearly finished writing about our time in the Congo and hope to have it completed within a few days.  Meanwhile, here is the chapter about the country that will give you some background.  We are both well and sorry to be leaving Africa.  We have loved our experiences in these three countries in spite of the various difficulties encountered.  Hopefully, you are enjoying reading about them too.

About the Democratic Republic of the Congo

There is a lot to say about the Democratic Republic of the Congo and I will try to be concise. The country is located in south central Africa with a narrow connection to the Atlantic Ocean via the Congo River, which runs through the entire country and provided the country with its name. It is 1.59 times the size of Alaska and is the second largest country in Africa and the 11th largest in the world. It is bordered by nine countries: the Central African Republic and South Sudan to the north; Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania to the east; Zambia to the south; Angola to the southwest and the Republic of the Congo and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. With a population over 78 million, it is the most populated officially francophone country, the fourth most-populated nation in Africa and the 17th most populated country in the world.

It was first settled by humans about 90,000 years ago, as proven by found artifacts. Bantu people settled in the region in the 5th and 10th centuries. The Kingdom of the Kongo ruled from the 14th to the 19th centuries. In the 1870s, Henry Morton Stanley led the way for European exploration of the Congo under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium. Somehow Leopold acquired rights to the Congo in 1885 and made the land his private property. How rude was that? He named it the Congo Free State and allowed, or maybe hired, the colonial military Unit, Force Publique, to force the local population into producing rubber from 1885 to 1908. Millions of Congolese died from disease and exploitation. Finally, Belgium was embarrassed into annexing the Free State, which then became the Belgium Congo. In 1960 the Begium Congo achieved independence under the name Republic of the Congo.  The Belgians fled the country, leaving their large estates behind.

The first elected president and prime minister did not last long as the Army Chief of Staff, one Joseph-Desire Mobutu, gained de facto control through a coup d’etat the same year. In 1965, Mobutu officially took power through a second coup. He changed his name to Mobutu Sese Seko and, in 1971, changed the name of the country to Zaire. He ran the country as a one party dictatorship and received considerable support from the USA due to his anti-communist stance during the cold war. In the early 90s, his government began to weaken. Destabilization in eastern Zaire resulting from the Rwandan genocide and disenfranchisement among the eastern Congolese Tutsi population led to a 1996 invasion by Tutsi ruled Rwanda, which began the First Congo War. The war led to the end of Mobutu’s 32 year rule.

In May 1997, Laurent-Desire Kabila, a Tutsi leader, became President. He immediately changed the name back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tensions between Kabila and the Rwandan and Tutsi presence in the country led to the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003. Ultimately nine African countries and 20 armed groups became involved in the war, resulting in the deaths of 5.4 million people. Kabila was assassinated in January 2001 and a week later his son, Joseph Kabila, succeeded him as President. He called for multilateral peace talks. UN peacekeepers arrived and negotiations finally resulted in a peace accord in 2003. By mid year all foreign armies except those of Rwanda, had left the Congo. A transitional government was set up, a constitution was approved and multi-party elections were held in July 2006. The election was disputed and fighting broke out in the capital, Kinshasa. The UN took control of the city. A new election took place in October. Kabila won and was sworn in as President in December, 2006. He set up a commission to reduce corruption and began implementing economic reforms. In spite of his efforts, very little improved for the people.

Conflicts and uprisings continued to take place. In 2009, The New York Times reported that people in the Congo continued to die at a rate of 45,000 per month, due mainly to widespread disease and famine. Reports indicated that almost half of the deaths were children under the age of 5. One study found that more than 400,000 women were raped every year in the DRC. The two wars devastated the country. Together they are considered the bloodiest war since WWII. By 2015, major protests broke out across the country and protestors demanded that Kabila step down. However, he did not step down at the end of his term, as promised, and insists on staying on until elections are held. The date for elections has changed and dragged on. Protests continue. Currently the election is scheduled for December 2018.  No one is optimistic that the election will actually occur or that the results will be satisfying, if it does occur.

Located on the equator, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a tropical climate that produced the Congo River system which dominates the region topographically along with the rainforest it flows through. The river basin occupies nearly the entire country and forms the backbone of Congolese economics and transportation. The river has the second largest flow and the second longest watershed of any river in the world, trailing the Amazon in both respects. The river and a 23 mile wide strip of coastline on its north bank provide the country’s only access to the Atlantic. The volcanically active Albertine Rift passes through the very mountainous northeaster section of the country. Geologic activity created the Great Rift Valley and the chain of African Great Lakes (Albert, Kivu, Edward and Tanganyika). The Rift valley has exposed an enormous amount of mineral wealth throughout the south and east of the Congo, making it accessible to mining. Cobalt, copper, cadmium, diamonds, gold, silver, zinc, manganese, tin, germanium, uranium, radium, bauxite, iron ore and coal are all found in in plentiful supply. The Congo is considered the most biodiverse African country and one of the world’s richest countries in natural resources. You can begin to imagine the wealth this country possesses in natural resources that are mostly untapped and not providing jobs or infrastructure or health or education or anything else for the people of the region, whose per capita GDP is nearly the lowest in the world. Such a shame. Its untapped deposits of raw minerals are estimated to be worth 24 trillion, according to Wikipedia.