THE CONGO EXPERIENCE:The Story of The Democratic Republic of the Congo

The tragic and turbulent history of Africa's third largest country, the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, based on excerpts from the diaries, reports and writings of those who lived it,-- missionaries like Father Julian Azcona, who spent 28 years in the rainforest of Upper Zaire and among many interactions with both Walese and Pygmies and soldiers come to loot, chatted with two young "warriors" of the Mai Mai, native accounts of the arrival of the Belgians in the 1850's, government officials of the Belgian Congo like Leon Rom known for adorning his garden with severed native heads and a Belgian doctor protesting the "hospitals" at the mines and others who saw "no evidence" of anything wrong, Belgian and international voices including literary voices like Joseph Conrad and Mark Twain, raised in protest against the atrocities that were decimating the native population, Lumumba who won the Congo's first elections only to be almost at once marked for death by powerful foreign interests, aided and abetted by Congolese who had their own plans for wealth and power, foreign diplomats like the wife of one American who arrived at the new post with her three small children the day before violence exploded throughout the city and the country, the American diplomat who survived being a hostage of the Simba, reports by the military that organized the rescue attempts of those hostages, invaders from neighboring countries who turned their "mission" into their country's ability to become significant exporters of coltan and diamonds, even though they had none in their own country, officers like General Prem Chand of India as well as soldiers of the UN forces forced to step in, a doctor "without frontiers" who saw firsthand the results of the atrocities against women, and of course observations of a few travelers amazed at the resilience of the Congo people themselves who, in spite of the horrors, still manage to survive and have hope. The content is illustrated by hundreds of photographs.