Word: congo
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...Congo has been the suffering heart of Africa for more than a century, and its turbulent colonial history has been well documented in novels like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, and in Adam Hochschild's nonfiction King Leopold's Ghost. But the more recent travails of what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) have until now been poorly appreciated. And they are apocalyptic. In January, the International Rescue Committee estimated that 5.4 million people have died in the various wars - and their related effects - that have torn through Congo since...
...Press wire agency in 2004, and covers the bumpy transition from war to peace. After that, it's back to more fighting in the east, before Mealer embarks on two long journeys across the country, by boat and by rail. In June 2007 he finishes his travels and leaves Congo...
...claustrophobia and surrealism that permeates Congo's jungles builds in the tense run-up to the presidential elections of June 2006. Mealer finds himself in eastern Congo waiting for the possible emergence of Commander Cobra, a mysterious militia leader in charge of 2,000 soldiers, mostly children, who are ruled through fear and black magic. Fighting between the government and Cobra has displaced tens of thousands, and Mealer teams up with a pastor whose experience of war only makes his faith burn brighter. The pastor acts as Mealer's translator through the refugee camps where people are dying from disease...
...doesn't hurt that the author has an ear for precision and an aversion to cliché, and is also engagingly honest. "In mid-March 2005, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland announced Congo had become 'the world's worst humanitarian crisis,' " he writes. "For the few Western journalists based in the capital, this was fantastic news, meaning we'd somehow edged out the tsunami in Asia and the genocide in Sudan in the race for absolute misery...
...staying connected to the motherland, is an essential part of the immigrant experience in the U.S. At least on the football field, Europe, too, has learned that diversity can have its rewards. The great Zinedine Zidane is the son of an Algerian; Florent Malouda, born in French Guiana, and Congo-born Claude Makelele will feature for France this year. Turkey once exported guest workers to Switzerland and Germany, and is now seeing a return. Several of its team, including Hamit Altintop and Hakan Balta, are German-born. Germany itself reflects Europe's now swirling populace. Two strikers, Miroslav Klose...