Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown: The Congo. Worth watching.

[alexd]

I just watched his Congo episode and it brought back a lot of memories. It looks like the country hasn't changed at all since I lived there as a kid, except maybe that there are fewer fish in the river, and there is even less infrastructure now.

The episode made me happy to see familiar places, but incredibly sad at the same time. The resilience of the Congolese people in the face of all that war and adversity is astounding.

 

[Preroller]

ya, that was a good one. The Belgians really fucked them over. That part with the train station that people keep working on for free in the hopes that someday it will come back was kinda sad.

 

[alexd]

ya, that was a good one. The Belgians really fucked them over. That part with the train station that people keep working on for free in the hopes that someday it will come back was kinda sad.

The same with the agricultural library. There Congolese all over the country trying to maintain or preserve the last of the remaining infrastructure with no pay, with no tools, no replacement parts. It is incredibly sad.

If you are interested, there is a guy who went to my high school in Kinshasa who maintains a blog with excellent historical and modern pictures of Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC.

Kinshasa Then and Now