Congo Quotes

Dream Song 55
Peter's not friendly. He gives me sideways looks.
The architecture is far from reassuring.
I feel uneasy.
A pity, - the interview began so well:
I mentioned fiendish things, he waved them away
and sloshed out a martini
strangely needed. We spoke of indifferent matters
God's health, the vague hell of the Congo,
John's energy,
anti-matter matter. I felt fine.
Then a change came backward. A chill fell.
Talk slackened,
died, and began to give me sideways looks.
'Chirst,' I thought 'what now?' and would have askt for another
but didn't dare.
I feel my application failing. It's growing dark,
some other sound is overcoming. His last words are:
'We betrayed me. ~ John Berryman

But like all things, the business has two sides. Clean white teeth are not always wise, now are they? Par exemplum: when I was in the Congo, the only way I could identify the nigger was by the whiteness of his teeth, if you see what I mean. Horrid business. Dark as buggery, it was. And they died because of it, you see? Poor bastards. Or rather I survived, to look at it in another way, do you see? ~ Zadie Smith

Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

We [human beings] are two-legged omnivorous animals, and this means that we have many ecological niches, regarding the possible places where we can live. Therefore, we have to adapt to these different environments and we cannot predict, in a generic way, in which type of world we are going to live (cold as the North Pole or hot as Congo). ~ Rodolfo Llinas

That's what I thought" he said. "It doesn't change anything, Zinzi". He moved to kiss me, but as I tilted my head up, he pressed the mango against my lips instead. "Idiot" I said, wiping my mouth, mainly to hide my smile. "Adulterer", he grinned. "Unwitting accomplice!" "You weren't so unwitting last night. And besides polygamie is legal in Congo." "Did I call you an idiot already?" "Only as much as I deserve." This time he did kiss me. I handed over twelve bucks for the mango and tucked myself under his arm, forcing Sloth to shuffle over begrudgingly. "Are we a terrible cliché?" "Isn't everybody?" he said. ~ Lauren Beukes

One day, putting my finger on a spot in the very middle of the then white heart of Africa, I declared that some day I would go there ... It is a fact that, about eighteen years afterwards, a wretched little stern-wheel steamboat I commanded lay moored to the bank of an African river.

Everything was dark under the stars. Every other white man on board was asleep. I was glad to be alone on deck, smoking the pipe of peace after an anxious day. The subdued thundering mutter of the Stanley Falls hung in the heavy night air of the last navigable reach of the Upper Congo ... Away in the middle of the stream, on a little island nestling all black in the foam of the broken water, a solitary little light glimmered feebly, and I said to myself with awe, 'This is the very spot of my boyish boast.'

A great melancholy descended on me. Yes, this was the very spot. But there was no shadowy friend to stand by my side in the night of the enormous wilderness, no great haunting memory, but only the ... distasteful knowledge of the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration. What an end to the idealised realities of a boy's daydreams!... Still, the fact remains that I have smoked a pipe of peace at midnight in the very heart of the African continent, and felt very lonely there. ~ Joseph Conrad

All we hear about Africa in the West is Darfur, Zimbabwe, Congo, Somalia, as if that is all there is. ~ Mo Ibrahim

Free trade and Christianity, it's the German East Africa Company, it's French Equatorial Africa, it's the Belgians cutting down the Congo population from twenty million to ten in barely twenty years, by nineteen fourteen there's nothing left to plunder in Africa so they go to war with each other in Europe instead that's what the whole damned first world war was all ab ... ~ William Gaddis

I see so many people get so wrapped up in wanting to get a bigger SUV or a bigger house. But then I think, 'My God, I could have been born a woman in the Congo.' ~ Janine Di Giovanni

Over the years, the diamond industry has had a devastating impact in countries such as Sierra Leone, Angola and the Congo, where profits from the sale of diamonds have been used to fund brutal wars, with disastrous effects on local communities. ~ Sheherazade Goldsmith

What America did in Vietnam and the Congo - we feel. And as a result come these demonstrations. I am not defending the act of burning USIS books. We deplore it. But we can understand the motives of the students. ~ Sukarno

It is essential that the foreign forces who have invaded and occupy large parts of the Congo halt their offensive action ~ Richard Holbrooke

We must bear in mind, however sadly, that psychopathology is no longer the exclusive preserve of the degenerate and perverse. The Congo, Vietnam, Biafra -these are games that anyone can play. Their violence, and all violence for that matter, reflects the neutral exploration of sensation that is taking place now, within sex as elsewere (...). Were all this leads one can only speculate (...). What will follow is the psychopathology of sex, relationships so lunar and abstract that people will become mere extensions of the geometries of situations. ~ Ballard James G.

Some day I shall write a novel and call it 'A Walking Tour in the Congo' or 'Thrills and Spills in Aeronautics'; but I keep this type of title as a last & mercenary resort. ~ Louis MacNeice

I cannot forget the place that I come from. The Congo is much in need. ~ Dikembe Mutombo

I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo. ~ Frantz Fanon

The Congo is very wealthy from oil money but is not paying its debts and at the same time is applying for special status at the World Bank. That's shocking and disingenuous. ~ Paul Singer

Concrete can rot. It turns green and black before crumbling away.
Maybe only people from Congo know that. ~ Eliot Schrefer

After the sale of Celtel, I really wanted to give the money back, and I had a number of choices - to go and buy masses of blankets and baby milk or to go into Darfur or Congo. That would have been very nice actually, but it's just like an aspirin: it doesn't deal with the problem. ~ Mo Ibrahim

Bosch had left Nigeria with his infamous Butcher Boys - assorted sizes, shapes and colors, but all killers for a price - when his scheme to take over a native village backfired. He had figured on cleaning up by selling the village girls in the Congo but found himself dodging spears, knives and related items of cutlery instead. ~ Walter Kaylin

If low taxes were the way that people like me created wealth, then we'd be starting our companies in the Congo or Somalia or Afghanistan, but we're not. We come to places where there are lots and lots of customers. ~ Nick Hanauer

Most people don't know that Congo Square was originally a Muscogee ceremonial ground ... in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. ~ Joy Harjo

There is a structural difference between the way that Europe views Israel, and America views Israel. The European view is informed by the importance of colonialism in Europe's past. So for Europeans we are like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. Strange interlopers in somebody else's land. But in fact, we [Israeli] have been here for 4,000 years. This is our ancestral homeland. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

My foundation was created so I can find a way to improve the living conditions of my people in the African continent, not just in Congo. ~ Dikembe Mutombo

As to the efficacy of the policy recommended by Rostow, it speaks for itself: no country, once underdeveloped, ever managed to develop By Rostow's stages. Is that why Rostow is now trying to help the people of Vietnam, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, and other underdeveloped countries to overcome the empirical, theoretical, and policy shortcomings of his manifestly non-communist intellectual aid to economic development and cultural change by bombs, napalm, chemical and biological weapons, and military occupation? ~ Andre Gunder Frank

Many of us imagine carrying out dramatic changes in impoverished places, but few have the patience for the small, time-consuming, and seemingly endless details that make it possible. ~ Deni Ellis Béchard

Israel is one of the most multiracial and multicultural countries in the world. More than a hundred different countries are represented in its population of 6 million. Consider how the Israeli government spent tens of millions of dollars airlifting more than forty thousand black Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1984 and 1991. Since 2001 Israel has reached out to help others, taking in non-Jewish refugees from Lebanon, the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, Liberia, and Congo, and even Bosnian Muslims. How many such refugees have the twenty-two states in the Arab League taken in? The Arab world won't even give Palestinian refugees citizenship in their host countries. Remember, Jews can't live in the neighboring Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan or in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But Arabs are living as citizens in Israel. What does that tell you about their respect for other cultures? Over 1 million Arabs are full Israeli citizens. An Arab sits on the Supreme Court of Israel. There are Arab political parties expressing views inimical to the State of Israel sitting in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Women are equal partners in Israel and have complete human rights, as do gays and minorities. Show me an Arab nation with a Jew in its government. Show me an Arab country with half as many Jewish citizens as Israel has Arab citizens. Show me freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and human rights in any Arabic country in the Middle East the way they exist and are prac ~ Brigitte Gabriel

We live as we dream--alone...."
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Congo Diary ~ Joseph Conrad

Before any modern man talks with authority about loving men, I insist (I insist with violence) that he shall always be very much pleased when his barber tries to talk to him. His barber is humanity: let him love that. If he is not pleased at this, I will not accept any substitute in the way of interest in the Congo or the future of Japan. If a man cannot love his barber whom he has seen, how shall he love the Japanese whom he has not seen? It ~ G.K. Chesterton

I'll not be a hypocrite and dispute you over that. It's the custom and culture that up brings us to what's right and what's wrong. It's just easier to follow than to dispute. ~ Max Connelly

Up steps, three, six, nine, twelve! Slap! Their palms hit the library door.
* * *
They opened the door and stepped in.
They stopped.
The library deeps lay waiting for them.
Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes. ~ Ray Bradbury

No matter Pretoria's thirst for Congo's megawatts or Washington's hopes that Inga can help transform Congo and lift its people out of poverty. The world can't want Inga more than the people of Congo want Inga; that just won't work. Until then, the vast power of the Congo churns on, waiting to be harnessed - one day. ~ Anonymous

It is America (or Israel) at war, not just any war, that disturbs the Left. That is why there have been few demonstrations, and none of any size, against the mass murder of Sudan's blacks; the genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, or Congo; China's crushing of Tibet; or Saddam Hussein's wars against Iran, Kuwait, and Iraq's own Kurds. Though there are always admirable individual exceptions, the Left has not been nearly as vocal about these large scale atrocities as it is about America's wars. One additional reason is that, in general, atrocities committed by non-whites rarely interest the Left - and therefore 'world opinion,' which is essentially the same thing as Leftist opinion. ~ Dennis Prager

I can't be calm when I drive through sections of Atlanta that look more like Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, than America. ~ Cynthia McKinney

I live with that contradiction daily. It is a constant struggle. I struggle very deeply. I don't think I've said this to anyone, but I've wondered if I just want to give up this world and live in the Congo and just be there. But I don't think that's what they need from me ~ Eve Ensler

They were dying slowly - it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now - nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. ~ Joseph Conrad

Shortly afterwards, it sounded as if the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) were landing dangerously close - so close that I immediately dropped to the floor, prompting an unflinching Congolese man in the lobby, who'd obviously endured much worse, to jokingly say, "I see you do not enjoy the beautiful music we play here in the Congo." It is still one of the most reassuring things anyone has ever said to me in the midst of a crisis…. ~ Samantha Nutt

Rational order in the technological world can be as fascinating as the fetishes of a Congo witch-doctor - scientific phenomena become significant images. ~ Eduardo Paolozzi

I was occupied so entirely by each day, I felt detached from anything so large as a month or a year. History didn't cross my mind. Now it does. Now I know, whatever your burdens, to hold yourself apart from the lot of more powerful men is an illusion. On that awful day in January 1961, Lumumba paid with a life and so did I. On the wings of an owl the fallen Congo came to haunt even our little family, we messengers of goodwill adrift on a sea of mistaken intentions. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

From the days of the Assyrians and the Qin, great empires were usually built through violent conquest. In 1914 too, all the major powers owed their status to successful wars. For instance, Imperial Japan became a regional power thanks to its victories over China and Russia; Germany became Europe's top dog after its triumphs over Austria-Hungary and France; and Britain created the world's largest and most prosperous empire through a series of splendid little wars all over the planet. Thus in 1882 Britain invaded and occupied Egypt, losing a mere fifty-seven soldiers in the decisive Battle of Tel el-Kebir. Whereas in our days occupying a Muslim country is the stuff of Western nightmares, following Tel el-Kebir the British faced little armed resistance, and for more than six decades controlled the Nile Valley and the vital Suez Canal. Other European powers emulated the British, and whenever governments in Paris, Rome or Brussels contemplated putting boots on the ground in Vietnam, Libya or Congo, their only fear was that somebody else might get there first.
Even the United States owed its great-power status to military action rather than economic enterprise alone. In 1846 it invaded Mexico, and conquered California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming and Oklahoma. The peace treaty also confirmed the previous US annexation of Texas. About 13,000 American soldiers died in the war, which added 2.3 million square kilometres to the "United S ~ Yuval Noah Harari

At the time of the Congo controversy a hundred years ago, the idea of full human rights, political, social, and economic, was a profound threat to the established order of most countries on earth. It still is today. ~ Adam Hochschild

The murder of Lumumba, in which the U.S. was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa's major hope for development. Congo is now total horror story, for years. ~ Noam Chomsky

Don't you sometimes find daily life almost unbearably poetic? Minute curiosity is a requirement of the travel writer – as it is of the biographer, novelist and poet. The significance of the trivial is what makes a piece of travel writing human, not the stuntish business of being the first person to paddle the Congo. Out there on the road, I have often found that the most aimless and boring interludes yield, in the long run, the most fertile material. ~ Sara Wheeler

Ayaana was surveying the longest line on the globe's three dimensional grid, the equator, the first line of latitude. Her special point zero, 40,075 kilometers long; 78.7 percent across water, 21.3 percent over land, zero degrees, all the Kenya equator places she had never imagined to claim as her own: Nanyuki, Mount Kenya. The invisible equator line crossed only thirteen countries - Kenya, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, São Tomé and Principe, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Uganda, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia, and Kiribati - thirteen countries that were the center of the world, and hers was one of them. ~ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

And eventually there is no one left in the world except people who don't look at other people's faces and who don't know what these pictures mean and these people are all special people like me. And they like being on their own and I hardly ever see them because they are like okapi in the jungle in the Congo, which are a kind of antelope and very shy and rare. And I can go anywhere in the world and I know that no one is going to talk to me or touch me or ask me a question. But if I don't want to go anywhere I don't have to, and I can stay at home and eat broccoli and oranges and licorice laces all the time, or I can play computer games for a whole week, or I can just sit in the corner of the room and rub £1 coin back and forward over the ripple shapes on the surface of the radiator. And I wouldn't have to go to France. ~ Mark Haddon

Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull. ~ Alan Bennett

My last point about getting started as a writer: do something first, good or bad, successful or not, and write it up before approaching an editor. The best introduction to an editor is your own written work, published or not. I traveled across Siberia on my own money before ever approaching an editor; I wrote my first book, Siberian Dawn, without knowing a single editor, with no idea of how to get it published. I had to risk my life on the Congo before selling my first magazine story. If the rebel spirit dwells within you, you won't wait for an invitation, you'll invade and take no hostages. ~ Jeffery Taylor

Ego Tripping

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach e ~ Nikki Giovanni

Electronics companies are purchasing the minerals that come out of the Eastern Congo, and they are illicit; they're dirty. ~ Robin Wright

Furthermore, unlike many other great predators of history, from Genghis Khan to the Spanish conquistadors, King Leopold II never saw a drop of blood spilled in anger. He never set foot in the Congo. There is something very modern about that, too, as there is about the bomber pilot in the stratosphere, above the clouds, who never hears screams or sees shattered homes or torn flesh. ~ Adam Hochschild

As so often happens in politics, what appears to be politically expedient for those in power rarely overlaps with the public interest. The lesser evils of the regime become entrenched, while the greater good is never realized. ~ Jason Stearns

The Congo Free State is unique in its kind. It has nothing to hide and no secrets and is not beholden to anyone except its founder. ~ Leopold II Of Belgium

The old man might have been drunk, but he was right. Outsiders have robbed and exploited the people of the Congo ever since the days of the first European and Arab slavers. The territory that Stanley staked in the name of Leopold witnessed what many regard as the first genocide of the modern era, when millions of Congolese were effectively worked to death trying to meet the colonialists' almost insatiable demand for resources, most notably rubber. And since independence, foreign powers have toyed with the Congo, stripping its mineral assets and exploiting its strategic position, never mindful of the suffering inflicted on its people. And that really was the point. At every stage of its bloody history, outsiders have tended to treat Congolese as somehow sub-human, not worthy of the consideration they would expect for themselves. For progress to be made, outsiders must treat Congolese as equals and they could do worse than follow the example of an amazing white woman I discovered after we got back to Kalemie. ~ Tim Butcher

As I searched the atlas for somewhere to run to, Hugh made a case for his old stomping grounds. His first suggestion was Beirut, where he went to nursery school. His family left there in the midsixties and moved to the Congo. After that, it was Ethiopia, and then Somalia, all fine places in his opinion.
'Let's save Africa and the Middle East for when I decide to quit living,' I said. ~ David Sedaris

On 7 October 1909 E. D.Morel, head of the Congo Reform Association,wrote A. Conan Doyle, a member, that Conrad's story [Heart of Darkness] was the "most powerful thing ever writtenon the subject. ~ Hunt Hawkins

And yet the world we live in - its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence - is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history. ~ Adam Hochschild

Stanley must have realized that this postponement would probably be fatal. But while he did not give up, he never for a moment thought of abandoning his African quest [...] Yet Stanley still longed for the security of marriage, and hoped he could find Livingstone and marry Katie. [...] The romantic side of his nature told him that their story ought to end in marriage: the workhouse boy, having distinguished himself beyond all expectations, weds the daughter of the respectable local gentleman, and they live happily ever afterwards in a big house
[...] But Katie had never understood his inner conviction of being chosen for a great task. ~ Tim Jeal

I can't quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire. ~ Lynn Nottage

When I was seven years old, my family moved to North Carolina. When he was seven years old, Hugh's family moved to the Congo. We had a collie and a house cat. They had a monkey and two horses named Charlie Brown and Satan. I threw stones at stop signs. Hugh threw stones at crocodiles. The verbs are the same, but he definitely wins the prize when it comes to nouns and objects. ~ David Sedaris

Down the street, tree branches strung in purple Halloween lights began to shudder and sway. Dusty whirlwinds rose from the ground, and from the north came a great rush of wind.
From Congo Square, she thought. Where the slaves danced and sang.
"...and St. Louis Cemetery," whispered in her ear.
The wind blew as cold as the icy breath of Lake Superior. Blowing veins seizured round the wrought iron gate. Yet the music continued. The only one oblivious to the sudden shift in the air--as if she were expecting it--was Angelique, who continued her dance, face to the sky. As though nothing had changed, though everything had. ~ Eve Wallinga

The good performed by some of United Nations institutions, such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF, has been outweighed by the amount of bad the UN has either abetted or allowed. It has enabled genocide in Rwanda, done little or nothing to stop genocide in the Congo and Sudan, given a respectable forum to tyrannies, convened conferences (the Durban Conferences on racism) that simply became forums for anti-Semitism, and been preoccupied with vilifying one of its relatively few humane states, Israel. Its moral failings were further exemplified by its placing Qaddafi's Libya on its Human Rights Commission, Iran on its Commission on the Status of Women, and North Korea on the Nuclear Disarmament Commission. It is not that the people who run the United Nations are bad people; it is that the United Nations is run by a majority of the world's governments, and they are run by bad people. Without America in the Security Council, the bad would nearly always prevail. ~ Dennis Prager

Almost astride the Equator, night fell like a portcullis. The sun dropped below the horizon and suddenly all was dark. ~ Tim Butcher

Britain's Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens had lately reclassified herpes B into biohazard level 4, placing it in the elite company of Ebola, Marburg, and the virus that causes Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. National ~ David Quammen

Deep in the heart of the hot, wet African rainforest, there lives a tribe of peacemakers who share a multiplicity of pleasures and make a very special kind of love. South of the sprawling Congo River, in the midst of war-ravaged territory, some 2,000 miles from the arid Ethiopian desert where the oldest human fossils have been found, lies this lush and steamy jungle paradise, the only natural habitat of the bonobo. ~ Susan Block

They argue that the modern world was created by private capital. The subcontinent of India, for instance, was owned by the British East India Company, Indonesia by the Dutch East India Company, our neighbors by the British East Africa Company, and the Congo Free State by a one man corporation. Corporate capital was aided by missionary societies. What private capital did then it can do again; own and reshape the Third World in the image of the West without the slightest blot, blemish, or blotch. NGOs will do what the missionary charities did in the past. The world will no longer be composed of the outmoded twentieth-century divisions of East, West, and a directionless Third. The world will become one corporate globe divided into the incorporating and incorporated...to become the first voluntary corporate colony, the first in a new global order..with NGOs relieving us of social services, the country becomes your real estate. ~ Ngugi Wa Thiongo

He [Stanley] had stated that he longed to do something wonderful for the African tribes along the Congo, and instead, as would become all too apparent, had set them up for a terrible fate. In 1877 he came down the great river as the first European ever to do so, declaring his hope that the Congo should become like `a torch to those who sought to do good'." Instead, it became the torch that attracted the archexploiter King Leopold II of Belgium. ~ Tim Jeal

I would characterize Moonlit Nights as a mix between Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's 'The Relic' and 'Congo' by Michael Crichton. If those books had a baby and that baby was a werewolf then that would be my book! ~ Jacob Parr

If I had not played basketball and made the millions of dollars that I had made, I would never have been able to build a hospital in Congo. It started in 1997, and 10 years later I was able to unveil the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named after my mother, in my hometown outside of Kinshasa. It was such a blessing. ~ Dikembe Mutombo

The Congo was the most difficult shoot of my life but was also maybe the greatest adventure of my life. ~ Anthony Bourdain

All the fascination of King Solomon's Mines seems to be behind those great mountains and this I may add is a bit of advance work for mother, an entering wedge to my disappearing from sight for years and years in the Congo. ~ Richard H. Davis

We don't really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples - almost a third, as it turns out - engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Forests and trees make significant direct contributions to the nutrition of poor households ... [as] rural communities in Central Africa obtained a critical portion of protein and fat in their diets through hunting wildlife from in and around forests. The five to six million tonnes of bushmeat eaten yearly in the Congo Basin is roughly equal to the total amount of beef produced annually in Brazil - without the accompanying need to clear huge swathes of forest for cattle. ~ Frances Ford Seymour

Bonobos, related to chimpanzees and native to the Congo, have been found to engage in French kissing. ~ Karen Shanor

There is a need to take advantage of the change that has taken place in the Congo, however tragic that has been in its coming. ~ Paul Kagame

I wanted to tell the story of these women and the war in the Congo and I couldn't find anything about them in the newspapers or in the library, so I felt I had to get on a plane and go to Africa and find the story myself. I felt there was a complete absence in the media of their narrative. It's very different now, but when I went in 2004 that was definitely the case. ~ Lynn Nottage

World opinion" - that vapid, amoral concept - deems the murder of members of one's group less noteworthy than the murder of outsiders. That is one reason blacks killing millions of fellow blacks in Congo elicits virtually no attention from "world opinion." Between 1998 and 2008, according to the International Rescue Committee, 5.4 million people in Congo were killed, and virtually no one in the world knows this. But if a few Iraqi prisoners are sexually humiliated in an American-run prison, or if one Palestinian dies at the hands of an Israeli soldier, the story is on the front pages of the world's newspapers. ~ Dennis Prager

I created the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation back in 1997 for the purpose of going in and improving the living conditions of my people on the African continent, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo where I came from. Out first mission was to go and build a new hospital. Our next mission was to build a school. ~ Dikembe Mutombo

I feel very passionate that we need CAT scanners in every country in the world. There's not a CAT scanner in all of eastern Congo. People don't use the word "cancer" because they don't get diagnosed. They just die. ~ Eve Ensler

If there is the right opportunity for us to have a big oil play in Congo or somewhere else, we will definitely go for it. ~ Dan Gertler

When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

A diamond may be forever, but terrorism, promiscuously funded, will be too.

Let's make the connection clearly by tracing the path of the diamond. Diamonds start out in the earth, and eventually that earth is part of a country, like Sierra Leone, Angola, or the Democratic Republic of Congo. In those countries, desperate battles for control have been going on for decades, and the armies that fight the battles finance their ambitions with diamonds. Villagers are forced to mine the diamonds by ruthless rebels who maintain order through terror: by raping women and hacking off the limbs of the children, something, by the way, you never see in the De Beers ads. The rebels then smuggle the diamonds into neighboring dictatorships in exchange for guns and cash. There the diamonds are sold to the highest bidder--whether they be terrorists or "legitimate" dealers--and finally they're laundered in Europe, shipped to America, and end up in jewelry stores where they're purchased by men and given to women in exchange for oral sex.

In the feminized world we live in, it's practically national policy that women are more evolved that men--but if that's so, how come they're still so impressed by shiny objects? ~ Bill Maher

Helen Rosevere was a British medical missionary in the Congo years ago during an uprising. Her faith was strong and her trust was confident, yet she was raped and assaulted and treated brutally. Commenting later, she said, "I must ask myself a question as if it came directly from the Lord, 'Can you thank Me for trusting you with this experience even if I never tell you why?'" What a profound thought. God has trusted each of us with our own set of unfair circumstances and unexplained experiences to deal with. Can we still trust in Him even if He never tells us why? ~ Charles R. Swindoll

We live a life of privilege. That doesn't mean we can literally switch off these women, whose only fault was being born in the Congo during civil war. We need to bear witness. ~ Maria Semple

A stable and prosperous DRC is the victory of the World. Congo is a deciding factor for Africa's development whether we like it or not. ~ Ahmed Padia Binkatabana

The country is like a great sponge - it finally absorbs you. Eventually you will get malaria or you will get dysentery and whatever you do, if you don't keep doing it, the jungle will grow over you. Black or white, you've got to fight it every minute of the day. ~ Katharine Hepburn

Russ remarked how hot it had been. I agreed it had been very hot. He said, 'Aren't you from the Congo?' I said, 'Well, I am an American citizen now, but yes - I was born in the Republic of the Congo. Why do you ask?' Russ said, 'Oh, nothing, I just figured you would be used to the heat, having lived in the jungle.' I looked Russ in his eyes, asked him, 'Are you from New Jersey?' 'Yes,' said Russ, 'born and raised.' I nodded. 'So I assume you strip down to your underwear and make out with very tan girls in hot tubs.' Russ raised an eyebrow and smiled. 'No,' he said, 'why would you think that?' I said, 'I have seen the television show Jersey Shore, so I am educated in the way all people from New Jersey live. ~ David Arnold

I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos
and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth. ~ Frantz Fanon

The collapse of the state in this large swathe of Africa meant that its people either relied on the charity of outsiders or took to violence. I must have looked bit dejected because Louise tried to lighten my mood. 'From my point of view as a church worker,it's great.'she said.When I go on leave back to the UK and I go into a church on Sunday,I am the youngest person there by a long way. But here in the Congo,I am always the oldest. ~ Tim Butcher

When I look at Africa many questions come to mind, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Dr Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba were to rise up and see what is happening, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Nelson Madiba Mandela were to rise up and see what is happening, because what they will be confronted with is an Africa where the Democratic Republic of Congo is unsettled, there is a war going on there, but it's not on the front pages of our newspapers because we don't even control our newspapers and the media. ~ Patrick L.O. Lumumba

Nothing is going to change in congo until you and i figure out what is wrong with the person inside the mirror ~ Donald Miller

This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn't necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing.
All in vain. All wasted.
The older the world becomes, the more obvious it is. The bomb and the tortures in Algeria and the starving babies in the Congo. It gets bigger and darker.
More and more suffering for more and more. And more and more in vain. ~ John Fowles