- 4 weeks ago
Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown S01E08 Congo (1080p x265 10bit Joy)
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TravelTranscript
00:00After nine days of threats of imprisonment, confiscation of footage, and what was the most chaotic, difficult, yet amazing trip of my life,
00:11the last thing that stands between us and our flight home is the reason we came.
00:17The Congo River itself.
00:19Eric, this ferry cannot move today because now it's a bird and it has to be paid tomorrow.
00:26The UN truck just said he's been here since this morning.
00:30I've had times where I've been held up for days.
00:33What's up, Freddy?
00:34They're starting the engine.
00:35They're starting the engine.
00:36Awesome.
00:37I just broke down again.
00:39Yeah.
00:39We now have one hour of daylight left.
00:43They're starting the engine from the target.
00:45Okay, great.
00:46Here it comes.
00:47Yeah.
00:55You learn quickly.
00:56In Congo, things change at a moment's notice.
01:02Welcome to the jungle.
01:08I took a walk through this beautiful world.
01:15Felt the cool rain on my shoulder.
01:20I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:26I felt the rain getting colder.
01:30I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:33I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:34I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:35I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:36I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:37I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:38I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:39I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:40I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:41I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:42I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:43I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:44I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:45I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:46I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:47I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:48I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:49I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:50I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:51I found something good in this beautiful world.
01:52Everyone gets everything he wants.
02:02I wanted to see the Congo, and for my sins, they let me.
02:17In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad writes of his alter ego.
02:22When I was a little chap, I had a passion for maps.
02:25At that time, there were many blank spaces on Earth.
02:32But there was one yet, the biggest, the most blank, that I had a hankering after.
02:39This, then, is the Congo.
02:42The size of all Western Europe combined.
02:45It should be Africa's wealthiest nation.
02:48But people forget, or never even knew, that the 20th century's first Holocaust happened
02:56here when Belgium's King Leopold managed to bamboozle the world into giving him a personal
03:02title to the Congo.
03:03Leopold's agents, of whom the mythical Kurtz was one, raided, slaughtered, mutilated, and
03:17pressed into forced labor much of the population in a bloodthirsty quest for first ivory and
03:23then rubber.
03:23When independence finally came, the Belgians trashed what they could and left behind a
03:31completely unprepared, tribally divided, and largely ungovernable landmass filled with
03:38stuff that everybody in the world wanted.
03:41And things pretty much went downhill from there.
03:45And things pretty much went downhill from there.
03:48Yeah!
03:49Yeah!
03:50Yeah!
03:51I'll see you!
03:52You here?
03:53Yeah!
03:54Oh!
03:55Oh!
03:56Oh!
03:57Oh!
03:58Oh!
04:00Oh!
04:01Oh!
04:02Oh!
04:03Oh!
04:04Oh!
04:05Oh!
04:06Oh!
04:07Oh!
04:08Oh!
04:09Oh!
04:10Oh!
04:11Oh!
04:13Oh!
04:14Oh what's this ここ!
04:15Hey!
04:22But this story begins with a truck stop in Rwanda.
04:27Stock enough in Rwanda because my expectations for food in the Congo are more measured.
04:41If you're looking to get to the Eastern Congo, and many would ask why you'd even want to
04:47do that, the best way is to drive across from neighboring Rwanda.
04:52This country, of course, not too long ago, suffered its own appalling genocide.
04:59Behind the wheel, Dan.
05:01He's been living in the DRC for two years, working on a documentary about some of the
05:06several dozen rebel groups in the country.
05:11Riding shotgun, Dan's close friend and associate, Horeb, a Congolese.
05:19They're taking me across the border.
05:22One side, Rwanda.
05:24Hotels, paved roads, internet, and paperwork to be filled out.
05:34Just a few feet of barbed wire, machine guns, and cement walls away, this.
05:41Welcome to Goma.
05:56A city of one million, a significant number of whom are IDPs, internally displaced people,
06:03sitting, rather inconveniently, at the base of Mount Nirugongo, a still smoldering volcano.
06:09Current street level is about 12 feet above where it was in January 2002, when it last erupted.
06:18Lava everywhere.
06:20Which explains the less than smooth ride.
06:23One of the first things you notice out the car window, the U.N.
06:35About four months ago, the M23, one of the various rebel groups holed up in the jungle nearby, invaded the city.
06:42The NGOs battened down the hatches.
06:45The U.N. stood by, hands tied.
06:49Everyone else had to fend for themselves until the rebels withdrew.
06:53The Congo is a place I've dreamed of visiting since before I ever thought I'd get the chance to travel the world.
07:04Actually being here, I'm not so sure.
07:08Dan, Horeb, and I head for a local restaurant.
07:20Good food is going to be a challenge soon, so we take the opportunity to fill up on what we can.
07:26Grilled chicken,
07:28ugali,
07:30piri piri pepper.
07:31A pretty nice meal.
07:32Goma in the 50s, you know, tourists used to come from as far down as Rhodesia, up here, to vacation.
07:41Amazing with life.
07:43Also, I remember, from my childhood, seeing lions just alongside of the road sometimes.
07:48Goma was a touristy place for a long time.
07:51They're not coming anymore?
07:52No.
07:53No, you're just saying no.
07:54It's a red zone.
07:57It's looking like there won't be house-to-house fighting or artillery or mortars dropping in.
08:02It's a Goma.
08:03Was today a good day?
08:05Well, right now we have a rebel group just 10 kilometers north of us.
08:08Right.
08:09And then we have maybe seven other rebel groups that are all caught in the blender, you know?
08:14So...
08:15Things change quickly in Congo.
08:18Confused yet?
08:19Virtually all of the eastern part of the country is being contested by rebel groups.
08:24Some local and others allegedly acting on behalf of interests based in neighboring countries.
08:29Recently, the largely Tutsi, Rwandan-backed M23 has been active in the area around Goma.
08:35But the mostly Hutu, FDLR, is also here.
08:39The Mai Mai can refer to either somewhat generic local self-defense groups or specific entities like APCLS or Cheka.
08:46Some groups, like the FRPI, are principally defending a stake in a resource-like goal.
08:53And others, like the Raya Motumboki, are mainly interested in fighting with a particular enemy.
08:58In their case, they have a beef with the FDLR.
09:00And lots of other organizations controlling territory who haven't come up with a name or a cool acronym yet.
09:07This is only a fraction of the rebel groups in a single area of the Congo.
09:12And be advised, this map was hopelessly outdated before we even got here.
09:17It's all these variables kind of knotted into one big mess.
09:23And these are the reasons why media has a difficult time, why the Western world doesn't hear much about Congo.
09:29Because how can you sum it up in a three-minute report?
09:32But for us, Goma is just a stopover on the way to the Congo River.
09:40So we need to keep moving.
09:43And roads? Forget it.
09:45Certainly nothing even remotely safe between Goma and where we're headed.
09:49We're flying to Kisigani. This is the preferred route.
09:53So we've chartered a bush plane, formerly Queen Elizabeth's Flying Wardrobe.
09:57When the Queen traveled, presumably in her younger years, her clothes followed in this beast.
10:02Or so we're told.
10:04I have not seen this model of plane before. A first for me.
10:07Of course, you'll learn to take nothing for granted in the Congo.
10:11A pool.
10:13Just as we're about to take off, thunder, lightning.
10:18I don't see what the problem is.
10:20The weather looks fine to me.
10:22Let's get this thing airborne.
10:27Wow, nice.
10:30We're best to wait this one out a little bit.
10:33Crashes are pretty commonplace.
10:35Not so long ago, a plane with nearly 100 people on board went down on the same route we're taking today.
10:41Now, most planes that crash in Congo crash because of the weather, right?
10:45Yeah, most of the time, yeah, but...
10:47Not us.
10:49Don't worry.
10:49Impossible, man.
10:51The weather clears up.
10:53Sort of.
10:55So we decide to give it a go.
10:56And the weather is very bad to stay on the ground.
11:02What about rebels?
11:03They're shooting at the planes?
11:05No, normally no.
11:08Okay, we'll see you after your trip.
11:11Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:12Okay, have a good one.
11:13Lifting off from Goma, we head out over the shores of Lake Kivu before circling back north-northeast.
11:32Our destination, what Conrad referred to in Heart of Darkness as the Inner Station.
11:42Here, surrounded by dense jungle, lies our rendezvous with the Congo River.
11:47A waterway responsible for both building this country and helping to destroy it.
11:52Two hours out of Goma, we land at Kissing Donny.
12:11This was once Stanleyville, and the country's second largest city, before war and neglect cut it off from the rest of the Congo and the world.
12:30Stanleyville, known in Heart of Darkness as the Inner Station.
12:34The Congo River stretches across the country's middle.
12:49Conrad describes it as a twisting snake with its head in the Atlantic Ocean and its tail buried deep in Africa's heart.
12:56To Europeans, it was a natural route to transport slaves, ivory, rubber, minerals, the commodities upon which modern-day Brussels and Antwerp are built.
13:11For the Congolese, both before and after the Belgians, it provided more basic things.
13:18Water.
13:19To wash, to clean your clothes in, to cook with, to drink.
13:26Also fishing.
13:28Since long before the expeditions of Dr. Livingston and Henry Morton Stanley, the Waginha tribe has been fishing the river in unique fashion.
13:45Highly coordinated and acrobatic, the Waginha dive into the treacherous rapids of what is still referred to as Stanley Falls.
13:53First, navigate downstream between baskets that need tender.
13:59Perched on a precarious network of wooden poles, they hoist together.
14:06The catch these days?
14:09Not much.
14:10So this is the second biggest force in this Congo river.
14:19Oh, yeah?
14:19Yeah.
14:20Ogi is a Waginha fisherman and was a guide bringing tourists to his village.
14:24Since the last two wars, Kisangani tourism has been pretty much non-existent.
14:34Chief of the Waginha, Pierre Mosala Abeka, it is said, is a direct descendant of King Ntendibuma Ephila, who greeted Stanley in the 1870s.
14:45Please, please thank him for the privilege of seeing his community.
14:55It's a present from the chief.
14:58This is a way to welcome the delegation of CNN.
15:00The Waginha tribe made what was in retrospect the mistake of allowing Stanley to pass.
15:13The famous explorer, of course, pretty much shot and raided his way along his historic route to the coast before effectively jump-starting the colonial period.
15:23Using Stanley as administrator, King Leopold of Belgium claimed the Congo as his personal property.
15:40Under Leopold's reign, men, women, and children were tagged with numbers, separated into groups, given production quotas.
15:48If they fell short, they were whipped with the shikot, their hands cut off, hanged.
15:56An estimated 10 million Congolese were either starved, worked to death, executed, or just killed where they stood.
16:04All in just over 20 years.
16:07By the end, half the population of the country was gone.
16:15Have you ever thought about all those years ago?
16:18If your people had just killed Stanley.
16:24Somebody else would have come.
16:26Somebody else would have come.
16:29Ordinarily, a large tigerfish like this one, it's going to the market, considered way too valuable to eat.
16:36But today, guests.
16:38It's a mean-looking fish.
16:42She used to sell fish in the market.
16:43The Congolese standard, limboke.
16:47It can be pretty much anything wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed.
16:55It's very traditional.
16:57Typical, traditional.
16:59Excellent meal.
17:00A lot of work.
17:14Though it looks like they're not having an entirely miserable time, but the water looks good.
17:17On a good day, how many like this?
17:20On a good day, 50.
17:2350?
17:23Yeah, 50.
17:24They turned two ancestors.
17:26Ancestors used to catch.
17:27They just got the big fish.
17:29One basket like this, they used to catch about 10 big fish.
17:34But the situation changed.
17:36The tourists used to come and see how the fishmen are catching fish.
17:40Right, hundreds of them used to come, yes?
17:42Yeah, yeah.
17:43Well, things get a little better here.
17:45Maybe they come back.
17:46I hope so.
17:47I hope so, too.
17:47I hope so, too.
17:47After Leopold, the Belgian government took over and pretty much continued as before.
18:10An apartheid-like system of what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine.
18:15By the 50s, there was a beautiful modern infrastructure built.
18:19Railroads, hotels, sports clubs, schools.
18:23The envy of Africa.
18:28Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn were here while filming The African Queen.
18:33They stayed at the luxury hotel, the Puerkwa Pah.
18:37This is the Puerkwa Pah now.
18:39Like everything else of that time, a hollow ruin inhabited by squatters or simply eaten by the jungle.
18:47But none of this was ever for the Congolese.
18:50They weren't allowed in many of these buildings except as help.
18:53Not even allowed to walk their own streets after dark.
19:04Not a lot of dependable electric power left in the city.
19:08But what lights do glow around town, much of it comes from places like this.
19:13Small kiosks serving the Congolese version of barbecue and what passes for cold beer.
19:21Christian is one of our fixers, tasked with keeping us on track and out of trouble.
19:27Which, believe me, is a big job around here.
19:30You know, it's an amazing looking city.
19:33If you just blur your vision a little bit, you can see it the way it used to be.
19:38Beautiful.
19:40I think it could be the best place to live.
19:45Very kind people.
19:47People like listening to music, sitting, taking their beers, eating.
19:51What's a Congolese word for barbecue?
19:53Barbecue.
19:55Cheers.
19:57Cheers.
19:57I like any meat on a grill.
19:59Oh, it's looking good.
20:02Grilled goat with cabri, a traditional goat stew on the side.
20:07Now we're talking.
20:08They roast it and then they put some sauce on it.
20:10It's delicious.
20:12As you can see, people don't eat meat.
20:15Meat is quite expensive, almost $2.
20:18It is a lot.
20:19That's more than most people make in a day or even two days.
20:22What are the first things you buy if you're very, very, very poor?
20:26Very poor, soap.
20:28Soap.
20:29Because at least you have to look a bit clean.
20:31So soap first.
20:33Soap.
20:34But in between, as Congolese, you want to think of dressing, looking smart, clothes.
20:40All these Congolese, you can see, if you give them $10, they'll think of at least buying soap or food.
20:49And keep maybe $1 to buy a shirt.
20:52So that's called pride.
20:53Yeah.
20:55And there's hope.
20:57You can plan for tomorrow.
20:59For tomorrow.
20:59I'm going to go to bed.
21:12I'm going to go.
21:15In Heart of Darkness, Conrad writes about the greed of the Belgian colonizers.
21:42They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got.
21:48It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale.
21:59And after 75 years, the Congolese had had enough.
22:07But independence came quickly.
22:08And when the new country managed to inaugurate their first democratically elected leader,
22:13Patrice Lumumba, the CIA and the British, working through the Belgians, had him killed.
22:19We helped to install this miserable bastard in his place, Joseph Mobutu.
22:25He stole billions of dollars from his people and pretty much became the template for despotism
22:31in Africa.
22:33Needless to say, this situation deteriorated over the next 30-odd years, and by the time
22:38Mobutu was done, the Congo was mired in a series of civil wars, the government was no longer
22:44paying its bills, and the trains basically stopped running.
22:51This is Kisangani Station.
23:03There's one short run left.
23:06Service once a week when operational, which isn't often, I'm guessing.
23:13Abandoned by the Belgians, shot up and stripped by rebels in the 90s, the station, the engines,
23:23the ancient passenger cars, and the tracks themselves, have slowly receded into the jungle.
23:43And yet all these years later, with hardly any resources, Monsieur Aloub-Emile, the railway
23:49administrator, and a staff of clerks, conductors, mechanics, and engineers, show up at work and
23:55do what they can in an attempt to keep things in working order.
24:06How do you do?
24:07They say that you are welcome to see this place.
24:11How many employees still work here?
24:25So, at one time, you could dispatch a freight to South Africa?
24:29Yes.
24:30Yes.
24:31You could leave here until the South Africa, with some correspondence, of course.
24:36So, a hypothetical question.
24:42If the government said, OK, we're ready, we have the money, we would like to, as quickly
24:49as possible, get operational, does he have the workers ready to go?
24:53And this is one of the few things here that's working today, a feature of great pride to
25:06the staff.
25:07The railway employees, I'm told, do not get paid, yet they continue to show up at work.
25:27It is said of the building of the country's once vast rail network, one Congolese died for
25:34every single time.
25:59time.
26:00Like many Congolese we meet, they are all these years later, and in spite of everything that's
26:18happened, ready, and waiting for the situation to improve.
26:47You lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, till you thought yourself bewitched,
26:52and cut off forever from everything you had known once.
26:57So Conrad described the Congo after piloting steamships in the early days of Belgian colonialism.
27:02I've had something of a multi-decade obsession with the Congo.
27:07It's been kind of a personal dream, if you will, to travel the Congo River.
27:14And now, for better or worse, I get that chance.
27:18We've rented a trusty vessel, and I shall dub thee the Captain Willard.
27:27All right, did you maggots load the chickens?
27:31Finding food along the way, it's anticipated, will be a challenge.
27:35Refrigeration of any kind is impossible.
27:38Okay.
27:39Well, I'm psyched.
27:40My dream has finally come true.
27:50Blocked by officials?
27:52This could be months.
27:56Okay.
27:57Let the probing begin.
28:05How do we do this?
28:07Let's get underway before they figure a new tax to levy on us.
28:10Our trip downriver will take us some 120 kilometers, even deeper, into the jungle.
28:28But instead of Kurtz and his ivory hoard, a crumbling Belgian research center with a shadowy
28:33past awaits us at our destination.
28:36This is a turn-of-the-century map.
28:40So, Kisigani was then called Stanleyville.
28:44Leopoldville would be here.
28:47I don't know, like 3,000 kilometers or something like that.
28:50A long way to go if we were taking the full ride.
28:53That's what we're doing, right?
28:55All the way to the Atlantic?
28:57You didn't tell them yet?
29:00I don't think we have enough spam, gentlemen.
29:06A half-day's journey downriver, there's a local dignitary we've promised to visit.
29:19Yeah, there's the ship who's coming down.
29:23We arrive, late, but the king is still waiting for us.
29:28Traditional headgear, not-so-traditional suit.
29:31The medals, given by the Belgians, proving his royal lineage.
29:35This place belongs to the Bambole ethnic group.
29:51And he's the king?
29:53My father ruled from 1928, and I came after him in 1963.
30:04That's a lot of history.
30:06Incredible.
30:08We give him a goat as a way of saying I'm sorry for being so late,
30:12and sorry we can't stay longer.
30:14And he gives me a simple, yet hefty-looking bracelet,
30:17which only later do I come to appreciate for what it is.
30:36Horror told me this goes back to Arab Portuguese times.
30:40It was Arabs who taught them how to do this.
30:42So they wear them on their wrists and their ankles.
30:45This is older than our story, probably.
30:48The chief said his father gave it to him in 1935.
30:53So, who knows, man. Wow.
30:57So, where'd you get the bracelet?
30:59Oh, an African king gave it to me.
31:01Congo River.
31:03Where'd you get yours?
31:06We've come a long way downriver, but with many kilometers still to go,
31:16attention has turned towards the evening meal.
31:19I figure I'll make coq au vin, which is a pretty simple way
31:22of dealing with a bunch of tough, old, stringy birds in one pot.
31:26Getting close to killie time.
31:28The moment of truth.
31:30It's quickly getting dark, and I'm very aware of a number of things.
31:34How do they usually kill chickens?
31:36A small knife.
31:37A small knife.
31:38Cut the head off.
31:39Our chickens are thin, scraggly, and tough.
31:41Ah, he's biting me.
31:43In order to make anything, any kind of edible,
31:45I'm probably going to have to stew the crap out of them.
31:48But first, we've got to kill these things and collect their blood,
31:51which, if you know anything about chickens,
31:53and most of my crew don't, takes time.
31:55I'll hold the bucket, you kill the chicken.
31:57You want to eat?
31:58You've got to kill your own chicken and pluck it, too.
32:01Time to get killie, killie.
32:04But every man has a breaking point.
32:09And in retrospect, perhaps this was ours.
32:13Saw harder.
32:14Harder, harder.
32:15You're almost through.
32:16I'm not.
32:17Killing him, fam.
32:18Stuck.
32:19Clean kill.
32:20Clean kill.
32:21Now you can join our treehouse.
32:23By the time our birds are cleaned and plucked,
32:27the sun is down, and dinner is still a long way off.
32:32Read out the cherikens.
32:36It's time to kill the cherikens.
32:39Hand in the nose.
32:47Somewhere down the Congo River,
32:48and I'm continuing to deal with a few pressing concerns.
32:55The one knife on board is as sharp, really, as a soup spoon.
32:59And soon I'm frantically trying to rip out the backbone and guts in one go with my bare hands,
33:03because the knife ain't shit, and it's getting darker and darker,
33:06and the damn generator keeps kicking up.
33:08And I really need the light so I can see what I'm cutting.
33:11I can't cut what I can't see.
33:13There's only three light bulbs on right now.
33:16There's only 240 watts.
33:17There's no way it's the draw.
33:19They're not going to eat at all.
33:21I'm never, I'm never going to get through with this.
33:29Nice.
33:33No, maybe we should figure out how to cook dinner,
33:35unless you don't want to eat any dinner.
33:37Because we are really not going to eat any dinner today.
33:40Okay, I've had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,
33:42and I would like to eat,
33:43especially as we've gotten through all of this misery
33:47with these chickens.
33:49It would be apropos to point out that we do not want to be moving at night.
33:59We would not like to run aground in the middle of the freakin' Congo.
34:04He's going to swim in now.
34:05He's worried about crocs?
34:06I can't see anything.
34:09The current's unpredictable.
34:11Visibility, nil.
34:13Time to tie up for the night.
34:15Generator issues?
34:20More or less fixed.
34:21But now another, just as serious problem presents itself.
34:25With the lights burning, it becomes insanely buggy.
34:28Crush the wrong one of these moss while swatting your face,
34:31and you will blow up like a balloon.
34:33Seriously.
34:34Okay, take the other two bottles of wine.
34:36You'll pour all three bottles of wine into the onions.
34:42All right, let's put the top on.
34:44Bring it up to a boil.
34:49Three hours later,
34:51and it looks like the jungle-style stew
34:53might actually work out after all.
34:55Okay, someone wants to bring this over carefully to the table.
35:07All right.
35:08Let's eat.
35:09At the top.
35:10Bon appetit.
35:11Bon appetit.
35:12Bon appetit.
35:13In the end, my coq au vin was a bit
35:24scraggly.
35:25But passable.
35:27It is written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
35:33I think I now understand what that means.
35:37Next morning on the river, and of course, we're not alone.
35:58Fishermen from all the surrounding villages have heard of us, and have, long before we're
36:04even awake, come by to check us out.
36:10Hey, you ever find a couple of onions for me?
36:12Don't go crazy.
36:13If we don't have, we don't have.
36:14I will not go crazy.
36:20All right.
36:21I will get on the spam and egg patrol.
36:25We may have invented the stealth bomber.
36:27Really, this will be our crowning accomplishment as a culture.
36:29Get in there, boys.
36:36Once we finally get there, we're supposed to get all the way back.
36:38Coming back was never part of the plan, man.
36:42We're not coming back.
36:43Yeah, they'll find us ten years later, naked in the bush with like a necklace of spam cans.
36:48That was glorious.
36:55Time to get back out on the river.
36:57We have places to go.
37:03Two days down the Congo, we're finally nearing our destination.
37:07It's an abandoned Belgian research station.
37:14And it's still functioning in some capacity.
37:17But the Ngambi itself goes about 30 kilometers in.
37:20There's over 250 buildings.
37:23They're doing it all here.
37:27Much myth and legend surrounds this place.
37:32Ah, there we go.
37:33Yeah.
37:35It has been inferred by some that the Belgians conducted uranium enrichment and a host of bizarre experiments here.
37:46However, the facts would suggest the scariest thing to ever happen here.
37:52Some genetically modified banana varietals.
37:54You made it, man.
37:55Young Ngambi.
37:56Ah.
37:57Whew.
37:58Deep in the jungle and miles from anywhere, this was once the Institute for Agricultural Studies of Congo.
38:21Construction began in the 1930s.
38:24The complex was once staffed by hundreds of Belgian researchers, doctors, and engineers until they left hurriedly in 1960.
38:34With independence began a rapid decline.
38:41The eventual cessation of funding.
38:46Of the hundreds of structures built here, what used to be housing, laboratories, hospitals, and research facilities, the vast complex's library is clearly the most important to those who remain.
39:01Though crumbling like everything else, the grass is cut and grounds maintained.
39:11It's swept and kept clean.
39:13And yet most incredibly, this man, Casongo Bertin, still fights a daily battle to stave off further decay to the thousands of volumes of books and research materials contained on these shelves.
39:28So what happened here?
39:29Did the place stay open?
39:30Did people continue to do research?
39:32They are not yet able to benefit from it.
39:36There are some new staff.
39:38They don't get anything.
39:39But for those who have been there for long, they get an allowance from the government.
39:44Independence comes.
39:46What happens here?
39:47The Blacks are left.
39:49The most people found that they didn't have to go directly.
39:53The UNEAC continued to work in Rwanda and Burundi.
39:58The most people have traveled on the other side.
40:01So, unless I'm mistaken, the gentleman just said that cutting-edge research moved to Burundi and elsewhere, the Congolais who remained.
40:10Their mission, all these years later, has been to preserve the patrimony that existed.
40:16All this was state-of-the-art back in the 50s when the library was built.
40:25But for 20 years, there hasn't been electricity to run the dehumidifiers to keep out the damp.
40:31Through so many wars, through all of these difficulties, he has maintained this facility to an extraordinary degree.
40:40Why?
40:41To keep me.
40:43Why?
40:44Because it's...
40:45Today, I'm calling me Dwaye.
40:46I'm calling Dwaye.
40:47Because if I'm not here, nothing will work.
40:51Because I'm already known about all of these.
41:00Staff still show up to work and organize, catalog, and write requests for funding.
41:08Perhaps the Kinshasa or a central office where someone may or may not ever respond.
41:16He was here pre-independence, yes?
41:19Does he remember the Belgian rule?
41:21No, no.
41:22It was good.
41:23It was good.
41:24It was good.
41:25It was good.
41:26It was good.
41:27It was good.
41:28It was good.
41:29No, he remembers.
41:30He remembers that period of colonialism.
41:32Right.
41:33That was the good, the best time that they were living.
41:36What do you say to someone who suggests that Belgian colonialism might have been the good times?
41:43The road home.
42:00Such as it is.
42:02Rotting bridges.
42:04Makeshift ferries.
42:06It's an adventure.
42:08Fortunately, ours was a good adventure.
42:11The Congo is a place that's always fascinated me.
42:17This is a trip I've been wanting to take since I've been writing stories or making television.
42:23But what I found was something unexpected.
42:26I met a lot of people who, for a long time, have been waiting.
42:30Hoping for things to get better.
42:34A lot more hope here than there's any right to expect.
42:39When all is said and done, I wanted to go to the Congo.
42:48And I did.
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