The Congo Cookbook is a collection of recipes from Africa. (Easiest to view them all here.)
posted on Apr 13, 2008 - View this thread

The full-on, amped-up sanza sounds of Konono No. 1 have been celebrated here at MeFi not once but twice, and they are indeed wonderful. Björk's been working with them a bit lately, too. But let's go back a few decades, and take a listen to the unplugged version of this type of music: mesdames et messiurs, Papa Kourand, the grand old man of the sanza!
posted on Oct 10, 2007 - View this thread

A band of Congolese rebels is threatening to kill all of the Virunga mountain gorillas. Two-hundred Mai-Mai fighters attacked conservation posts in the violence-prone Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in response to government efforts to protect Virunga National Park from settling and poaching. Virunga is home to roughly half the world's 700 remaining mountain gorillas (and was the workplace of Diane Fossey). Last year, Mai-Mai fighters killed nearly half of the park's hippos, eating the meat and selling the teeth as ivory, and in January they killed and ate two silverbacks. The increased violence is part of a trend that has accompanied attempts to integrate the area's independent militias- mostly remnants of groups that fought in the Congo civil war, then refused to disband- into the national army, and some observers believe that the war, which already killed 4 million, may reignite.
posted on May 25, 2007 - View this thread

To be a Sapeur in Kinshasa is to treat every trash-strewn alley or muddy street as a fashion catwalk. Inspired by Congolese rumba star Papa Wemba* and his Société des Ambianceurs et Persons Élégants* (le Sape), urban peacocks cheerfully adopted "Religion Kitembo”, literally the worship of clothes. "The Pope of the Sapes" himself appears to have undergone a conversion since his recent legal troubles. Photo gallery by Héctor Mediavilla. *sound
posted on Nov 28, 2006 - View this thread

Congotronics! Mawangu Mingiedi, 72, a musician and truck driver from Kinshasa, was simply trying to allow the music of his street band, Konono No. 1, be heard over the traffic and street noise, but when he fashioned home-made amplifiers out of junkyard parts he created something raw and distorted with a sound all its own (quicktime). (via MonkeySARS, where an MP3 awaits you)
posted on Nov 22, 2005 - View this thread

In Congo, 1,000 die per day: Why isn't it a media story? "A media story is currently developing around the Congo - focusing, paradoxically, on how the conflict is not a media story." A journalist's-eye view of a story approaching the tipping-point towards widespread media coverage.
posted on Jun 15, 2005 - View this thread

Six foot tall ferocious lion killing species of ape discovered in jungles of the Congo. Or they could be giant chimpanzees. Or half-breeds. The discovery has baffled scientists.
posted on Oct 9, 2004 - View this thread

History, Present, and Future of the Congo CBC has created a great multimedia site that tells the story of the Congo. Sad, maddening, but offers a ray of hope.
posted on Jun 2, 2003 - View this thread

"We can only watch the slaughter, say UN troops" in the Congo - where machetes are turned into weapons of mass destruction - the hobbled UN presses for action, and the US and Major US Media outlets take no notice.
posted on May 26, 2003 - View this thread

Before you get that cell phone check to see where the tantalum inside it comes from. You could be funding a civil war in the Congo.
posted on Jun 6, 2001 - View this thread

No Refuge: He fled the war in Congo for America. The I.N.S. greeted him by putting him in jail. -- this week's nyt mag has stories of people who have been in new york city for one year. this one is especially powerful.
posted on Sep 18, 2000 - View this thread