Considered one of the least developed countries in the world, Rwanda is an unusual destination for high school groups, but it had been a focus of study and service for the three Upper Valley students who traveled there in December.
Kigali, Rwanda -- After months of planning and fund raising, followed by 36 hours of travel across seven time zones via five cities and three continents, there's a problem: the soccer balls.
Last week, Congo installed the winner of its first multi-party presidential election in 40 years: Joseph Kabila is now the leader of the war-torn country.
Mvemba Dizolele describes the Congolese response to their historic elections as 'giddy'. Mvemba is an American citizen who was born and raised in Congo. He talks with Dick about his detention as a young man by the dictator who had employed his father, why he became an American…and what it was like to encounter a pygmy taller than he is.
We stopped our car along the main road that snakes from Kigali, Rwanda's capital, to the country's western region. We were heading to the volcanoes that soar along the northwest border for a story about mountain gorillas and what has happened to their habitat. But the light was good now, streaking through the rainy season's ever-present clouds, and the cameraman I was traveling with wanted to shoot.
When Nelson Mandela was released from jail in 1990 and during the subsequent 1994 independence and elections in South Africa, the United States displayed a dramatic commitment to the democratic movement in Africa that has not been in evidence since. That seemed to change, however, with the U.S.-sanctioned arrest of Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor, on March 29, 2006, for human rights violations in neighboring Sierra Leone.
"Another Darfur?" aired as the In Focus piece on Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria.
The Mushangi area is nested high in eastern Congo's mountains, far from the capital, Kinshasa, on the border with Rwanda. The hills are barren, stripped of their lush vegetation both by erosion and by a seemingly never-ending conflict. While the rest of Congo prepares for the second round of presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 29, the people of Mushangi worry about one thing: survival.
Without Khartoum's agreement, even 200,000 NATO troops wouldn't be able to impose a political settlement in Darfur. While the force that could ease Darfur's situation—the African Union—is underfunded.
A series presenting DRC's Tchomia IDP Camps by Pulitzer Center grantee, Mvemba Phezo Dizolele.
Photos chronicling Pulitzer Center grantee Mvemba Phezo Dizolele's reporting in DRC.
(09-10) 04:00 PDT Ruhengeri, Rwanda -- The mud, at first, is brutal. It splashes your pants and sloshes down your socks and seems to fling itself at you from the thick bamboo forest. It suctions your boots as you strain up what shouldn't really be called a path, and mocks you for moving so slowly, especially compared to the Rwandan guides who seem to glide through the forest.
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