Now serving 5 million people: With single courthouse
June 4, 2004
By TODD PITMAN
BUNIA, Congo (AP) _ Nights at the Uruguayan U.N. military camp. Days in a courthouse surrounded by barbed wire, with U.N. peacekeepers on guard outside. Death threats all the time.
This is life for the small team of judges and prosecutors dispatched here from Congo's distant capital to help restore the rule of law _ and central government authority _ to a tense region still ruled by the gun in the wake of a five-year war.
Their means: A single courthouse serving 5 million people in the vast northeastern district of Ituri.
Law's Reach
Palm Beach Hotel, II
Rebels, war and unpaid bar tabs: Congo hotel survives in Africa's heart
July 11, 2004
By TODD PITMAN
KISANGANI, Congo (AP) _ It's counted diamond dealers, foreign soldiers and an ill-fated president among the guests. It's been occupied by rebels who left behind astronomical bar tabs. It's been splattered with bullets, littered with corpses, battered, broken, bruised and rebuilt.
In the city immortalized by Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," the Palm Beach Hotel has seen it all, and survived _ much like the country itself.
Palm Beach Hotel, I
FEATURE-Rebels run up huge bills in Congo hotel
09:03 p.m Nov 24, 1998 Eastern
By Todd Pitman
KISANGANI, Congo, Nov 25 (Reuters) - When rebels swept through this city in the heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo three months ago, it didn't take them long to find the nicest hotel in town.
As retreating government troops fled by boat down the mighty Congo river, the rebels -- a mixture of Rwandan, Ugandan and Congolese soldiers fighting to oust President Laurent Kabila -- checked into comfortable rooms at the riverside Palm Beach Hotel.
Three months later, hotel staff say the rebels have run up a tab of nearly $70,000.
``They come, they eat, they drink, but they don't pay,'' said 43-year-old Charlette Bongumba, who has run the hotel -- a family business -- for the last four months.
``Before we used to make money. We had tourists, businessmen, diamond dealers. But now when you talk about the bill, they (the rebels) just laugh,'' Bongumba said.
Kisangani, a city of diamond shops and fading colonial villas perched in the middle of some of the densest jungle on earth, has been the military headquarters of the rebellion since it fell from government hands on August 23.
Dozens of gun-toting rebels, some with machine-guns and small rockets or grenades strapped to their chests, relaxed at the reception hall this week or lounged around hotel grounds chatting, sleeping and listening to radios.
Just behind the hotel on the banks of the broad, dark Congo river, rebel troops joked with local residents and haggled to buy cigarettes -- sold individually at small wooden kiosks.
Other rebel soldiers stood guard at the hotel's front gate or reclined behind the restaurant reception desk with rifles while officials held talks over fried bananas and beer.
DEJA VU FOR THE STAFF
While the rebel occupation may not be good for profits, it is not the first time hotel staff have witnessed such scenes.
Two years ago, another rebellion led by then guerrilla leader Laurent Kabila swept across the country, capturing Kisangani from government soldiers in March 1997.
Kabila moved into the Palm Beach Hotel and rebels then -- as now -- ran up massive, unpaid bills.
``Kabila stayed here in this room, but he didn't pay either,'' said Omar, a grey-haired sweeper in blue flip-flops pushing a broom through a modestly furnished two-bedroom villa equipped with air-conditioning and cable television.
Kabila's troops went on to oust one of Africa's longest ruling dictators, the late Mobutu Sese Seko, and many of them then became government soldiers.
They finally left this hotel in April 1998 but by then they had looted almost everything they could find, including television sets, refrigerators, mattresses and forks.
That tab -- in excess of $100,000 -- was never paid despite repeated appeals to Kabila's government in the capital Kinshasa.
Hotel staff say this time around, the Congolese troops have more unpaid bills than the Ugandan or Rwandan soldiers, mainly because many of them haven't been paid in months themselves.
With supplies from Kinshasa cut off by the war, military cargo flights from the Ugandan capital Kampala have brought in basics like soap, sugar and salt to keep the place running.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Ngizo, the Major
6Oct1998 DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Latest Congo war divides embattled army again.
By Todd Pitman
GOMA, Congo, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Two years ago Major Siatilo Ngizo defended the sprawling river town of Kindu in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo against rebels advancing on foot through some of the densest forest on earth.
But the rebels - backed by Rwanda and led by then guerrilla leader Laurent Kabila - captured Kindu with ease, forcing Ngizo and thousands of government troops into a humiliating retreat.
This week the bespectacled, camouflage-clad Ngizo was back in Kindu, fighting Kabila's forces again. But this time Ngizo was on the rebel side, commanding troops in Congo's latest revolt who successfully battled their way into the town after a week of heavy shelling that forced most residents and loyalist troops to flee.
Ngizo, the Colonel
April 15, 2004
Distrust, power plays hamper Congo's search for postwar order
By TODD PITMAN
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) _ For years, Col. Siatilo Ngizo was a soldier in Congo's eastern battlefields, serving in a rebel army that tried _ and failed _ to seize Kinshasa, the capital.
Ngizo finally has made it to Kinshasa _ not as a fighter, but as a bureaucrat.
Coming Home
Separated by war, one Congo family reunites after six years
April 22, 2004
By TODD PITMAN
KISANGANI, Congo (AP) _ When Constant Akode left this riverside city six years ago, he kissed his wife goodbye, thinking he'd see her in a few weeks.
But then came a five-year war that divided Congo.
With the war over, Akode is finally back home in Kisangani, laying eyes on his wife for the first time since 1998 _ and seven children he barely recognized.
Soldiering On
With old weapons and little money, Congo embarks on ambitious plan to rebuild army
May 30, 2004
By TODD PITMAN
KISANGANI, Congo (AP) _ Questions about pay in the new army's first and only brigade prompt chuckles among the men. In Congo, soldiering on a steady salary was never part of the deal.
Less humorous are the former child combatants and illiterates who pepper the ranks, a motley crew of ill-trained guerrilla fighters and government soldiers who fought on opposite sides of a five-year civil war.
Bushmeat's Bite
June 15, 2004
By TODD PITMAN
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) _ Crocodile, boa constrictor, tortoise and antelope top the menu, served up in banana-leaf sacks with french fries on the side. And for the willing, there's one dish that would make most carnivores squirm: monkey meat.
At Mama Ekila's Inzia restaurant, African bushmeat is flown in _ and fried up _ for discerning diners looking to put a bit of adventure on their plate.