Economy

Stephanie Hanes and Stephen Sapienza, for the Pulitzer Center
Gorongoza, Mozambique

Stephanie Hanes and Stephen Sapienza, for the Pulitzer Center
Gorongosa, Mozambique

Today we met Tendai Loja, a man cutting grass with a big machete in Gorongosa's Chitengo camp. He used to be a poacher – the boss of a group of villagers who would go into the park and snare protected animals, which they would sell at local markets. But he was arrested after some of his colleagues ratted him out, and he was sentenced to six months of manual labor in the park.

Although most of the animals are gone, Gorongosa is still rich in biodiversity. The park sits at the end of the Great Rift Valley, in the trough between the Cheringoma Escarpment and the long, flat-topped Gorongosa Mountain.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) is established by the UNSC in monitoring the peace process among the various ethnic conflicts.

Kinshasa is Congo's capital and one of the country's largest cities.