M6 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

I am traveling to the year 1884, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was a Belgium territory, ruled by King Leopold II. He treated the country like his own personal property, Africans were considered savages and were all full time slaves to the king, I am going to a work site in the 1880s.

The air is filled with dust, everywhere there are hundreds of African men chained together pulling huge blocks of stone. White guards stand by holding rifles, in the distance I hear a cry of pain echo up the canyon, a man is getting one of his hand cut off for not working hard enough. To prove that they are doing there jobs, the leader of the sites will often show government officials baskets of smoked human hands.

In 1908 the Belgium government was embarrassed sufficiently that it persuaded the king to give the country back to the people, but while the work was less brutal, Belgium still made large profits off the then Belgian Congo. But finally France declared the Belgian Congo free and owner ship was given to Patrice Lumumba.

Because of the hurriedly arranged election, two provinces succeeded from the DRC, one of them controlled the copper industry and so, with support from the US and Belgium a civil war broke out. To put a stop to the war, Belgium paratroopers kidnapped and executed Patrice Lumumba. The new leader of the DRC began a period of Africanization, he changed all the names in the country including the names of the citizens to African names, the new name for the country became Zaire. The first and second Congo war happened between the period of Americanization up to the present, with the second war officially ending in 2003 but hostilities continuing up to this day. 

Although the people of the DRC have faced many problems in the course of history, they have succeeded and created a country with many problems, but on the rise. The DRC currently receives foreign aid from it's allies because of its strategic location.