Brief History of DR Congo

We had our second training meeting last night. I am more excited than before about the trip after spending time with our team, discussing the book we're reading (more to come on that), and talk about other issues. Gwen gave us a brief history of DR Congo and other info about where we're going....and I wanted to share that with you all...

The Great Lakes region of Africa includes the Congo countries, Rwanda, Burundi, etc. (Check out a map...I should put one on here!). DR Congo is formerly known as Zaire and changed only in 1997. The area was subject to colonialism many years ago by the Belgians. They pitted African against African. If you are familiar with the Rwandan genocide...you know the two tribes involved in that conflict (Tutsi and Hutu). When the Belgians pulled out, it left a power struggle and the genocide insued. Both tribes at one point fled across the border into Congo and then back to Rwanda. The town we are staying in is called Goma, and is close to the border where much of this happened. All this is directly related to the recent wars in DR Congo between an assortment of the Congolese army, Tutsi rebels, Hutu rebels, and whoever else decides to join in. There has been a cease fire for a little while, so hopefully that holds for us!
The town of Goma is next to a volcano that erupted at some point recently. The town basically was destroyed and then rebuilt on top of the hardened lava. So that will be interesting.