Congo villagers hope for fresh start from poll
Source: Reuters
By Alistair Thomson NDAKU-PEMBE, Congo, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Clutching her orange voting card to her chest, 67-year-old Lukula Celestine Nsimba waits in the rain to vote at a school built of mud and straw, hoping at last for a change in her country's fortunes. "This time there is a difference," Nsimba said, her grey hair cropped close. "We want peace in our country, an end to suffering and misery." Mashiau school, where Nsimba voted, is testament to the wasted decades. Just 90 km (40 miles) east of the capital Kinshasa, its six tiny mud-built classrooms serve hundreds of children from Ndaku-Pembe and outlying settlements, said Jean Jabbela, whose five children are pupils. To avoid overcrowding, young children have lessons in the mornings and the older ones come in the afternoon. Like many people in the area, Jabbela gets by through subsistence farming, growing enough maize, manioc and beans to feed his family and sell any surplus to buy supplies. Along the main road east from Kinshasa, once productive fruit plantations lie abandoned. This road was once crowded with traffic for the southeastern copper mining capital of Lubumbashi, nearly 2,000 km (1,250 miles) away. But now the muddy potholes get deeper and the demands for money by soldiers at checkpoints more insistent with every hour away from the capital. Ancient trucks stacked high with people and charcoal for sale in Kinshasa sway round deep potholes and pick their way past rusting hulks of broken and crashed vehicles. At one point a wide concrete bridge lies upended in a ravine. Along parts of the road runs a line of pylons, straight as a die, carrying electricity from the Congo river to Lubumbashi -- without giving power to villages of mud-built huts. Laurent Kabila and his Rwandan-backed rebel army marched along this road on their way to topple late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, an uprising followed by five years of war. Sunday's presidential run-off poll pits President Joseph Kabila, who succeeded when his father was assassinated in 2001, against former rebel warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba. Despite continuing violence, many see reasons to hope. "This time we have arrived at a final showdown. It's a matter of electing a head of state who is capable of sorting out our country's problems, the roads, the schools...," Zephyrin Guswanguluga said after voting in Nsele-Bambou. Guswanguluga, dressed in a crumpled blue suit, stained white shirt and a tie, said he last voted several decades ago, when the choice was between green, for Mobutu, and red. "The red card symbolised blood, and the green card represented peace and the economy. There was no choice. We were forced to vote for peace," he said. "This time round everybody is making their own free choice and choosing their candidate."
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