A Visit to the Other Congo, the Forgotten Congo

VPM | By Tom Gjelten

Published April 28, 2007 at 12:00 PM EDT

Updated July 7, 2023

SCOTT SIMON, host:

Earlier this month, NPR’s Tom Gjelten was on assignment in the Republic of Congo – not the Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Zaire – but the other Congo. Never heard of it? Here’s a little story in itself.

TOM GJELTEN: I set out recently to do a story about the World Bank, which works in 180 countries, many of them small and far away. I chose to visit the Republic of Congo. Many people confuse this African country with the more famous Congo, the old Belgian Congo of King Leopold, later the domain of the deeply corrupt Mobutu Sese Seko. That’s not where I went. I went to the little Congo.

The two countries are next to each other, separated by the Congo River. The Republic of Congo was part of French Equatorial Africa before it became independent. It’s sometimes called Congo-Brazzaville after its capital and to distinguish it from the Congo across the river. I wanted to describe the poverty in Brazzaville.

(Soundbite of recording)

GJELTEN: Here in the rocky banks of the Congo River, women are washing their clothes, beating them against the rocks and rinsing them in the brown churning waters of a river.

(Soundbite of people talking)

GJELTEN: With that little scene, I was hoping to give my listeners a sense of where exactly I was. People at least have heard of the Congo River, I figured. I couldn’t blame them for not knowing more about this little country of four million people. It seems we pay attention to these small African countries only when they’re at war. In the case of Congo-Brazzaville, hardly even then.

A war there in 1997 was overshadowed by war in the big Congo, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo. About three million people died in the DRC. In the little Congo, about 10,000 people died, too few to warrant our attention, but still devastating.

Mr. ALAIN AKOULA (Minister of Communications, Congo-Brazzaville): (French spoken)

GJELTEN: The minister of communications in Brazzaville Alain Akoula told me how most of the schools in the country, most of the bridges were destroyed during the war. People outside, he said, don’t know what happens here. I’d like to think my reporting from Congo-Brazzaville made listeners more aware, but I wonder.

After my story about this former French colony, we’d heard from many listeners who wrote to correct me. Congo was a Belgian colony, they insisted. No, I was in the other Congo, the forgotten one still.

(Soundbite of music)

SIMON: NPR’s Tom Gjelten.

This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Tom Gjelten

Tom Gjelten reports on religion, faith, and belief for NPR News, a beat that encompasses such areas as the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and conflict arising from religious differences. His reporting draws on his many years covering national and international news from posts in Washington and around the world.

In 1986, Gjelten became one of NPR's pioneer foreign correspondents, posted first in Latin America and then in Central Europe. Over the next decade, he covered social and political strife in Central and South America, the first Gulf War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the transitions to democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

His reporting from Sarajevo from 1992 to 1994 was the basis for his book Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (HarperCollins), praised by the New York Times as "a chilling portrayal of a city's slow murder." He is also the author of Professionalism in War Reporting: A Correspondent's View (Carnegie Corporation) and a contributor to Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know (W. W. Norton).

After returning from his overseas assignments, Gjelten covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs, first from the State Department and then from the Pentagon. He was reporting live from the Pentagon at the moment it was hit on September 11, 2001, and he was NPR's lead Pentagon reporter during the early war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Gjelten has also reported extensively from Cuba in recent years. His 2008 book, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (Viking), is a unique history of modern Cuba, told through the life and times of the Bacardi rum family. The New York Times selected it as a "Notable Nonfiction Book," and the Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and San Francisco Chronicle all listed it among their "Best Books of 2008." His latest book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story (Simon & Schuster), published in 2015, recounts the impact on America of the 1965 Immigration Act, which officially opened the country's doors to immigrants of color. He has also contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other outlets.

Since joining NPR in 1982 as labor and education reporter, Gjelten has won numerous awards for his work, including two Overseas Press Club Awards, a George Polk Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, he began his professional career as a public school teacher and freelance writer.

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