Oregon Public Broadcasting

With barely 300 miles of paved road in all of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Congo River has become the nation's Route 66 -- the artery pulsing life into the heart of Africa.

The river dominates the lush, green port city of Mbandaka, which straddles the equator. Perpetual activity on and around the water drowns out everything but the loud hum of the engines of vessels berthed at the port.

With a population of about 750,000 people, Mbandaka is the capital of Equateur province. It is in a sleepy corner of northwest Congo, 500 miles upstream from the capital, Kinshasa. A familiar sight in the city is its pedal bike taxis, with colorful crocheted seats, climbing up and down the hills, ferrying passengers.

Mbandaka, a major transportation hub, is an important trading post in the region. The Congo River, Africa's second-longest river, makes it possible. But years of civil war and spillover conflict from neighboring countries have periodically choked the lifeline, which witnessed some of Congo's heaviest fighting in the late 1990s and early in this century.

A 'Big Floating Market'

Congolese board barges in Mbandaka that carry them and their goods up and down the river. It was here that American explorer Henry Morton Stanley stopped to mark the equator in the late 19th century, on his maiden voyage down the Congo. The "Equator Stone" he placed near the riverbank, south of the city, remains there today.

At bustling Mbandaka port, outdoor market vendors sell everything from freshly ground coffee, heaped in neat mini-mountains, to used clothing and shoes.

Navy blue and white pick-up trucks sit on a barge waiting to be transported upstream. There is an air of expectation as passengers mill around the port, waiting for confirmation that there is a barge on the move.

Smoked and salted fish from the northern and equatorial provinces make their way downstream, along with other food shipments. Kinshasa, in turn, sends up items that river communities -- with little access to the outside world and often no running water and electricity -- find impossible to get in Congo's remote interior: electrical goods, flashlights, school books and stationery, used shoes and tires and pick-up trucks.

"The Congo River is like a big floating market," says Charles Lonkama, former librarian and archivist at the Aequatoria Research Institute near Mbandaka. "People come from far away to buy things they need."

"The development of Congo and Africa depends [on] the river, because that helps us to live. When Congo is in difficulties, people can't travel. But if we're in peace, boats and canoes can give to the population of the river foods and medicines, and all things that helps people to live," he says.

Attacks Disrupt River Traffic

And Mbandaka has seen its share of difficulties recently. Violence flared earlier this year, when on Easter Sunday dozens of fighters crossed the Congo River and attacked the city, killing several people, including two United Nations peacekeepers. The assault was believed to be part of a local ethnic dispute over fishing rights and not part of the long-running, wider conflict in eastern Congo that overflowed from Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Bilonda Mibiya, a trader and mother of seven, says she was in the vicinity of the April 4 attack and describes a frightening experience. She says people were at church, as normal, on Easter Sunday when the commotion broke out.

"We were so scared," she says. "We didn't know what was happening, because Mbandaka is usually quiet and calm."

Later, they found out that about 100 rebel insurgents had struck, overwhelming a handful of Ghanaian U.N. peacekeepers guarding the airport. It took 24 hours for Congolese troops -- backed by U.N. soldiers -- to win back control of the airport and other strategic installations.

In May, a military tribunal convicted about 30 rebels for their involvement in the attack, including a dozen who were sentenced to death.

The army magistrate in the case appealed to the public for calm, and a senior regional official discouraged would-be travelers from heading up the Congo River because of the risk of attack. All vessels going downstream now require a military escort, he said.

Clashes between rival militias and other armed groups, as well as the Congolese army in the east, account in part for the continuing presence of the largest U.N. peacekeeping deployment in the world.

Initially, the U.N. troops were deployed as observers to monitor a peace accord agreed to by factions involved in a conflict that has been dubbed Africa's World War. The fighting began in 1996 when Rwanda invaded Congo; Rwanda's stated aim was to pursue those who committed the country's 1994 genocide. A year later, backed by forces from Rwanda and Uganda, rebel leader Laurent-Desire Kabila ousted longtime Congolese strongman President Mobutu Sese Seko -- who had opened the eastern border to let in the fleeing Rwandans. The following year, renewed conflict exploded into a regional war drawing in more than half a dozen nations.

After a peace accord was implemented, the U.N. mission evolved into one of peacekeeping in Congo's volatile east -- where violence from neighboring Rwanda's genocide had spilled over and expanded to include the Congolese army, and local and Rwandan rebel groups.

Now, an array of marauding armed men, as well as the army, still stalk eastern Congo -- attacking and pillaging -- in a mineral-rich area known as the rape capital of the world, where sexual violence is used as a weapon of war.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been caught in the crossfire and remain displaced in camps in a conflict that relief agencies describe as a forgotten humanitarian crisis.

As well, U.N. peacekeepers have been accused of failing to protect civilians. Some U.N. soldiers have faced charges of sexual abuse of Congolese -- including underage children, and illegal gold trading and corruption.

Vital Link For Remote Villages

The civil wars, ethnic violence and lack of investment and maintenance of vessels has meant the number of boats plying the Congo River has dramatically dwindled in the past decade, even though river traffic remains vital to the nation's interior, says Lonkama, the historian.

"About 20 years ago, there were a lot of boats from Kinshasa to Kisangani, and from Kisangani to Kinshasa," he says, adding that the government is doing its best to revive the shipping traffic.

Without boats and the supplies they carry, he says, remote villages have no shops, no schools, no books or pens. He says the vessels and their goods provide people with livelihoods and the ability to "live as a human being can."

At sundown in Mbandaka, a choir rehearsing at a church overlooking the river lustily sings a hymn called "Ebale Mbonge," or "The Waves of the River."

Life is like navigating the river, the song says. If you take it too fast, you may not arrive at your destination; so be patient.

Patience is a virtue, and often a necessity, for the people of Mbandaka and elsewhere in Congo. Life along the river has been buffeted by economic uncertainty and periodic violence.

Up next: Boarding the barge at Mbandaka en route to Kinshasa Copyright 2010 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.