Idealogian

The Cool, Cool River

It's not often that you see a front page New York Times article that reads more like Siddhartha than a news story:

On the Congo River, Congo - The river is the life and memory of this country.

On the muddy banks of Kisangani, the river releases a man who risked cholera and crocodiles and spent three months on a decrepit barge - all for a chance to travel a thousand miles to sell, at long last, a sack of plastic ladies shoes.

Outside Mbandaka, where the river trips over the Equator, it glances up at the shell of a dictator's unfinished palace, now home to a pair of cows.

In a hidden creek in the hard-knocks capital, Kinshasa, the river hears the screams of an unwanted girl. Her father banished her to the water, believing that she was a witch.

Strange.