after nine days of threats of imprisonment, confiscation of footage, and what was the most chaotic, difficult, yet amazing trip of my life, the last thing that stands between us and our flight home is the reason we came. the congo river, itself. >> the u.n. truck just said he's been here since this morning. >> held up for days. >> what's up, freddy? >> starting the engines. >> awesome.

>> just broke down again? >> yeah. >> we now have one hour of daylight left. >> they started the engines. >> okay. great. here it comes. >> you learn quickly, in congo things change in a moment's notice. >> welcome to the jungle.

everyone gets everything he wants. i wanted to see the congo and for my sins, they let me. in heart of darkness joseph conrad writes of his alter ego. when i was a a little chap, i had a passion for maps. at that time there were many blank spaces on earth. but there was one yet, the biggest, the most blank, that i had a hankering after.

this, then, is the congo. the size of all western europe combined it should be africa's wealthiest nation. the people forget or never even knew that the 20th century's first holocaust happened here when belgium's king leopold managed to bam booboozle the wo into giving him personal title to the congo. leopold's agents of whom the mythical kertz was one mutilated and pressed into forced labor much of the population in a blood thirsty quest for, first, ivory and then rubber. when independence finally came, the belgians trashed what they could and left behind a completely unprepared, tribally divided, and largely ungovernable land mass filled

with stuff that everybody in the world wanted. things pretty much went down hill from there. this story begins with a truck stop in rwanda. stocking up in rwanda, the last location for food in the congo.

we're measured. if you are looking to get to the eastern congo, and many would ask why you'd even want to do that, the best way is to drive across from neighboring rwanda. this country of course not too long ago suffered its own appalling genocide. behind the wheel, dan. he's been living in the drc for two years working on a documentary about some of the several dozen rebel groups in the country. riding shotgun, dan's close friend and associate, horev, a congolese. they're taking me across the border. one side, rwanda -- hotels, paved roads, internet, and paperwork to be filled out. just a few feet of barbed wire, machine guns, and cement walls

away, this. welcome to goma. the city of 1 million, the significant number of whom are internally displaced people, idps, sitting, rather inconveniently, at the base of mount niragondo, currently still smoldering volcano, 2002 when it last erupted, lava everywhere. which explains the less than smooth ride. one of the first things you notice out the car window the u.n. about four months ago, the m-23,

one of the various rebel groups holed up in the jungle nearby, invaded the city. the ngos batoned down the hatches. the u.n. stood by, hands tied. everyone else had to fend for themselves until the rebels withdrew. the congo is a place i've dreamed of visiting since before i ever thought i'd get the chance to travel the world. actually being here? i'm not so sure. dan, horev, and i head for a local restaurant. good food is going to be a challenge soon, so we take the opportunity to fill up on what we can. grilled chicken, pepper, pretty nice meal. >> in the 1950s tourists came

from as rhodesia up here to vacation. >> amazing life. i remember in my childhood seeing lions alongside of the road sometimes. goma was a tourist choice for sometime. >> they're not coming anymore? >> no. >> you're just saying no. >> it's a red zone. >> it's looking like there won't be house-to-house fighting or artillery or mortars dropping into goma. was today a good day? >> we have a rebel group just ten kilometers north of us and then we have maybe seven other rebel groups that are all caught in the blender, you know? so things change quickly in the congo. >> confused yet? virtually all of the eastern part of the country is being contested by rebel groups -- some local and others allegedly acting on behalf of interests based in neighboring countries. recently the largely tootsie rwandan backed in 1923 has been

acting around goma but the mostly hutu is also here. there are the local self-defense groups offer specific entities. some groups like the frpi are principally defending a stake in a resource like gold, and others are mainly interested in fighting with a particular enemy, in their case, a beef with the fblr. lots of other organizations control territory who haven't come up with a name or a cool acronym yet. this is only a fraction of the rebel groups in a single area of the congo. be advised, this map was hopelessly outdated before we even got here. >> all these variables kind of knotted into one big mess and these are the reasons why the media has a difficult time, why the western world doesn't hear much about congo, because how can you sum it up in a three-minute report? >> but for us, goma is just a stop over on the way to the

congo river. so we need to keep moving. and roads, forget it. certainly nothing even remotely safe between goma and where we're headed. this is the preferred route. so we've chartered a bush plane, formerly queen elizabeth's flying wardrobe. when the queen traveled, presumably in her younger years, her clothes followed in this beast, or so we're told. i have not seen this model of plane before. a first for me. of course, you learn to take nothing for granted in the congo. just as we're about to take off, thunder, lightning. >> looks fine to me. let's get this thing airborne. >> wow. nice. >> we'll wait this one out a little. crashes are pretty common place. not so long ago a plane with

nearly a hundred people onboard went down on the same route we're taking today. >> most planes that crash in congo crash because of the weather, right? >> yeah. most of the time, yeah. >> not us. >> don't worry. >> the weather clears up. sort of. so we decide to give it a go. >> when the weather is very bad, stay on the ground. >> what about rebels? they shooting at the planes? >> no. nobody knows. okay. we'll see you after your trip. >> yeah, yeah. >> okay. have a good one. >> lifting off from goma we head out over the shores of lake kevu before circling back north-northeast. our destination, what conrad

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two hours out of goma we land. this was once stanleyville and the country's second largest city before war and neglect cut it off from the rest of the congo and the world. stanleyville known as the inner station.

the congo river stretches across the country's middle. conrad describes it as a twisting snake with its head in the atlantic ocean and its tail buried deep in africa's heart. to europeans it was a natural route to transport slaves, ivory, rubber, minerals. the commodities upon which modern day brussels and antwerp are built. for the congolese both before and after the belbelgians, it provided more basic things -- water to wash, clean your clothes in, cook with, to drink. also fishing. since long before the expeditions of dr. livingston and henry mortan stanley the tribe has been fishing the river in unique fashion. highly coordinated and

acrobatic, they dive into the treacherous rapids of what is still referred to as stanley falls. they navigate down stream between baskets that need tending. perched on a precarious network of wooden poles, they hoist together. the catch these days? not much. >> so it is the second biggest falls in the congo river. >> ogie is a fisherman and was a guide, bringing tourists to his village. since the last two wars, tourism has been pretty much non existent. chief of the tribe, it is said he is a direct descendant of the king who greeted stanley in the 1870s. please thank him for the

privilege of seeing his community. >> this is a present -- this is a way to welcome the delegation from cnn. >> the tribe made what was in retrospect the mistake of allowing stanley to pass. the famous explorer, of course, pretty much shot and raided his way along his historic route to the coast before effectively jump-starting the colonial period. using stanley as administrator king leopold of belgium claimed the congo as his personal property. under leopold's reign, men, women, and children were given

numbers, separated into groups, given production quotas. if they fell short, they were whipped, their hands cut off, hanged. an estimated ten million congolese were either starved, worked to death, executed, or just killed where they stood all in just over 20 years. by the end, half the population of the country was gone. have you ever thought about all those years ago if your people had just killed stanley? somebody else would have come. >> ordinarily a large tiger fish like this one is going to the market. it's considered way too valuable to eat. but today, guests. >> it's a mean looking fish. the congolese standard.

it can be pretty much anything wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed. >> announcer: good tradition. >> excellent meal. a lot of work. it looks like they're not having an entirely miserable time of it. that water looks good. on a good day, how many like this? >> on a good day, 50. >> 50. >> yeah. 50. but in time to ancestors, ancestors didn't use -- they'd just catch about ten big fish one basket like this. but the situation changed for two reasons. the tourists used to come and see the fishermen catching fish. >> hundreds used to come. >> yes. >> well, things get a little better here, then they come

back. >> i hope so. i hope so, too. ♪ ♪ >> after leopold the belgian government took over and pretty much continued as before. an apartheid like system of what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine. by the '50s there was a beautiful, modern infrastructure built -- railroads, hotels, sports clubs, schools. the envy of africa. humphrey bogart and katherine hepburn were here while filming "the african queen" and stayed at the luxury hotel. this is the hotel now. like everything else of that time, a hollow ruin inhabited by squatters or simply eaten by the

jungle. but none of this was ever for the congolese. they weren't allowed in any of these buildings, except as help. not even allowed to walk their own streets after dark. not a lot of dependable electric power left in the city. but what lights do glow around town, much of it comes from places like this. small kiosks serving the congolese version of barbecue and what passes for cold beer. christian is one of our fixers tasked with keeping us ontrack and out of trouble which, believe me, is a big job around here. you know, it's an amazing looking city. if you just blur your vision a little bit, you can see it in the way it used to be. >> beautiful. i think it could be the best place to be. very kind people.

people like listening to music, sitting, taking their meal. eating. >> what is the congolese word for barbecue? >> barbecue. >> cheers. >> cheers. >> i like any meat on a grill. looking good. a traditional goat stew on the side. >> now we're talking. >> now put some sauce on there. >> that's delicious. >> as you can see, people don't eat meat -- meat is quite expensive, almost $2. >> which is a lot. more than most people make in a day or even two days. what is one of the first things you buy if you are very, very poor? >> very poor? soap. >> soap. >> because you have to look a bit clean. >> so soap first. >> soap. but as congolese you want to think of dressing, looking smart, clothes. if you give them $10 they'll

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in heart of darkness conrad writes about the greed of the belgian colonizers. they grab what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. it was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale. after 75 years the congolese had had enough. independents came quickly. when the new country managed to inaugurate their first democratically elected leader, the cia and the british working through the belgians had him killed. we helped to install this miserable bastard in his place, joseph mubutu who stole millions

of dollars from his people and pretty much became the dem platte fordespotism in africa. this situation detective jasitu 35 years. the government was no longer paying its bills and the trains stopped running. this is the station of kisengame. there is one short run left, service once a week when operational, which isn't often i'm guessing. abandoned by the belgians, shot up and stripped by rebels in the '90s. the station, the engines, the ancient passenger cars, and the

tracks, ceded into the jungle. and yet all these years later with hardly any resources the railway administrator and a staff of clerks, conductors, mechanics, and engineers, show up at work and do what they can in an attempt to keep things in working order. >> how do you do? >> thank you for coming to see this place. >> how many employees still work here? >> when it is running well we have about 500 people. but these days we are about 200. >> so at one time you could

dispatch a freight to south africa? >> yes, we could leave here and travel to south africa with connections of course. >> so a hypothetical question. if the government said, okay. we're ready. we have the money. we would like to as quickly as possible get operational. does he have the workers ready to go? [ speaking in foreign language ] this is one of the few things here working today. a feature of great pride to the staff. railway employees i'm told do not get paid yet they continue

to show up at work. it is said in the building of the country's once vast rail network one congolese died for every single tie. like many congolese we meet, they are all these years later and in spite of everything that's happened, ready and

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felt yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once. so conrad described the congo after piloting steamships in the early days of belgian colonialism. >> i've had something of a multi decade obsession with the congo. it's been kind of a personal dream if you will to travel to congo river. now, for better or worse, to get that chance. you've rented a trusty vessel and i shall dub the captain willard. all right. did you maggots load the chickens? finding food along the way it's anticipated will be a challenge. refrigeration of any kind is impossible. >> i'm psyched. my dream has finally come true.

blocked by officials? this could be months. okay. let the probing begin. how do we do this? >> let's get under way before they figure a new tax to levy on us. our trip downriver will take us some 120 kilometers even deeper into the jungle. instead of kertz it is a crumbling belgian research center with a shadowy past that awaits us at our destination. >> a turn of the century map so it was then called stanleyville. leopoldville would be here. >> 3,000 kilometers or something like that. >> a long way to go if we were

taking the full ride. >> that's what we're doing, right? >> all the way to the atlantic? >> you didn't tell them yet? >> i don't think we have enough spam, gentlemen. a half day's journey down river is a local dignitary we promised to visit. >> there, coming down is the chief. >> we arrive late but the king is still waiting for us. traditional head gear, not so traditional suit. the medals given by the belgians proving his royal lineage. >> this place belongs to the

bamboli ethnic group. >> and he is the king? >> my father ruled from 1928 and i came after him in 1963. >> that's a lot of history. incredible. we give him a goat as a way of saying, i'm sorry for being so late and sorry we can't stay longer. he gives me a simple, yet hefty looking bracelet, which only later do i come to appreciate for what it is. >> he told knee me this goes ba arab, portugese times. the arabs taught them to do this so they wear them on their wrists and ankles. this is older than our story

probably. the chief said his father gave it to him in 1935. so who knows now? wow. so, where did you get the bracelet? oh, an african king gave it to me. congo river. where'd you get yours? we've come a long way down river, but with many kilometers still to go, attention is turned toward the evening meal. i figure i'll make a meal which is simple to deal with a bunch of old stringy birds in one pot. getting close to killing time. the moment of truth. it's quickly getting dark and i am very aware of a number of things. how do they usually kill chickens? >> small knife. >> cut the heads off? our chickens are thin, xrag ly, and tough. in order to make anything, any kind of edible, i'm probably going to have to stew the crap out of them. but first we got to kill these things and collect their blood,

which if you know anything about chickens and most of my crew don't, takes time. i'll hold the bucket. you kill the chicken. you want to eat you got to kill your own chicken and pluck it, too. but every man has a breaking point. and in retrospect, perhaps this was ours. >> saw harder. you're almost through. >> killing him. >> harder. >> clean kill. >> now you can join our tree house. >> in time our birds are cleaned and plucked. the sun is down and dinner is still a long way off. better. so now i can help make this a great block party. ♪ [ male announcer ] advair is clinically proven to help significantly improve lung function.

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somewhere down the congo river now continuing to deal with a few pressing concerns. one knife onboard is as sharp really as a soup spoon. soon i'm frantically trying to rip out the back bone and guts with one go with my bare hands because the knife ain't [ bleep ] and it is getting darker and darker and the damn generator keeps giving out. >> i really need the lights so i can see what i'm cutting. i can't cut what i can't see.

only 240 watts. >> they're not going to eat at all. i'm never going to get through with this. maybe we should figure out how to cook dinner unless you don't want to eat any dinner. because we are really not going to eat any dinner tonight. i've had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and i would like especially as we go through all of this mystery with these chickens. there's the machete. it would be appropriate to point out that we do not want to be moving at night. we would not like to run aground in the middle of the freaking congo. the currents, unpredictable. visibility, nil. time to tie up for the night.

generator issues more or less fixed but now another just as serious problem presents itself. with the lights burning it becomes insanely buggy. crush the wrong one of these mogts and you will blow up like a balloon, seriously. >> you can pour all three bottles of wine into the onions. all right. let's put the top on. bring it up to a boil. three hours later and it looks like the jungle style stew might actually work out after all. who wants to bring this over carefully to the table? all right. let's eat.

bon appetite! in the end it was a bit scraggly, but passable. it is written that i should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. i think i now understand what that means. next morning on the river and of course we're not alone. fishermen from all the surrounding villages have heard of us and have long before we're even awake come by to check us out. >> find a couple onions. don't go crazy. if we don't have them we don't have them. >> i will not go crazy.

>> all right. and the stealth bomber -- this will be our accomplishment as a culture. >> been there. >> once we finally get there, we still have to get all the way back. >> coming back was never part of the plan, man. we're not coming back. >> yeah, they'll find us ten years later, naked in the bush with a necklace of spam cans. that was glorious. ♪ >> time to get back out on the river. we have places to go. ♪ two days down the congo, we're finally nearing our destination. ♪ >> it's an abandoned belgian research station. still functioning in some

capacity. but there's about 30 kim someters kilometers in, 250 buildings. they're doing it all here. >> much myth and legend surrounds this place. omplt omplts. >> oh, there we go. >> it has been inferred by some the belgians conducted uranium enrichment and a post of bizarre experiments here. however, the facts would suggest the scariest thing to ever happen here, some genetically modified banana varietials. >> hey, man, in gambi. but you had to leave right now, would you go? man: 'oh i can't go tonight' woman: 'i can't.' hero : that's what expedia asked me. host: book the flight but you have to go right now. hero: (laughs) and i just go? this is for real right? this is for real?

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try capzasin-hp. it penetrates deep to block pain signals for hours of relief. capzasin-hp. take the pain out of arthritis. . deep in the jungle and miles from anywhere, this was once the institute for agricultural studies of congo. construction began in the 1930s. the complex was once staffed by hundreds of belgian researchers, doctors, and engineers until they left hurriedly in 1960.

with independence began a rapid decline. the eventual cessation of funding. of the hundreds of structures built here, what used to be housing, laboratories, hospitals and research facilities, the vast complex's library is clearly the most important to those who remain. though crumbling, like everything else, the grass is cut and grounds maintained. it's swept and kept clean. and yet most incredibly, this man, castunga still fights off a battle to further decay to thousands of volumes of books and research volumes on these shelves. >> did people continue to do research? >> translator: there's some new stuff. but i don't get anything.

those have been there for long, they get an allowance from the government. >> independence comes. what happens here? >> so unless i'm mistaken, the gentleman just said that research moved to barundi and elsewhere. the congoli, their mission has been to preserve the patrimony that existed. all this was state-of-the-art in the '50s when the library was built. but for 20 years, there hasn't been electricity to run the dehumidifiers to keep out the damp. >> through so many wars, through all of these difficulties, he has maintained this facility to an extraordinary degree.

why? >> staff still show up to work and organize. catalog and write requests for funding. perhaps the kinshasa are a central office where someone may or may not ever respond. >> he was here preindendence, yes? >> yeah. >> does he remember the belgian rule? >> no, yeah, he remembers the period. >> right. >> but that was the good -- the best time they were living. >> what do you say to someone who suggests that belgian

colonialism might have been the good times? the road home. such as it is. rotting bridges. makeshift ferries. it's an adventure. fortunately, ours was a good adventure. the congo is a place that's always fascinated me. this is a trip i've been wanting to take since i've been writing stories or making television. but what i found was something unexpected. i met a lot of people who, for a long time, have been waiting. hoping for things to get better. a lot more hope here than there is any right to expect.

when all is said and done, i wanted to go to the congo, and i did. the following is a cnn special report. what began with fire became murder and manhunt. >> the level of intensity is incredible. >> a best friend turned worst enemy. >> this gentleman that was a friend of ours for a long time has taken everything. >> one teen in grave danger. >> the amber alert, this picture of a girl. i said that's the girl we saw on the mountain. >>