Nearly a century ago, when the first Europeans ventured into Zaire's vast interior, Kikwit was a small village whose people and institutions existed in a quiet, self-contained world wholly uninterrupted by the frenetic rhythms of modernity.
The village gradually disappeared as a social and cultural force as Belgium, Zaire's colonial ruler, exploited the region's mineral and agricultural wealth, transforming Kikwit into a provincial trading center. A paved highway was built to speed diesel trucks hauling cassava and corn to other regions.
While the Belgians were often consummately patronizing to their African subjects, they installed an efficient colonial administration. In time, they introduced health care, water projects, education, telephones and power lines, helping to turn this once isolated village into one of the most affluent and best-tended cities in the core of equatorial Africa.
Today, the legacy of Kikwit's colonial past is swiftly disappearing.
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The main road to Kikwit is now rutted and crumbled, and for most of the year the city can be reached from Kinshasa, Zaire's capital, only by a four-wheel-drive vehicle. In 1960, when Zaire gained independence, a visitor could drive the 300 miles in six hours. Today the same drive takes at least 10 hours.
Elsewhere in town, squatters have moved into homes that once belonged to the Belgian colonials. Entire families now camp on sidewalks, in parks and even in cemeteries. Streets and backyards are littered with indescribable filth, and toward the edges of the city the roads crumble into dirty sand and then disappear altogether. Rats and flies are breeding as never before, adding to critical sanitation and hygiene problems.
