New book spotlights war in Democratic Republic of the Congo

And here on the Sunday, Vincent’s joining us in studio. It’s so good to see you and thank you for reaching out. Uh, we’re talking about your book here today, uh, The Heart of Darkness The Forgotten War of the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It, it reads like *** first person textbook and, and it’s heartbreaking to, to read about the Baya Malenge. These are, are your people, the atrocities that they’ve gone through over the last 30 years and what they’re going through today. What inspired you to write this book? Ianiai Congo has been going. *** lot of stuff, mostly the war since I can say since 1996 and um. To be honest, uh, the Tutsibanya Muenge were the most targeted people, and from 2017, it has been worse. That’s why I have decided to. Tell the world what’s going on in Eastern Congo. I want to read to you *** passage. This is early on in the book that that stood out to me, and you shared with me that that you really managed to escape death at multiple points. You write here to grasp the severity of the situation, you must understand as I write these lines, this is February of 2026. Military drones and fighter jets are flying over and bombing two different cities in your home country. What have you seen? Yeah, so as I said, it’s from 2017 it’s where things get worse. So we have *** government right now led by President Felix. Who is sending drones day and night to Minambo? Which is in South Kivu where actually Baya Moulenge lives. It’s our capital, the main village. And Unfortunately, he’s bombing innocent people, innocent people who live there, and due to those bombings, most of the people have died. And the rest have displaced. So you came to the United States. You resettled here in, uh, it was 2017, right? So you have *** wife here, you have two children. Um, you’re far from the only, um, Congolese person who is resettled here in Maine. There’s *** large population. Have you talked to your neighbors from your home country who live here? Have they, have they all survived seeing the same atrocities that you describe in this book? I will say that the main purpose of us to immigrate here in the United States is because of war. If you look at the majority of immigrants who are here in Maine or in general in the United States and in Europe, in whatever. Most of them are Congolese, either Congolese or Somalia. We have the largest number. That is because of war, because if our country was stable, we would not come here. You describe some of the changes that you want to see in this book here. You’re calling on the US government to take some kind of action, and you want to see the Democratic Republic of the Congo federalized. What would that mean? So first of all, it’s because. I came with that because right now, the current US government, has *** good relationship with President Chiti and his government, so I came with this point because first of all, the DRC Congo, it’s *** continent, it’s huge, it’s really big. So, and the second issue is that we don’t have infrastructure. There was no road, schools, medical system or nothing virtually, nothing there. So, another thing is that uh Kinshasa, which is like Washington DC, it’s our capital, they collect money from like we have *** state called province and each state has *** governor. So every governor sent their revenue to Kinshasa. But when the money gets there in Kinshasa, they loot it. Your current president wants to change the constitution to continue his power. There is, there are so many Americans that fear becoming entangled in another foreign conflict of sorts. Is there *** way that you could see or you would like to see? US leaders get involved in *** way where they can help the DRC without increasing violence that we’re seeing. The current US government can help *** lot because, as I was saying, that if this current government, US government, government, government can help us to federalize our country, that will be huge. So because we really need that federalism. So that the state can have some power. Um, well, this is *** very informative read. Um, I thank you so much for coming in and thank you for sharing your experience. I appreciate it so much.