In recent months, gunbattles have broken out between loyalists of the government in Kinshasa and the ex-rebel army in the east. Military installations in the capital have been attacked by assailants whose motives remain unclear.
Each side has held onto its weapons. Each challenge is an invitation to return to bloodletting. The war may be over, but trust has yet to be won.
With demobilization largely a dream, soldiers still prowl along the river, still with empty bellies. Downstream from Kisangani, before the river touches the Equator, they linger on in a village called Lolanga.
During the war, this was the rear base of government forces. For years, with nothing coming in from Kinshasa, villagers up in the hidden creeks had holed up in the jungle, barefoot or worse still, naked. Civilians abandoned their fields and fled into the bush.
Today, cassava has been planted for the first time in years. The market, the most reliable barometer of war and peace across the continent, bustles with pigs and plastic flip-flops.
But the gunmen -- hungry, greedy, armed -- still hover in sufficient numbers to intimidate the villagers, extract their hard-earned produce and keep them quiet. "If the soldiers aren't paid, they are going to find some other way," one villager, Ambrose Makele, said.
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