evidence: "The Congo River is the spine of our country," says Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, a professor of history at the University of Kinshasa. "Without a spine, a man cannot stand up." Seen this way, the river pathway—which, after traveling northward from Boyoma Falls (formerly Stanley Falls, for the great explorer Henry Morton Stanley), takes a southwestward plunge toward the ocean—traces the figure of a dogged but severely hobbled peasant. That it has no real governing authority makes the Congo River the nation’s great equalizer. It also greatly diminishes the river’s value as a resource. Given the 1.5 million-square-mile river basin’s immense hydroelectric and agricultural potential, all of Africa could be beholden to it, and thus to its mother country. Instead the river remains wild, and the DRC staggers under the weight of overpopulation, poverty, lawlessness, and corruption.