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Democratic Republic of Congo

Diggers

The diggers have been gone less than a year. In the grown-over patches on the slope of Mpama South, emptied anchovy tins rust in the dirt beside strips of tarp, thick plastic jugs, and waxy cartons of mango juice squeezed flat at the waist. Over them grows a lace of cherry tomatoes: some hard and green, some red and ready for plucking.

Tin Fever

In the first shafts of light to pierce the jungle canopy, the tin porters danced. They swayed and sashayed to the languorous rhythms coming from a radio that someone, in the night, had thought to stash under a bag of beans. The rest, an hour earlier, had been looted—the other radios, flashlights, pocketfuls of cash, half of Adolphe's precious stock of sardine tins, and two porters to transport it all, nudged forward with assault rifles into the moonless oblivion of the jungle.