Kisangani

The falls decided everything. Where the Lualaba drops through seven cataracts, the river ceases to be navigable from downstream, and the Wagenya and neighbouring communities had long fished and traded at the break. By the nineteenth century the Swahili-Arab networks of Tippu Tip had reached the area, dealing in ivory and slaves, and in 1883 Henry Morton Stanley established a station at the falls that grew into Stanleyville. Tippu Tip was made governor of the Stanley Falls district by the Congo Free State in 1887, before war broke out between the state and the Arab traders in the 1890s.

Under Belgian rule the town became the commercial capital of the upper Congo, the place where goods transferred between the river barges and the railway that bypassed the falls, and where rubber, ivory, cotton and later gold from the north-east were handled. It acquired boulevards, a cathedral, a port and an administrative quarter.

Politics made it turbulent after independence. Stanleyville was Patrice Lumumba's stronghold, and after his murder his supporters set up a rival government there. In 1964 Simba rebels seized the city and held American and European residents hostage until Operation Dragon Rouge, mounted by Belgian paratroopers alongside Congolese troops and foreign mercenaries, freed them. The city was renamed Kisangani in May 1966 under Mobutu Sese Seko's authenticité policy. During the Second Congo War the Rwandan and Ugandan armies, once allies, fought each other in the city in June 2000, in the deadliest of three such confrontations there, destroying about a quarter of it. Kisangani has been rebuilding, slowly, ever since.

Kisangani is where the river culture of the Congo basin meets the Swahili world of the east. Lingala and Swahili are both street languages here, used according to company and neighbourhood, with French for administration and education; the mixture is one of the things residents point to when explaining what makes the city distinct from Kinshasa or Goma.

The Wagenya fishing families at the falls are the best-known local tradition, their trap-building technique passed down through generations and inseparable from the rapids themselves. In the wider region the Mangbetu and Azande of the north are known for carved harps and pottery, and Mbuti communities of the Ituri forest for polyphonic singing; their work and produce reach Kisangani's markets and workshops.

Church life is strong across Catholic, Protestant and revival congregations, and choirs are a serious business, rehearsing through the week for Sunday. Evening belongs to music: Congolese rumba and its descendants play from bars along the boulevards, and live bands appear at weekends. The university gives the city a student population and a tradition of debate, theatre and forest science. Manners are formal by regional standards — greetings before business, respect for elders — and residents carry a wry pride in a city that has been fought over repeatedly and is still standing.

Kisangani had an estimated 1.6 million people in 2016, which makes it the country's fifth-most populous urban area, though it feels less like a metropolis than a very large town spread thinly along the river. Most residents live in the communes inland from the centre in single-storey houses with cassava plots and mango trees behind them.

The economy runs on the river, the forest and the state. The port handles timber, fuel, cement and manufactured goods moving between Kinshasa and the interior; sawmills and palm-oil operations work in the surrounding province; traders bring gold and produce from the north-east; and the provincial administration, the university and international organisations provide most salaried employment. Informal trade and small workshops occupy nearly everyone else.

The day begins before six, when markets fill and motorbike taxis crowd the boulevards, and slows in the heat of the afternoon before a second burst in the evening. Electricity from the Tshopo station is intermittent and generators are common; water supply is uneven; the roads out of the city are poor enough to make the region feel like an island. Isolation, the cost of imported goods, employment and the security of the roads east and north are the standing concerns of city life.

The Congo and the surrounding forest supply most of what Kisangani eats. River fish — catfish, tilapia and many local species — is grilled over wood, stewed, or wrapped in leaves with onion, tomato and chilli and steamed as liboke; large quantities are smoked on racks for keeping and for sale downriver. Fresh fish from the traps at the falls is a point of local pride.

Cassava is the everyday starch, pounded into fufu or fermented and wrapped as chikwangue, and its leaves are stewed with palm oil and smoked fish as pondu, also called saka-saka. Plantain, makemba in Lingala, is boiled, fried or roasted at the roadside; rice and maize round out the plate. Groundnut sauces thicken stews, palm oil colours them orange-red, and pili-pili chilli is added by the spoonful or served as a paste. Because Swahili-speaking eastern traditions reach the city, maize dough called ugali and dishes of beans and greens appear alongside the river food.

Forest produce is sold in the markets in season: wild mushrooms, honey and edible caterpillars, the last a delicacy fried with onion. Palm wine is tapped in the villages around the city and drunk fresh; bottled lager, brewed in the country, is the standard drink of the bars; and strong sweet coffee and tea are taken early in the morning.