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Rating: 
Summary: The Real Heart of Africa
Review: I own over a thousands books on a wide range of subjects regarding Africa. This is THE BEST book in plain english about what life is like in a central african tribe from the perspective on an African. I have also traveled to the congo and other countries for research. This book gets it right, helping to create a cohesive picture of life there without a bunch on anthropological, higher instition speak. A must, must read. Note the this book would have a 5 star overall rating except someone who wrote a positive review forgot to vote.
Rating:
Summary: The Real Heart of Africa
Review: I own over a thousands books on a wide range of subjects regarding Africa. This is THE BEST book in plain english about what life is like in a central african tribe from the perspective on an African. I have also traveled to the congo and other countries for research. This book gets it right, helping to create a cohesive picture of life there without a bunch on anthropological, higher instition speak. A must, must read. Note the this book would have a 5 star overall rating except someone who wrote a positive review forgot to vote.
Rating: 
Summary: It's your Congo too because that is from whence we came.
Review: It's your Congo too! Whether you are, Yellow, Brown, Black or White, modern science has it that our original lineage started with a few thousand ancestors who emigrated out of Africa and populated the world. This development began some 50,000 years ago. African customs continued to be relatively constant because the living conditions for those who stayed did not change as much as they did for those who ventured out. A few hundred years ago some of these emigrants discovered the way back to Africa. They imported their vastly changed lifestyles and technologies and inspired the natives to abandon their local customs. They turned Africa into the fastest changing area of the world. However, some pockets that contributed nothing of economic importance, stayed isolated from this forceful change longer than did others. The Sonde tribe lived in one such pocket. "Kianza's Congo" is mostly the autobiography of the chief of the Sonde tribe. His stories give us a good feeling of how our early ancestors lived and managed their social life before they started their journey... to the moon. "Kianza's Congo" is not the usual superficial description of native culture as seen by an outsider, a journalist, a photographer, an historian, a tourist or a politician. Here, Kianza tells it as he remembers his own life. It is as if the Chief of the Sonde tribe - although he was illiterate - wrote it himself. By now, the tidal wave of change has obliterated the lifestyle of the Sonde tribe as well and because of that, some of the last traces of our deepest root are irretrievably lost. Fortunately, the soul of these early tribes is kept alive in "Kianza's Congo". Its stories leave us with a descriptive portrait of the home from whence we came.
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Summary: WOW! This is the REAL inside story of the CONGO.
Review: Kianza's Congo is the inside story of black life in the Congo. Written by a man who lived 10 years with the tribes. He spoke their language, witnessed their customs, and learned of secret rituals. The life of Chief Kianza is told in Kianza's own words and translated by his confidant Mr. Daems. The book includes suspense, sex, politics, power, and even an experience of slavery. To be accepted in the male elite clan you must pass tough rituals, or die trying. These and more are described in this excellent book. This is REAL AFRICAN LIFE.
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Summary: Discovery of a lost Africa
Review: This book saves you the discomfort of a trip deep into the African Jungle: I have never read such a detailed description of the real 'Circle of Life' in Africa. Mr. Daems tells us the story of Kianza's life, starting with the first encounter of Kianza's father with white people, up to the independence of Congo. Tales of slavery, intiation rites, secret societies, local politics and economics, all these subjects are demystified in this book by Kianza himself. Kianza is not just a first row spectator but a participant himself. The arrival of white man however disrupted the existing fragile social structures which had evolved out of several thousands of years of trying to live in harmony with nature. "Kianza however did not oppose progress blindly, but it was blind progress that he opposed."
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