Thursday, June 13
Jun. 14th, 2024 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Absolutely stunning weather today. Perfect temperature, lots of sun, everything a vivid green from the recent rain.
I decided to go to "the other town" today to see if I can find plain white t-shirts to make into a "splashed" 80's looking shirt (if your my age, you know exactly what I mean) for my freestyle costume.
I picked up the mail first, and paid the bills at the bank down the street right away.
There used to be a consignment boutique right next to the post office, and now it is a thrift store. I asked the woman working there if it supports charities, and she says she works with the women's shelter, and a group that makes sure kids have jackets and so on. It's good to support those kinds of things.
I found a white t-shirt right away, so that's good.
Since I had the day to myself I stuck my head into another consignment store, found a scarf, and then the usual Sally Ann, where I found a few things and some DVDs.
I did take a bag of books and some nice upholstery fabric that I have had for years and done nothing with it as my donation/volume offset.
A fun day in town, and some nice items found.
I came home and let everyone out into their pastures, and right about then my Sweetie got home. He went bike riding right after work, and was returning.
We worked together to plant most of the bedding plants into the big half barrel planters.
Then I worked with Dandy for a short while (I am surprised that even with these short sessions of about 15 minutes, he's picking things up quickly). I got him to trot with me at Liberty, which is great! I could never get him to trot with me on a lead line.
When I came in, we watched an episode of "Justified", and it was pretty good.
D from pottery texted me to see if I would like to get together tomorrow, and we agreed to meet at the park down the road for a walk. Hopefully it works out.
If nothing else, it's nice to have someone in my life who bothers to even ask if I would like to do something with them.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (you might remember it as Zaire) is centered on the Congo River basin, and has about 105 million people. It's capital city is Kinshasa.
Historically it was inhabited by pygmy people (the Mbuti people)and then the Bantu people moved in. Then it was ruled by a series of African kingdoms, including the Kongo, Azande, Luba, and Lunde kingdoms.
There are still many groups who live in pretty much the same hunter/gatherer manner as their ancestors.
" King Leopold II of Belgium formally acquired rights to the Congo territory from the colonial nations of Europe in 1885 and declared the land his private property, naming it the Congo Free State. From 1885 to 1908, his colonial military forced the local population to produce rubber and committed widespread atrocities. In 1908, Leopold ceded the territory, which thus became a Belgian colony.
Wow. That guy PRIVATELY OWNED what is now a country. Not Belgium, Leopold. He owned a country. Maybe not for very long, since he needed the military to control it, but it was HIS for a while.
Belgium insisted he hand it over because of his abuse of the people. In order to meet his demanding quotas of production, things like cutting off people's hands was happening. After some investigating, Belgium felt that this wasn't a "best practice". It is estimated that literally half of the population was massacred during his administration. So, then Belgium put some other people in charge, and continued to run it as a colony.
Congo achieved independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960 and was immediately confronted by a series of secessionist movements", and it really hasn't been free of conflict since.
Even though there are a lot of natural resources, the economy stagnates from the war and conflict and there is not a lot of investment in the harvesting of the resources, nor in infrastructure or investing in things like schools or hospitals, or basically ANYTHING that would create a stable society or economy.
"In 2021, DR Congo's level of human development was ranked 179th out of 191 countries by the Human Development Index[15] and is classed as a least developed country by the UN. As of 2018, following two decades of various civil wars and continued internal conflicts, around 600,000 Congolese refugees were still living in neighbouring countries.[16] Two million children risk starvation, and the fighting has displaced 4.5 million people.[17]"
Everything along the Congo basin is wet rainforest, and on each side moving away from it you get plateaus and grassy savannah.
There is a great wealth of biodiversity, and of great concern are the many great apes that live here.
Wikipedia says that the DRC is fairly politically stable right now, but oddly enough nobody else seems to think so.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/democratic-republic-congo/freedom-world/2022
It sounds like right now, maybe it's not as explosively at war with itself as it normally is, but only because everyone is being suppressed.
Right now, the economy does rely mainly on mining, as there are many minerals that are valuable. The people though, are mainly very poor and live on about two dollars a day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo
https://youtu.be/dD3ZFQ62Vxc?si=EHacEYUvOAUUI0N_
Absolutely stunning weather today. Perfect temperature, lots of sun, everything a vivid green from the recent rain.
I decided to go to "the other town" today to see if I can find plain white t-shirts to make into a "splashed" 80's looking shirt (if your my age, you know exactly what I mean) for my freestyle costume.
I picked up the mail first, and paid the bills at the bank down the street right away.
There used to be a consignment boutique right next to the post office, and now it is a thrift store. I asked the woman working there if it supports charities, and she says she works with the women's shelter, and a group that makes sure kids have jackets and so on. It's good to support those kinds of things.
I found a white t-shirt right away, so that's good.
Since I had the day to myself I stuck my head into another consignment store, found a scarf, and then the usual Sally Ann, where I found a few things and some DVDs.
I did take a bag of books and some nice upholstery fabric that I have had for years and done nothing with it as my donation/volume offset.
A fun day in town, and some nice items found.
I came home and let everyone out into their pastures, and right about then my Sweetie got home. He went bike riding right after work, and was returning.
We worked together to plant most of the bedding plants into the big half barrel planters.
Then I worked with Dandy for a short while (I am surprised that even with these short sessions of about 15 minutes, he's picking things up quickly). I got him to trot with me at Liberty, which is great! I could never get him to trot with me on a lead line.
When I came in, we watched an episode of "Justified", and it was pretty good.
D from pottery texted me to see if I would like to get together tomorrow, and we agreed to meet at the park down the road for a walk. Hopefully it works out.
If nothing else, it's nice to have someone in my life who bothers to even ask if I would like to do something with them.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (you might remember it as Zaire) is centered on the Congo River basin, and has about 105 million people. It's capital city is Kinshasa.
Historically it was inhabited by pygmy people (the Mbuti people)and then the Bantu people moved in. Then it was ruled by a series of African kingdoms, including the Kongo, Azande, Luba, and Lunde kingdoms.
There are still many groups who live in pretty much the same hunter/gatherer manner as their ancestors.
" King Leopold II of Belgium formally acquired rights to the Congo territory from the colonial nations of Europe in 1885 and declared the land his private property, naming it the Congo Free State. From 1885 to 1908, his colonial military forced the local population to produce rubber and committed widespread atrocities. In 1908, Leopold ceded the territory, which thus became a Belgian colony.
Wow. That guy PRIVATELY OWNED what is now a country. Not Belgium, Leopold. He owned a country. Maybe not for very long, since he needed the military to control it, but it was HIS for a while.
Belgium insisted he hand it over because of his abuse of the people. In order to meet his demanding quotas of production, things like cutting off people's hands was happening. After some investigating, Belgium felt that this wasn't a "best practice". It is estimated that literally half of the population was massacred during his administration. So, then Belgium put some other people in charge, and continued to run it as a colony.
Congo achieved independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960 and was immediately confronted by a series of secessionist movements", and it really hasn't been free of conflict since.
Even though there are a lot of natural resources, the economy stagnates from the war and conflict and there is not a lot of investment in the harvesting of the resources, nor in infrastructure or investing in things like schools or hospitals, or basically ANYTHING that would create a stable society or economy.
"In 2021, DR Congo's level of human development was ranked 179th out of 191 countries by the Human Development Index[15] and is classed as a least developed country by the UN. As of 2018, following two decades of various civil wars and continued internal conflicts, around 600,000 Congolese refugees were still living in neighbouring countries.[16] Two million children risk starvation, and the fighting has displaced 4.5 million people.[17]"
Everything along the Congo basin is wet rainforest, and on each side moving away from it you get plateaus and grassy savannah.
There is a great wealth of biodiversity, and of great concern are the many great apes that live here.
Wikipedia says that the DRC is fairly politically stable right now, but oddly enough nobody else seems to think so.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/democratic-republic-congo/freedom-world/2022
It sounds like right now, maybe it's not as explosively at war with itself as it normally is, but only because everyone is being suppressed.
Right now, the economy does rely mainly on mining, as there are many minerals that are valuable. The people though, are mainly very poor and live on about two dollars a day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo
https://youtu.be/dD3ZFQ62Vxc?si=EHacEYUvOAUUI0N_
no subject
Date: 2024-06-15 01:35 am (UTC)