As my wife and I crawled though bumper to bumper traffic on I-78 near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, I noticed a series of flashy billboards for an enormous new casino. Apparently, it had been built on the very site of Bethlehem Steel’s major American plant. A casino where Bethlehem Steel stood? Really?

At one point in the 1950’s, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation produced 23 million tons of steel each year, employing over 150,000 people. Bethlehem Steel’s products were used to build the George Washington Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building and the Hoover Dam, not to mention rebuilding post-war Germany and Japan. But as Europe and Asia recovered from the destruction of the war, they began to compete instead of import. American manufacturing fell behind and mills began to close. In 2001, Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy.

Have you ever been to Kinshasa? I haven't. And before I started my recent job with the Christian microfinance organization, HOPE International, I'm not sure I could have found it on a map. it is the chaotic capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire.

This year I'll be visiting HOPE's microfinance operations, staff and clients, in Kinshasa as well as conducting a visit to Brazzaville, located in the neighboring Republic of Congo which is is distinct from the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is something I learned last year when I applied for a visa to the wrong country!

Times are tough in this part of the world. Unemployment figures go as high as 97%. The World Bank has named DR Congo the worst country to do business three years in a row. The global economic crisis has caused commodity prices to fluctuate. At the bottom of this economic pyramid and getting crushed are the poor.