Here's a repost . . . seems timely in June when so many are heading across new landscapes. 

Pilgrimages have a long history. And it’s not always about reflection and solitude. When Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrims went to visit the tomb of the slain archbishop, I’m sure someone in the group stopped along the way to buy a refrigerator magnet with the words I CANTERED TO CANTERBURY.

I’ve been on an extended vacation three thousand miles from home, and I’ve learned that tourists come in all persuasions. At Mount Vernon, we met a junior high school group taking a whirlwind tour of the East Coast. While one young man was finding himself enlightened by the history of his forefathers, another was trying to poke chewing gum through the cracks in Washington’s livery stable for the hell of it. Go figure. Traveling for some is a chance to embrace self-discovery and for others, it’s a chance to be familiarly stupid in a beautiful new location.

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There are two countries in Africa named Congo. One is the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) and the other is the Republic of Congo. To distinguish between the two, people generally refer to the former as DR Congo and the latter by the name of its capital, Brazzaville.

On my recent visit to DR Congo, we also scheduled a trip to Congo Brazzaville in order to assist with some of the necessary planning with setting up a new microfinance institution there. Both Congos are desperately poor and HOPE International will be launching a new program in Brazzaville in the near future to meet the unmet demand for financial services there. My assessment is that there will be some challenges (but a forthcoming post will show how to overcome those challenges).

The Congos are separated by the Congo River. It’s quite a large river, about three miles wide at the point where the capital cities lie.

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