The looters ripped down silk wallpaper, tore up marble floor tiles and smashed through every door, looking for whatever treasures they could find. Except in parts of the Chinese palace, where some graceful wooden carvings and scenic murals apparently did not seem worth tearing off the walls, much of Mobutu's world has been stripped to concrete shells. The walls are now scrawled with graffiti in a half-dozen languages and filled with crude drawings of naked women. The jungle is winning. Ribbons of green sprout from tiny cracks in concrete and marble.
Vines creep across floors where presidents and kings once walked.
Thick layers of algae coat once-ornate fountains. The residents of Gbadolite lived off Mobutu's largesse. And those still here remember him with deep loyalty. He was a good man. But for the rest of Congo, or Zaire, as Mobutu had renamed it, the dictator brought little but misery.