The professor's family was highly placed in the Mobutu government. He had enjoyed a childhood of education at the best private boarding schools and colleges in Belgium and England. My fellow CS student? He had been labeled a communist, and fled the country with his wife and children. He somehow managed to make his way to the US and enroll in college.
Still, they were genuinely friends, and great company to be with.
This is one of the worst things ever, and recent enough to be photo-documented. They cut the hands and feet off children if their parents didn't gather enough rubber.
http://shop.antislavery.org/category/Images-Historical-Belgi...
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=congo+slavery&tbm=isch
https://discoveringbelgium.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/congo...
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/world/asia/korean-war-fast-fac...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties
[3] http://web.mit.edu/CIS/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf
[4] https://books.google.com/books?id=YpV7vbvclfgC&pg=PA354#v=on...
However, it is still a good indication of just how little attention we pay to Africa here in the west, that people in general don't even know that it existed.
And for the Congo in particular, their experience under Belgian (well, Leopold II) rule was so horrific that other colonial powers exerted pressure on Leopold to give it up. The death toll in the Congo at that time was about the same as for the recent Second Congo War (plus the war's aftermath). Given the population of the day, it's estimated that the Belgian rule in the Congo halved the population, whereas the recent war 'only' claimed a bit less than 10%. The Belgian rule also left a lot of people maimed without hands, since there were bounties on hands, and the payors weren't too fussy about where they came from. Leopold II is one of history's lesser-known evil kingpins. After Leopold was forced to hand it over for management elsewhere, it became a more regular colonial story of exploitation for little in return.
In short, for Congo in particular, the modern day is better than it's experience in colonial times, even with the recent war.
The war came about after the dictator Mobutu died and the chaos and aftermath of the Rwanda genocide spilled over the border. All the surrounding countries saw enormous natural resource wealth to be claimed and started funding and equipping their own proxy militias to seize power. The whole thing was a huge chaotic mess that destroyed what little infrastructure there was in the country.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbD76cWdBHc&list=PLDD34C9812...