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 NDAKU YA PEMBE, Congo (AP) - Election banners festoon the rutted main road that divides the village, but no candidates have come to press for votes from these cassava farmers whose lives seem locked in another century.
Children draw polluted water by hand from shallow wells. Women walk miles to collect firewood. They're only 60 miles south of Kinshasa, the capital, but have no electricity. Congo is the world's biggest source of coltan, a mineral on which cell phones depend. But there's no cell phone service here.
Yet the political chatter is lively and savvy in Ndaku ya Pembe as villagers prepare to join some 25 million of Congo's 58 million people in their first free elections of a president and parliament in 46 years.
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