Pebble on the Tongue: A Sweet, One-of-a-Kind, Byway

Along the lower reaches of the Congo River, in what was once called the Kingdom of the Kongo, lie tracts of sugar cane and a hundred-year-old factory that tickles the sweet tooth of central Africa.  But it is not the cane fields or the sugar plant or the rum it conjures that so impressed me at my visit years ago.  While some places might smooth the way of the traveler with concrete or tarmac, or more modestly with gravel, the Kwilu-Ngongo sugar refiners pave their roads with molasses, the leftovers after the sugar sacks, the libations and the dainty sugar cubes are all hauled away.

Now, there’s a sweet ‘vaya con dios’ unrivaled by anyplace I’ve ever had the great good fortune to visit.  It can be no happenstance that a cherished daughter was born to our family just a stone’s throw from that sweet, singular byway.