By Michelle Faul
Ndaku Ya Pembe - 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.
They're only 100km south of Kinshasa, the capital, but have no electricity.
Yet the political chatter is lively and savvy as villagers prepare to join some 25 million of the Democratic Republic of Congo's 58 million people in their first free elections of a president and parliament in 46 years.
Sunday's vote in the heart of Africa puts one of its largest, most populous and potentially wealthiest countries among those that have embraced democracy, however fitfully, in recent years.
If the vote sparks peace and growth in a country ravaged by ongoing violence and corruption it will be proof any nation on the continent can cast off the weight of history to reach for a better future.
"We need a really credible head of state, one that will take his duties seriously, that will help provide a good quality of life to alleviate the misery, and that means creating jobs that pay a livable wage, not such a pittance that it's hardly worth waking up in the morning," said Guylain Kasongo, a 25-year-old farmer who earns only $100 (about R700) a year from his plot.
In a country of jungles and huge rivers with only 500km of paved road, the United Nations (UN) effort to pull off this election is a logistical nightmare.
Soldiers and rebels left over from the wars of 1996-2002 continue to terrorise eastern DRC, forcing some 360 000 people from their homes this year despite the presence of some 17 500 UN peacekeepers.
Delivering ballot slips requires a daily airlift by hundreds of aircraft, with armies of Congolese to move them on by boat, bicycle or on foot to the farthest village.
It is bound to be an imperfect election, but the Congolese have seized the moment with gusto. Despite a prohibitive $50 000 (about R350 000) registration fee, 33 Congolese are running for president and 9 500 for 500 legislative seats. In some districts, so many candidates are running that the ballot slips look more like six-page newspapers.
The candidates are a mixed and not entirely promising bag: former rebels accused of killing, looting and pillaging resources; former cronies of Mobutu Sese Seko, the late and little-lamented dictator of 32 years; Mobutu opponents who served in his government and fell out with him; and the front-runner, Joseph Kabila, who has headed a transitional government for four years.
UN officials have chastised government officials for preventing political rallies and for encouraging soldiers and police to break up opposition rallies.
Politicians have received death threats and at least one has fled the country. Scores have died in election-related violence.
The DRC last elected a leader in 1960 when it won independence from Belgium.
The man elected prime minister was the charismatic Patrice Lumumba, who planned to kick out white colonisers and their exploitative mining companies.
He was assassinated by troops.
Mobutu, an army officer, managed to win international support but in 1996 an alliance of rebels invaded the country and overthrew him. Laurent Kabila, father of the present interim president, took power.
Then neighbouring Rwanda's genocidal war spilled over its borders and a regional battle began over control of vast resources that include 30 percent of the world's cobalt and 10 percent of its copper.
Country after country plunged into the war. Four million people died, mainly from strife-driven hunger and disease, and left the country in such disarray that even now, the UN estimates 1 200 people - half of them children - die each day in fighting or of diseases.
Kabila was assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001, and his son, now 35, took over.
It was he who pressed for the peace deal that set the stage for the vote, and he has managed to persuade Western governments that he is fit to govern.
Mining companies from Australia, China, India, the US, Britain and Canada are all hoping to do business.
With so much at stake, the question on many Congolese minds is what happens after the votes are counted. - Sapa-AP