The river is fast, narrow and winding, and in places the overhanging trees form a tunnel.

[2] The Belgian colonial authorities forced the peasants of the area to grow cotton against their will.

Direct refusal to plant cotton would have been suicidal given the brutal techniques of the colonialists.

One passive resistance technique was to boil the cotton seeds before planting them, so they would not germinate.

In 1925 people living in the southern plains of the Lubefu explained to a state agronomist that "the soil is burning the cotton seeds".