After years partitioned by war, the Congo - country and river - is navigable again.

The banks of the Congo are dotted with monuments to its often painful past. The Belgian-style red brick settlements recall the brutal era of the rubber trade; a grand, derelict pavilion was a summer house for the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

Meanwhile, the UN presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the most complex in the organisation's history; the international presence is intended to bolster a fragile peace process, ahead of the first free elections since 1960.

In this three-part series Mark Ashurst travels by barge downriver, from Kisangani to the capital Kinshasa. He asks whether the Congo is at last ready to change the course of its troubled history.