Zairian

LAURENT KABILA's government mocks the constitutional provisions laboriously drafted by the ousted Mobutu regime. By claiming to govern presidentially without a prime minister, and by decree, Mr. Kabila is not only resisting the pretensions of Etienne Tshisekedi. He is proclaiming revolution rather than evolution for the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire.The first 13 cabinet ministers kept the key portfolios among his loyal lieutenants. Others went to men associated with the political opposition to Mobutu Sese Seko.

After eight years building a congregation in the inner city of Buffalo, N.Y., and a five-year ministry in Zaire, Africa, the task of renovating the old orange church overlooking Fort Smallwood Road requiredonly a relatively small leap of faith for Thomas and Judy Brazell."

Daisy Anderson, 97, whose husband was a slave who ran away and joined the Union Army, died Saturday in Denver, leaving just two known surviving Civil War widows, one a Union widow, one a Confederate. She was 21 when she married a 79-year-old veteran, Robert Ball Anderson. Her husband died in a car accident in 1930.Henry J. Moore, 70, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist who helped select the landing site for the Mars Pathfinder, died of a heart attack Monday in Nephi, Utah, while en route to see relatives in Salt Lake City.

FOREBODINGS of a wider war arise from the Zaire rebels' success in the south and from Zaire's response. Yet what distinguishes this episode from attempts to dismember Zaire in times of Cold War and high copper prices is the reluctance now of outside powers to intervene.The new alarm comes from the rebel advance into the town of Kalemie on the eastern edge of Zaire and the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. It is inside the border of Shaba province, which was the copper-rich secessionist province of Katanga in the 1960s.

THE DEATH RATTLE of the 32-year tyranny of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire came when Gen. Nzimbi Ngbale donned civilian clothes and hopped a speedboat to sanctuary in neighboring Congo. If a last stand was going to be made, the presidential guard he commanded would have made it. The departure of President Mobutu from Kinshasa and announcement of his giving up power were anticlimax.Taking over an unresisting Kinshasa is a daunting challenge. It is a Third World megalopolis of some five million people, who need water and food and sanitation, reached by few roads, a mighty river and an airport.

London. -- "You might get some spread [of the Ebola virus] on a limited scale,'' said University of Chicago infectious-disease expert Dr. John Flaherty, ''but the scenario presented in movies like 'Outbreak,' where it just sweeps across the globe and annihilates everybody, is kind of far-fetched.''That's typical of the comments by health authorities since the start of the panic over the outbreak of Ebola fever in Zairian cities. But just in case you're feeling relieved by all the official reassurances that it can't happen here -- don't be.Four months ago, long before current panic, I made a special trip to talk to Dr. Alfred Crosby of the University of Texas, the world's leading authority on the history of disease.

KIGALI, Rwanda -- Bread loaves, foam mattresses and plastic water jugs are stuffed in the aisle and under the seats. Dance music squeals from a single speaker as the bus rumbles through Uganda toward the border.Many of the 56 passengers have been waiting three decades to return to Rwanda.In the early 1960s, tens of thousands of Tutsis fled north into Uganda to escape Hutu killers. Since last month, hundreds a day have been going back. Many were born in Uganda and only know Rwanda from their parents' romantic tales.

Over the phone, it isn't always easy for Marie Daulne to make herself understood.Though her English isn't bad, she has a tendency to fall back on French pronunciation and grammar, and there are some words that escape translation altogether. Given that English is, at best, her third language -- her father is Belgian, her mother Zairian, and she grew up speaking both French and Pygmy -- that's understandable. But it can make interviews slow going.Onstage with Zap Mama, however, things are different.

GOMA, Zaire -- The flow of Hutu refugees back to their homes in Rwanda increased yesterday to numbers so large as nearly to defy the imagination.The line of humanity packed a two-lane road shoulder-to-shoulder, stretched through Goma and for more than 10 miles into Zaire. Those in that slowly moving line walked like an inexorable force into the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi and then beyond, toward their home villages."There is no question that we are overwhelmed," said Ray Wilkinson, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

LAST CHANCE TO SEE.Douglas Adamsand Mark Carwardine.Harmony Books.220 pages. $20.Pairing British humorist Douglas Adams -- best known for thmind-bogglingly funny science fiction of "The Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy" and its many novelistic offspring -- with the serious issue of dying species may seem an odd idea.It turns out that, like the "Hitchhiker's Guide," this was the British Broadcasting Co.'s odd idea, although the BBC got the idea from a magazine article that paired Mr. Adams with zoologist Mark Carwardine of the World Wildlife Fund.