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"
Blood River
: A Journey to
Africa's
Broken Heart," by
Tim Butcher
;
Grove Press
(361 pages, 25). (Publication date for paperback
edition,
Sept. 1, 2009
.)
———
The Congo River
is 2,900 miles in length and could be the highway to the
future for the 67 million Congolese and tens of millions
in neighboring countries. But today it represents one of
Earth's last frontiers. Only the most intrepid venture
onto the river or into the interior of this impoverished
wasteland known as the
Democratic Republic of Congo
, a land that has gone from shaky post-colonial state to
a primitive, almost impassible jungle.
Henry Morton Stanley
, the Welsh-born American journalist reporting for the
New York Herald
and
London Telegraph
, was the first to traverse the river through the heart
of
Africa
in 1877, a 999-day journey in which two thirds of his
300 member party died en route.
Tim Butcher
, the Telegraph's
Africa
correspondent from earlier in this decade, decided to
retrace his steps — with some assists from
international charities, which made available motorbikes
and drivers, and the U.N. mission, which let him hitch a
ride on chartered vessels. He spent 44 days and lived to
tell about it.
This is
travelogue at its best, but so much more: Those who care
about the fate of
Africa
, who want to see the continent prosper, should read
this book to grasp the immensity of the problems of the
Democratic Republic of Congo
.
Fifty
years ago, the journey would have been relatively easy,
for
Belgium
, the colonial power, left a relatively efficient system
of steamboats on the navigable stretches and rail
transport where it was impassable. Today, the only way
to follow the course of the river is by motorbike along
rough and pitted dirt roads, pirogue or dugout canoe,
and, if you're lucky, on U.N. boats. Butcher calls it
"ordeal travel."
After
traversing Katanga province, where Mai Mai tribesmen at
the time were routinely sacking and burning villages,
leaving devastation in their wake, he arrives in Kasongo,
the first major stop on the journey, to receive an
incredulous greeting from a Kenyan employed by
Care International
. "Well you must be as crazy as Stanley," says
aid worker
Tom Nyamwaya
. "God knows what they would have done to you if
they caught you ... I would not travel anywhere in this
country except by plane. You would have to be mad to go
out there into the bush." But like so many other
aid workers, all of whom Butcher contacted in advance,
Tom provides him motorbikes and drivers for the onward
journey.
The Congo
he crosses is a completely failed state. At the first
village where they overnight, his driver tells him the
village chief "welcomes us, and is sorry but there
is no food to offer ... he said the Mai Mai passed
through here a few days ago and they took all the food
before they left ..."
There is
no almost public transport, and often no private
transport. Everywhere he goes, people live in abject
poverty and fear of gunmen from unknown quarters. More
than a few older Congolese are nostalgic for the
Belgians. This is astonishing when one recalls that
King Leopold
laid claim to the country in 1885 with the aid of the
same
Henry Stanley
, then ran the country as a private property, until
human rights campaigners in
Europe
and
the United States
shamed
Belgium
into taking control.
In Ubundu,
at the top of
Stanley Falls
, where Butcher arrives via pirogue, a Roman Catholic
priest provides lodging for a night but begs him to
leave quickly, fearing the Mai Mai. "This is a
terrible place where terrible things happen. You really
must leave before they find you," says Father
Adalbert Mwehu Nzuzi.
In
Kisangani, the L'hotel Pourquoi Pas — where
Katherine Hepburn
stayed when filming "The African Queen" in the
1950s — is now "a broken ruin, home to scores of
squatters who sleep on the bare floor next to walls
stained with damp."
A hawker
jumps on the UN barge Butcher hitched a ride on for 600
miles from Kisangani towards
Kinshasa
. "A boat like this is our only chance to earn any
money," said Jerome Bilole, 36. "My village is
like a community from the olden times, when people did
not have clothes to wear. Your boat is our only
lifeline."
In a
village of Mutshaliko, along the way, the local
administrative secretary bemoans the gunmen who
"come from time to time and take everything...we
don't know where they come from or who they are fighting
for. They just take our chickens and our goats and
cassava and then leave."
Speaking
of cassava, the staple of the jungle village, Butcher
recalls toying "with a marble sized piece (of
cassava), struggling to overcome a gag reflex brought on
by the rotting cheese smell and wallpaper-paste
texture."
But for
the "ordeal traveler," the greater the
challenge, the greater the reward.
"
High on the Congo
there were no helicopters to summon, no rescue teams to
call on. I felt very alone. But instead of being
overwhelmed by helplessness, I found it
liberating," he writes. That may be the zen of it
for Butcher; for a reader, his tribulation illuminates
the journey, the traveler, and most important the plight
of that benighted land.
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