I didn't know much about the Congo, other than that it is a vast, forested country with little or no infrastructure connecting its towns and cities, and that it has had a bloody history both during and since independence from Belgian colonial rule. When we lived in Zimbabwe, we had a friend whose brother and sister were both serving in the Zimbabwean army in the Congo, as Mugabe exchanged his soldiers' lives for diamonds. We read stories in the papers of the bodies being brought back from the Congo, once allegedly without their heads which caused a huge fuss, but our friend Oscar assured us that in fact his siblings were growing fat and rich serving there. He showed us a photo and it was true, they did look fat.
When we moved to Uganda, we got to know various Congolese students at UCU, most of whom had left with their families to escape the violence. We heard stories of different Congolese people in Uganda being poisoned, drugged, kidnapped and held captive. We heard of earthquakes and a huge volcanic eruption, and more violence. Poor Congo.
Tim Butcher captures the chaos, and the frustration and dangers of trying to travel overland through this country, a land where typically UN workers fly into remote towns, live and work in sterile prefab air-conditioned cabins, and leave again, never attempting to travel by land anywhere. Travel overland or downriver exposes the author to threats on his life, requests to adopt strangers' children, endless demands for papers, permissions to travel and visas, extortion, dehydration, hunger, and illness. He calls it "ordeal travel," and he is open about the fear and tension he suffered from through the entire journey.
A major theme of the book is the evidence he sees that the Congo was once far more developed than it is now. Under the horrifically cruel Belgian rule, there were large cotton factories, wide roads, trains, steamboats cruising regularly down the Congo River, even hotels. But in the years of fighting since independence the bush has taken over again, roads have dwindled to mud paths, factories and hotels have crumbled. He describes at one point how he met an old man with his grandchildren, deep in the rainforest, as he travelled through by motorbike. The elderly man commented that in the old days many cars used to pass by road this way, whilst the children gazed open-mouthed at the motorbikes, because they had never seen a vehicle in their whole lifetime before.
Tim Butcher portrays the potential and great natural wealth of the country, and the courage and resilience of the people who helped him along the way. He conveys always his respect for the skills, strength, and integrity of the many Congolese and few ex-pats he met, who guided him, gave him hospitality, and protected him, often for no reason other than their kindness and decency as people, sometimes for the dollars he paid them. But the tragedy of this country, of its history, and the way it is still oppressed by its violent leaders and by the complete breakdown of law, order and justice, is the overarching theme, and the book leaves the reader feeling sad and frustrated, and puzzled once again by the enigma that is Africa.
I will finish with an excerpt, just to give you a taste of the beauty:
"... we followed a track climbing up and away from the lakeside still. Nightjars roosted on the path. I would pick them up in our headlights and watch as they sat frozen to the spot, exploding a the last second from underneath the lead motorbike, peeling up and away into the darkness. Although Kalemie had appeared asleep as we left, for the first few kilometres I kept spotting ghostly figures on the roadside. They were women, with baskets and tools perched on their heads, making their way out to the bush to tend plots of cassava and other crops. From a distance I would make out their dark shapes against the lightening sky and then, for an instant, they would be caught in the headlights, the colours of their cotton wraps bright and their wide eyes frozen in surprise."
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