Blood River: A Journey To Africa's Broken Heart (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
Note :Tim Butcher is officially a diamond geezer. He's just joined Goodreads and read my review below and still sent me a thank you message today. Rereading the below review, I think some authors could have taken umbrage because, well, it's actually quite cheeky. The word pompous is used. Some fun is poked. Given some of the frankly unsavoury, if not downright ugly, author/reviewer encounters there have been on this site, I therefore salute Tim. ***A BOOK WHICH DESERVES TWO REVIEWS – FIRST, THE CHURLISHLY CYNICAL“My Congo journey deserved its own category : ordeal travel.”p216I hereby announce my ordeal reading challenge. I will read the complete works of Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett and Georges Perec in reverse alphabetical order whilst listening to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Helicopter Symphony, John Cage’s Atlas Elipticalis and Trout Mask Replica which will be played continually on a giant loop tape. All the time, ladies and gentlemen, I will be suspended – suspended I say - and gradually lowered into – a tank containing 127 tarantula spiders and a life-sized model of Richard Nixon. Surely corporate sponsors will be falling over themselves in a bid to offer me large amounts of sponsorship cash to fund my bizarre self-indulgent fantasy. Chat show host : “What was it like?” PB : "Well, my torso was firmly anchored to the ceiling by this ingenious contraption specially made by the brilliant engineers at Unilever (ka-ching!). Therefore I wasn’t too concerned I would fall into the tank of tarantulas manufactured by Pilkingtons Glass blah blah blab blab." Yes, I will be admired far and wide for my feat – I will explain that it was a challenge I had to take on, it came from deep within me, I had been wrestling for many years with the twin problems of how to bring 20th century avant-garde literature to a wider audience and also how to get on the chat show circuit and here I am being asked to explain Oulipo to a daytime TV audience – I feel I may say – mission accomplished!SECOND REVIEW : TAKING TIM BUTCHER AT HIS WORDAs Tim Butcher grinds his way across the Congo by 100cc motorbike, dugout canoe and barge, he is filled with a rising sense of despair:“the normal laws of development are inverted here in the Congo. The forest, not the town, offers the safest sanctuary and it is grandfathers who have been more exposed to modernity than their grandchildren. I can think of nowhere else on the planet where the same can be true.” p141Verond Ali Matongo : “I am the mayor of Kasongo, appointed by the transitional government in Kinshasa. But I have no contact with them because we have no phone, and I can pay no civil servants because I have no money and there is no bank or post office where money could be received and we have no civil servants because all the schools and hospitals and everything do not work. I would say I am just waiting. Waiting for things to get back to normal.”Tim Butcher : “And when was the last time things were normal?”VAM : “The 1950s. From what I hear, that is when this town was last normal.” p 162“Some of the best coffee in the world used to be grown neat Kisangani but now the finest hotel in the city served only imported Nescafe” p256This is the whole of the truth Tim has to tell us about the Congo (third largest country in Africa in size, fourth in population). It’s going backwards. Everything in the whole country – schools, roads, hospitals, trains, rivers, everything, was not just slightly but hugely better fifty years ago. Like previous white men in the Congo, Tim couldn’t get anywhere without Africans doing all the heavy lifting. Sometimes these helpers get paid, other times they’re just being kind. He steps from one situation to another like Harold Lloyd or Popeye stepping from one skyscraper girder to another. He finds some guys with pirogues (canoes) at the riverside, picks out the likeliest looking group, hires them on the spot to take him way way down the river where he has to get to a priest’s house in a particular town (the only safe place) in order to go from there to the UN compound the next day where he can cadge a ride to the next town. When they get to the town “Malike said he knew the way to the priest’s house and I was banking on him being right”. I bet you were, Tim! There’s a recurrent strangeness to these travellers’ tales – in the middle of a disaster zone you can easily find the kindness of strangers. I remember a famous BBC war correspondent being interviewed and the question was how the hell do you get around inside a war zone and he said “I just walk out of my hotel and ask the first few people I see what’s going on and how do I get there and they’re always very kind and helpful” – well, you have to take their word for it. But somebody must be doing all those bad things…“time and again during my journey with Benoit and Odimba I was struck by just how much tougher and more resilient than me they were”p 148“Kisangani.. I found it to be chaotically administered by inept, corrupt local politicians” p255p309-10This division of people into those Tim met (all good, strong, resourceful) and those causing all the problems (very bad people) was not altogether helpful in figuring anything out. Eventually Tim has to bite the bullet and ask the big question. He approaches it like this. He’s on a UN barge with Captain Ali who is from Malaysia.Captain Ali : “I don’t know what it is about these Congolese people, or Africa in general, but look at this wasted opportunity… In Malaysia people make millions from palm oil. It is one of the most valuable commodities in the world right now… [and the plants from which it comes grow all over the Congo:]. But the Congo people. They don’t want to make money for themselves. They just wait to take money from others.” …he had distilled the quintessential problem of Africa that generations of academics, intellectuals and observers have danced around since the colonial powers withdrew. Why are Africans so bad at running Africa?”Tim dismisses the stock answers – neo-colonialism, foreign meddling, rapacious multinational companies – as so much liberal huffing and puffing. Yes, they are elements, but they are by no means the whole story. But he gives no answer of his own. He has no idea. It’s such a dangerous question to ask – there are, after all, a thousand racists out there who think they know the answer.Apart from the hundreds of miles of the Congo where there is no single element of modern technology to be found, the towns which were thriving once and have been rusting and crumbling for 40 years, the forests which are empty of animal cries because the local villagers have eaten them all, Tim stumbles (often literally) on perfect examples of things profoundly not working. At one point he realises he’s on the Ubundu-Kisangani road. Before the trip, back in London, he’d been told by the British Government’s Department for International Development that this road had already been developed and upgraded following the 2002 peace treaty. British taxpayers’ money had been spent on it. Tim finds no such thing of course. The once-four-lane highway is now a single track footpath. Nothing has been done. The money had vanished, who knows where. Moreover, the British government department officials never come along to check, so they are still blithely telling anyone who asks that the Ubundu-Kisangi road has been upgraded and is now suitable for cars and heavy goods vehicles. In the end Tim says : “in six harrowing weeks of travel I felt I had touched the heart of Africa and found it broken”. He does himself no favours with this uncharacteristically pompous sentence, but still, I admire all who excavate difficult truths from such hard-won experience as this. I have to admit, grudgingly, that Tim Butcher has earned his chat show appearances.Tom Myanwaya : “What makes you do this sort of thing? I would not travel anywhere in this country except by plane. I don’t think I can stand more than a few months and I will leave as soon as I can. There are some jobs in the aid world which you have to do to get on.” p156
I love travel books in general and liked this one in particular as this is not simply cultural exposure but rather a combination of history, politics and adventure faced by the author.Tim Butcher´s book was a very insightful and vivid writing about the author´s promise to follow Stanley´s footsteps and trek across the DRC. Great reading and learning about the history of this country and about the adventure that Butcher had there. His account shows the backward spiral that this country, full of natural resources, has faced over the course of the past century, and it is tragic to read and learn the details. He had clearly researched his destiny thoroughly, before taking on his journey, and it makes the reading even more agreeable, informative and concrete.It feels like his trek across Congo is the long due fulfilment of a promise the author has made for himself for his mother (who happened to pass by there as a youngster) , and while it takes him years of wait and preparation to arrive to the perfect moment to take this trip, once he gets on it, it feels like it is like a redemption to him, despite of all the life-threatening risks involved. it’s a way for the author to try to travel back in time to the childhood of his mother and to discover what happened eversince. It is probably also a clear journey of introspection and whilst it is difficult to understand the risk he has taken to trek across the DRC, taking into account he has been a war journalist, I understand that these moments of reality (in between life and death) are those of introspection and inner discovery and realization of the value of life.Butcher is a journalist, and as such his writing style is that of an informative reporter, which is highly appreciated, however for me his portrayal of personal emotion could be stronger at times. Certainly a lot of emotions were involved in this trip, but managing to portray theif full scope more intensely would certainly profit the book! Nevertheless, I somehow think I understand the reason the author takes these life threatening risks as part of his work, and I can just imagine the adrenaline and the joy of living the author gets out of these scary trips. I guess I have had a similar experience when, after an operation, I had to wait for a whole dreadful month to know if I had cancer or not. After finding out I was well, I have never valued life more, and my life perspective has changed and my guess is that Butcher has a similar feeling of joy of being alive after his DRC and other similar travel experiences which in my mind probably makes the whole life-treatening trip worthwhile taking!This book was a great discovery to me, and I look forward to reading my second Butcher book now, on Sierra Leone and Liberia, to learn about the history of those countries, as well as to read the author´s adventures.
What do You think about Blood River: A Journey To Africa's Broken Heart (2008)?
What is it with me and muggy, hot, equatorial places and rivers? Like the book The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann, Blood River recounts the tale of Tim Butcher's crazy obsession to the trace the routes of a great explorer, Stanley in this case, through the Congo. While the rest of the world has become more accessible in the past half century, these two equatorial locales on different continents show that winning a battle (finding a route, establishing a forward post, or even building a city) is not winning a war (creating a functioning state). Vegetation has reclaimed much of the railway in the Congo, and once busy trading hubs have fallen into disrepair with no functioning services. Rule of law is unknown. Despair is endemic.In a way, the Congo may be a perfect example of how bad things can get when a state goes so wrong that great wealth of a few is squandered in the face of the unbounded poverty of the majority. And the resources are there for everyone to share in the future. All I could think was to have millions and millions of people descend on the Congo at once--the equivalent of holding a thrashing baby to silence it--and rock it into silence, until it unclenched enough to learn and notice there might be a better way to get what one needs. It is a terrible waste. Mankind is not always to be admired. We need to find a way to bring out the best in the Congo. ----------------August 2014I am embarrassed by this review now that I have listened to King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild. I did not know when I wrote this what a horror was perpetuated there, and how many slaughtered. Survivors continued the unbridled greed, notably President Mobutu Sese Seko and his offspring. I am aghast at my ignorance and the horror of what the Congo has had to live with.
—Trish
A century after the memorable journey of his Daily Telegraph colleague Henry Morton Stanley who mapped the Congo basin and then the now Congo country from its source to its mouth at Boma, Tim Butcher made the same journey, from Lubumbashi to Boma. This time, he chose the after war period. It was a real challenge and this book is in fact the celebration of such achievement. The journalist, like his former fellow, become the voice of the voiceless (what about those millions of the Rwandese refugee evaporated in Congo forests when the AFDL backed by the now Rwandan regime purchased them), he become the witness of the Congo and African failure states (where former railways have given space to the forest and big trees), he become the evaluator of what has been done and, probably, the most important, his view of the Congo is different with the view of the others commentators, journalists, experts who do not live and experiencing the deep Congo.The book is full of stories of his meeting with VIP and ordinary Congolese and others. In fact, crossing the Congo is a challenge. Crossing it on that after war situation is a stupid adventure he achieved.Anyone who want to know or to read about the now Congo needs to read Tim Butcher Blood River's book. But, the book is offering also a big door to discover and to learn more and more about the Congo. But, the author could not avoid to be in the footsteps of his colleague Stanley who published "Through the Dark Continent" (after his memorable book "How I met Dr Livingstone" celebrating his "Dr Livingstone, I presume" presume?" meeting with the old explorer and missionary), Butcher is still describing the Congo using the same negative cliche and tabloid: "A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart". But, to be honest also, this is the real Congo: a state non-state; a broken country; a broken society...Norbert X MBU-MPUTU
—Norbert Mbu-mputu
I have a theory which is that politicians often cannot do much to help a country but can certainly ruin one.Tim Butcher's Blood River provides ample evidence for this theory and also poses two more questions: How can people live like this and how can a country fall so far?Blood River tells us the recent history of the Congo and its descent from a wealthy and functioning country into a failed state. In the Congo the law is no more than another excuse for one group of people to arbitrarily extract money from another group and the only true power is exercised at a local level, meaning at the barrel end of whichever party is holding the gun.One inspiring story in a book lacking inspiring stories is where Tim meets a trader who builds his own bicycle out of wood, loads it up and pushes it along jungle trails longer than a hundred kilometers, risking death from armed gangs on the way, just to sell his goods for a few tens of dollars. What a pampered life we lead.By coincidence I read Why Nations Fail which goes a long way to explaining the reasons for the current state of the Congo and many other developing nations. This book outlines the theory that nations become relatively poor or fail because of what the authors call "exclusive political institutions" fostering "exclusive economic institutions" that allow a politically connected elite to extract a country's wealth at the cost of those without political powerLess a theory than common sense you may think, but we in the West, in the UK and US in particular, have seen the rise of our own "exclusive political and economic institutions" in the form of Wall Street and other wealthy people with no conscience who use their money to buy influence in the media and politics and so profit from favors that the rest of us pay for. Money spent on political lobbying in the US has the returns far, far better than anything as mundane as building a factory.There is no reason for the West to be complacent. We are a long way from the Congo but a few decades ago the Congo's citizens were living a relatively peaceful and wealthy life but then watched as the erosion of their political institutions and power grabbing by the elite pulled the country to a state of anarchy.Regrettably the West seems to have taken a few steps down the same path that the Congo has walked already and in that sense Blood River serves as a useful warning as to where this path ends. Worryingly as Why Nations Fail explains once a society has started walking down this path it is remarkably difficult to turn back.The Congo could be our future and we have no reason to be complacent at all.One PS I listened to this book on Audible rather than reading at and Tim Butcher himself is the narrator, which gives it a great immediacy which I would really recommend.
—Maru Kun
