I finished Blood River by Tim Butcher the other day, in a continuation of my recent trend towards reading about sub-Saharan Africa. It’s an account of Butcher’s attempt to recreate the first mapping of the River Congo by Stanley (of “Dr Livingstone, I presume” fame) in the 19th century, along with a potted history of the eponymous country.

I think the beauty of this book is not just the actual journey itself, but the way in which Butcher’s enthusiasm for the whole project sadly fades throughout, in the face of a country which has seemingly gone backwards whilst the rest of the world has advanced.

Countless people tell him that whenever any threat to them occurs, from whatever source (government, militias, rebels, foreigners), they run into the bush to hide. Whenever they come back out, inevitably their homes and businesses have been ransacked and/or burnt, and so begins again the cycle of semi-permanent rebuilding and sustenance living.

In a similar manner to when I read The State of Africa, which also covered the Congo, I couldn’t help but feel depressed by the end of reading this book. The continent of Africa as a whole (with exceptions, of course) just seems to be getting left further and further behind, and there is very little impetus from within or without towards improving the situation. ( )

This very engrossing travelogue of the author's journey down the Congo River is told against a backdrop of the recorded history of many other explorers, adventurers, missionaries, mercenaries, native peoples, profiteers, international aid workers, government officials, revolutionaries, movie stars(!) and others who have left their impact on the country throughout the last two centuries. The historical references alone would have made this an interesting read.

In 2004, the Democratic Republic of Congo has declined to a state that is in many ways worse than the pre-colonial era when Henry Morton Stanley first made the voyage that this author attempts to duplicate here. Conditions are deplorable everywhere and the voyage is full of potential hazard. His motto, "cities bad, open good" serves him well. It is heart-sickening to read of the corruption, greed and ruthlessness that is routine is a country of such vast natural resources. Unlike most places in the world which have at lease shown some progress over the last decades, the DRC has been steadily declining. What little infrastructure was left in the early 1960's has slowly been disintegrating. The wildlife in many areas has been decimated. Their is little agriculture. What is worse is that there is no communal memory of the atrocities just a few short years ago, so it is very hard to learn from those events. Most of the rural population seeks temporary refuge in the bush when threatened by roving bands of thugs.

Like Jeffrey Tayler in "Facing the Congo" and Peter Stark in "At the Mercy of the River", the author is eventually brought down by sickness. I am left with the impression that without his connections with UN personnel stationed in remote areas and cash reserves, the author would not likely have gotten far along this jouney. ( )

I don't read a lot of non fiction but this is one of those that reads like fiction. Butcher's journey to follow the path of Stanley up the Congo was fascinating. He gives you background history about the Congo as well as details of his own perilous journey in an easy to read narrative style. Well worth reading. ( )

When Tim Butcher became Africa's correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, he realised that it had been the same newpaper that had sent Henry Morton Stanley to chart the Congo River in the 1870s. The author's mother had also travelled through the Congo in 1958 and he had grown up with the souvenirs and pictures that his mother had taken gracing the walls of his childhood home. Despite being told that it couldn't be done and the impossible challenges and dangers he would face Tim became obsessed with trying to recreate Stanley's famous expedition.

He describes his journey as ordeal travel and even reading it isn't for the faint-hearted. His adventure is extraordinary and he also uses his journey through the Congo to tell the story of its history and its disturbing present.

More than anything, what stood out for me was that this is a country which is moving backwards. There had been modernity, but no longer. He encountered a grandfather who could remember tourists travelling around the country, but the motorbike that Tim was moving quickly through jungle tracks on was the first that his grandchildren had seen. The roads and infrastructure that had been there at independence are now eroded and swallowed up by jungle. The Congo is a vast country with enormous wealth in the form of natural resources, but there is no order. The safest place for so many people is to repeatedly flee into the jungle while all their belongings are destroyed by whichever rebel group.

This is a fascinating book and hugely readable. ( )

Review written May 2008: We had this for our book club this month, and Tim Butcher is coming to our Travel Writing Festival in Lismore next month so we will have the opportunity to talk to him. People had mixed opinions, some liked the book but not the author, while others found it riveting. I fell into the latter category as I found it fascinating that a country had regressed so much since the colonial period that it seemed to endorse colonialism as an option. Of course rational thinking shows that exploitation of a people or country can be done by anyone including the citizens, if power abuses occur or have the opportunity to thrive. The total anarchy is well presented, showing the near impossibility of managing a country so vast with no infrastructure, where the communications are so weak, and the book provokes far more questions than answers. I was reminded of a book I read whose name escapes me about the boats brought overland from the Cape to Lake Tanganyika to support the British war effort in WW1 against the Germans who scuttled their lake boat, the Graf Gotzen I think it was called, which is now plying the lake as the Liemba after it was refloated years later. Michael Palin travels on it in Pole to Pole. That book was fascinating in the efforts people made to overcome nature's obstacles, like getting boats to a lake a thousand miles from the sea! I google earthed the Congo river after reading Blood River and tracked the length of it and loved looking at the photos people posted of the various places he passed through. The bit from Kinshasa to the sea was the least known to me and I loved the account of his journey. It was quite a journalistic approach but no less enjoyable for that. I read The Catastrophist and The Poisonwood Bible and loved them so this was a nice counterpoint to those. I lived in Tanzania for years and enjoyed many a sunset over Lake Tanganyika from Kigoma looking over to the mysterious horizon of then Zaire with its shadowy mountains and wonderful kwasa kwasa music. ( )