Book 56 - Tim Butcher "Blood River"
Sep. 16th, 2012 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveTim Butcher "Blood River, A Journey Into Africa's Broken Heart" (Vintage)
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
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
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