Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World's Most Dangerous Country
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Edition: First Trade Paper Edition
- Author: Tim Butcher
- Publisher: Grove Press
- Release Date: September 2009
- ISBN-10: 0802144330
- ISBN-13: 9780802144331
- List Price: $16.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryPublished to rave reviews in the United Kingdom and named a Richard & Judy Book Club selection—the only work of nonfiction on the 2008 list—Blood River is the harrowing and audacious story of Tim Butcher’s journey in the Congo and his retracing of legendary explorer H. M. Stanley’s famous 1874 expedition in which he mapped the Congo River. When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the legendary Congo River and the idea of recreating Stanley’s journey along the three-thousand-mile waterway. Despite warnings that his plan was suicidal, Butcher set out for the Congo’s eastern border with just a backpack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vehicles, including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a pygmy rights advocate, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurer. An utterly absorbing narrative that chronicles Butcher’s forty-four-day journey along the Congo River, Blood River is an unforgettable story of exploration and survival. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Kept me gripping the pages
Rating:
I saw "Blood River" in an airport bookstore and riffled through it. I kept putting it back down, taking up another book more like what I thought I was looking for.... then returning to "Blood River."
So here I bought a book I didn't want to, just because I couldn't put it down. When I got home, the same thing happened again. Instead of the books I wanted to read, I found myself returning to "Blood River."
Finally I gave in, and stayed up most of one night to finish it (groans in the morning). Then I gave it to my husband and he finished it in one fell swoop too and is now reading "The Poisonwood Bible" because of it. (They're both about the Congo and its dangers.)
"Blood River" is about the author's journey through the Congo in 2004, almost certainly the first time in decades that a white man has crossed the country from west to east mostly on the ground. The country's infrastructure has deteriorated in fall-of-the-Roman-Empire fashion from its colonial high point and is now probably the most dangerous country on earth, ruled by illiterate teenagers with guns and "big men" who filter all foreign monies through their pockets. But the author shows that Belgian colonial rule led directly to this disaster by deliberately keeping the Congolese too uneducated to rule their own country, so that at independence there was only a handful of men with college degrees.
The book includes a description of the surreal town of Kisangani, once called Stanleyville, a city of more than half a million people that is reachable only by air, and by very occasional river boats. The city is as isolated from the rest of the world as the space shuttle.
The tension throughout the book is palpable, but it's possible to be slightly disappointed, in retrospect, that the author never actually encounters any serious danger in person; maybe he would not have survived to write the story if he had. He includes such a good history of the country that this could be the single book to recommend to anyone who has to go there. Hope you don't!
An elephant still stands in the room full of questions about the Congo.
Rating:
Tim Butcher deserves praise for both bravery and for honest-reporting. His successful retracing, by land and river, of the route of the Stanley expedition that mapped the Congo River over 125 years ago was an act of bravery-and this tale could stand alone as a travel adventure. But it is more than that. It is a skilled portrait of the Congolese people, and the author's revelations open up a roomful of questions. Tim gives thanks and credence to the many Congolese, both black and white, who helped him complete his journey. But an elephant remains in that room full of questions provoked by this book. Why does the Congo remain so dysfunctional? What is it about the people occupying this huge area of great potential that keeps them mired in catastrophic failure and terror? To be sure, the Belgians who ruled this colony were often brutes who basically went after the riches. But they also built and left behind viable systems of communication, transport, education, and governance. Today that is all gone. In the Congo, Mobutu was one of the first and probably the most important of many kleptocratic tyrants that have ruled this land. In Mobutu's wake corruption became the norm. Tim refuses to make a blanket-judgement on the people, and points to the fine, brave inhabitants who are the heros of his narrative. They protected him and gave assistance without asking. They wanted the Congo to become stable and free from terror and despair. Tim relates in passing the musings of a Malaysian skipper of a barge he traveled on. This UN employee, who was himself a native of an ex-colony that was once considered dysfunctional, called the Congo a place of "wasted opportunity", with people who "don't want to make money for themselves-they just want to take it from others". Is this too cruel a judgement? Is there no hope for this essential heart of Africa? There is no easy answer to that question in the pages of this fine but sobering book .
An Exciting Adventure that Paints an Accurate Picture of Congo Today
Rating:
After visiting Congo (DRC) in August of 2008, I decided to read Tim Butcher's book BLOOD RIVER. I found it paints a very accurate picture of conditions in this stricken country today. As the author portrays, just being in Congo is an adventure all by itself. It is dangerous, upsetting, and yet fascinating. Travel is every bit as hard as he says.
The book is exciting because you're never sure how the author is going to get from one destination to the next considering all the obstacles in his path. Yet through perseverance he somehow manages. Besides being an exciting adventure, it is an insightful visit to a hidden corner of modern day Africa.
I was particularly interested in his description of conditions on the set of Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn's 1951 movie "The African Queen" and how they have deteriorated in the 50 years since its filming. Sadly, conditions all over Congo continue to deteriorate. But for the armchair traveler who want to experience life in one of the most little travelled places in the world, read this book.
A great read!
Rating:
By mixing vivid accounts of the beauty of the Congo with a healthy dose of sheer wit, humour and an almost thriller-paced story of this audacious journey along the Congo River, Butcher's "Blood River" stands out as a fascinating read. Well-written, meticulously researched and a story beautifully told, it is most likely one of the most readable book about Africa that has come out for a very long time - highly recommended!
Into the Abyss of Africa
Rating:
The journalist Tim Butcher took to cross Zaire from East to West on the traces of Stanley. To reach the Congo River he had first to travel west, through provinces that have been in a state of near-permanent rebellion for more than 40 years, and where cannibalism remains as real today as it was in the 19th century, when bearer parties refused to take explorers there for fear of being eaten. Even if he made it to the river, he would still have 2500 km of descent before reaching the place where the Congo River spews into the Atlantic. A stretch where there was no more official traffic. It turned out to be a more nerve racking journey he could have ever imagined.
One has to know that Zaire was ever more run down economically since the colonial power left the country in the sixties. The whole infrastructure broke down, railway, streets, ferries, shipping, no matter which stage of a journey you choose it will not only be adventurous but also dangerous, because marauding gangs roam the country. What the author accomplishes is daring. His journey does not so much differ from the journeys of the explorers of the 19th century.
Butcher has an unbothering style of writing. He is not inclined to exaggerations. He is not in need of that. The events speak for themselves! He underwent the process of understanding the political and economical background which made Zaire to what it is now. Nothing to gloss over. The whites exploited the country but also built it up, that the exploitation could go on. The blacks exploited the country and its people even more. The people have no perspective, their hearts are broken and vulgarizing.
The territory that Stanley staked in the name of the Belgian King Leopold witnessed what many regard as the first genocide of the modern era, when millions of Congolese were effectively worked to death trying to meet the colonialists almost insatiable demand for resources. And since independence, foreign powers have toyed with the Congo, stripping its mineral assets and exploiting its strategic position, never mindful of the suffering inflicted on its people. At every stage of its bloody history, outsiders have tended to treat Congolese as somehow sub-human, not worthy of the consideration they would expect for themselves.
The author is often meeting eye witnesses of massacres and other atrocities. The safest place for a Congolese is the forest, in which he escapes whenever marauders haunt the village. And Butcher as well finds a liking in the jungles which are so much nicer than the dismal villages and decayed cities. There are also no embarrassing fraternization scenarios or occult orgies as for example Hanlon has it. Butcher is about humanity and reason, about development aid for the Congolese that they find to a humane life.
The wars had one major effect in that there were only two ways left for the Congolese to get on with life. Before, there was a system of schools to go to paid for by the state, a transport system so that people could reach other parts of the country, a health system so that one had a chance of recovery. But then all was gone "so that you only have two real options - you join a church, the only organisation that provides an education, a way for someone to develop, or you join one of the militias and profit from the war."
The collapse of the state meant that its people either relied on the charity of outsiders or took to violence.
"But the major lesson I learned on my trek through modern central Africa was that the most valuable asset stolen from the Congo was the sovereignty of its people."
Before Stanley and the white rule, the people of the Congo had a sense for local power. The society was tribal with the authority lying in the hands of the village chiefs. No chief could ignore the will of the subjects. Decisions had to be taken, at least partly with the interest of the people in mind. The whites stripped all aspects of sovereignty from the people and they got it never back.
"One of the great fallacies about white rule in Africa was that when it ended, power was handed back to the people of Africa:"
Instead it was hijacked by elites who publicly claimed they were working for the interest of the people, but were in fact only driven by self-interest. In Zaire it was Mobutu who ignored the plight of his people. Dictators and undemocratic regimes conceal their own malicious administration and corruptness by claiming sovereignty. They cloak themselves in it to dismiss the right of any outsider to hold them to account.
I can recommend this book. It is worth reading. It closes a gap in understanding this region and the problems of the black continent. It is altogether a stunning travel book through one of the remotest places on this Earth. But do not try to walk in his footsteps!
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