Blood River (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

Have we forgotten about The Congo? It's a country left to rot by its so-called civilisers, rendered now, once again, in Joseph Conrad's words "...the blankest of blank spaces on the earth's figured surface". It wasn't always thus and Tim Butcher has done the profound, if unwelcome, service of reminding the world of its existence with this amazing book.

Butcher describes his journey as "ordeal travel" rather than straight adventuring in the old-fashioned sense, which is what Stanley, he of the "Livingstone, I presume," moment, was all about. Butcher follows the journey as made by Stanley, who in the end vindicated his reputation with a heroic last leg, his entourage brought to their knees by the privations of the jungle and, most of all, the Congo River. Butcher does something similar, and along the way introduces the reader to many ordinary people whose life-stories he allows them to tell in their own words. The stories are mainly ones that the rest of the world doesn't seem to want to hear. Here is a man in a town called Kasongo: "I am the mayor, 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."

Civil society has broken down in The Congo. There is no rule of law; there is no lasting peace and the phrase comes again and again as Butcher talks to people "... we fled into the bush." The Congo is ruled by wandering bands of rootless and homeless soldiery, from one faction or another. Civil society has been abandoned in a souless cycle of murder, rape, looting and thieving. The only answer people have is to flee into the bush, to hide and hope that something will be left when they come back.

Butcher identifies the primal loss to be one of a sense of sovereignty and control. Colonisation can be blamed for creating this situation, but the people of Africa must share responsibility for their inability to initiate change. Former colonies in Asia have been able to develop; it is only in Africa that they have been able only to regress. "The cruelty and greed of African dictators is mostly to blame, but it is also true that the peoples of Africa have not been capable of working together to rein in the excesses of dictators." Isolated pockets of aid and peace-keeping - charities and the UN, mainly - are not the answer.

In the end, Butcher's journey was worthwhile - not because it satisfied his sense of dramatic wanderlust, or even for its epic feats of endurance - but because the book created from it tells the story of the heartbreak at the centre of Africa - it seems wrong, cheap, to use that well-worn phrase, but it also seems inevitable: it *is* unbearably, and still, the heart of darkness.

As a fan of writers like Jonathan Raban and Simon Winchester, who weave historical narrative into their own personal quests and journeys, I sent for Blood River after catching the tail end of a radio interview in which Tim Butcher described the various strands which run in parallel through his book.

I found it a compelling and satisfying read. There is the central account of the author's apparently impulsive decision to travel, against all advice, through the Republic of Congo in the first place, while it is in an on/off state of civil war; the lives of the equally intrepid Victorian adventurers who went before him; and as backdrop, the grindingly bleak and heartbreaking history of colonial, post colonial and present-day Congo. Three stories for the price of one - four if you count the heavy-hearted journey through the Congo in the late 1950's, after disappointment in love, of the author's mother.

Butcher's prose style, as you'd expect from a seasoned journalist, is crisp, economical and forward-flowing; but he is not afraid to share his vulnerabilities and his (abundantly justified) fear of what might easily have lain ahead at any point on the journey - `objective dangers', as he calls them, over which he had little control. I warmed to him for that, and for his empathy towards the ordinary Congolese he encounters: for me, they are the heroes of the story, helpless victims of an endless cycle of exploitation, violence and political bankruptcy.

Blood River is a gripping story well told; but beyond that, unlike some have-the-adventure-to-write-the-book yarns, it is highly relevant and by rights should tweak the conscience of those of us in the developed world who looked the other way.

am still reading the book, but I enjoy the style and pace of the story. The book gives a lot of info with regard to the congolese history. Great read.