Blood River - Tim Butcher

Blood River What is this book about? This is a factual account of a journey through the heart of Africa, crossing from side to side of the enormous country the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The author Tim Butcher is appointed as Africa correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and reads lots of material about the continent. Over the years, based in South Africa and flying off to report from whichever African country is the current hot stop, the author gets more and more obsessed with the idea of crossing the DRC from one side to the other, even though everyone he asks about it tells him it is impossible. He works to find contacts ...  Read the complete review

The Congo has has a tumultuous & largely grim history since coming to the attention of the wider world. Already being ransacked by Arab slave traders in the nineteenth century, it was famously traversed by Stanley, who was the first to follow the river Congo & realised it to be a precious means of transport to & from the heart of the continent. King Leopold II of Belgium then ran it as his own money-making enterprise, plundering it for ivory & rubber using a vicious system of slavery & exploitation. Relative stability followed when the Belgian state took it over as a colony, but after independence the country ...  Read the complete review

Blood River is the most compelling, memorable, educational and insightful book I have read for a long time. It is in the travel category here, and yes it is an account of the author's journey down the Congo river, but the book is also a throughly researched and passionate expose of the troubled history of the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was alternately gripped, horrified, astounded and shamed by this book. Gripped as the journey that the author made in 2004 to " the most troubled region of the world's most troubled continent" in the words of the author himself, was both amazing and insane, and shamed as at times I ...  Read the complete review

Way down deep in the middle of the Congo, A hippo took an apricot, a guava and a mango. He stuck it with the others, and he danced a dainty tango. The rhino said, "I know, we'll call it Um Bongo" Um Bongo, Um Bongo, They drink it in the Congo. The python picked the passion fruit, the marmoset the mandarin. The parrot painted packets that the whole caboodle landed in. So when it comes to sun and fun and goodness in the jungle, They all prefer the sunny funny one they call Um Bongo! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRBohQxBh2k) *Yep, fair do's; I hold my hands up - Um Bongo has pretty much nothing at all to ...  Read the complete review