The Lost Continent (Blood River - Tim Butcher)

Member Name: Joker25

Product:	Blood River - Tim Butcher
Date:	02/08/09 (111 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sound historical grounding

Disadvantages: Butcher's attitude to the land and its people

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 do with the Congo. Apart from claiming that 'they' drink it in the Congo. They probably don't, though. Especially as it's made in, erm, Somerset. There's not that many pertinent Congo related quotes, you see, so I thought you'd probably be glad of a reminder of the song.*


For the uninitiated, H M Stanley is the man who found David Livingstone and is credited with the famous 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' line. A line which, incidentally, manages the not unimpressive feat of being simultaneously smug and unnecessary (leading me to wonder whether there's a direct genetic link between Stanley and Jeffrey Archer).

Originally born in Wales of dubious parentage (fancy a Welshman not knowing who his father was, eh?) Stanley did the sensible thing and hightailed it out of there as fast as humanly possible, heading for America and a series of lacklustre jobs. Eventually he settled for journalism, and was given the commission to find Livingstone by the New York Herald. Following this success, Stanley went on to persuade the Herald and the British Daily Telegraph to fund his attempt to complete Livingstone's task: that of mapping the Congo. Obviously, mine is very much the abridged version of that particular history. For the purposes of this account, though, there's really only 2 key pieces of information you need to know about Stanley:

1. Were it not for him, it is likely the Congo would have remained an uncharted wilderness until well into the 20th century.
2. It would probably have been better for everyone if it had.


Just under a hundred and thirty years after Stanley's epic journey, a lightbulb flashed on above the head of one Tim Butcher, war correspondent and Africa Bureau Chief for the Daily Telegraph.

Butcher claims that, 'to shed my complacency about modern Africa and try to understand it properly, it was clear what I had to do: I would go back to where it all began, following Stanley's original journey of discovery through the Congo.' That he accomplished the latter part of this statement cannot be called into doubt. Whether he achieved his first two aims is open to speculation.

The book begins with the history of Stanley's expedition and the following scramble to lay claim to the region (which, surprisingly, the Belgians won pretty comprehensively). Butcher details that Stanley played a massive part in this: entering into tribal negotiations on behalf of Leopold II, arranging treaties and brokering deals for lands and resources. Despite his later reputation as a vehement opponent of the slave trade, these deals were to precipitate the utter fragmentation of the tribal structure and plunge the region into sharp decline. Beyond this initial overview, Butcher, as you'd expect, refers to Stanley as a constant presence throughout the chapters of the book; almost a co-narrator in some ways. However, whilst he documents Stanley's hypocritical and colonialist tendencies, he does not outright condemn them and there is the distinct sense that he views Stanley as one of the 'old guard'.

Having established the historical links between himself and Stanley, Butcher proceeds to detailing the start of his expedition and the problems he encounters. This segues neatly into some discussion of the current history and political status of the region. This is brief and does not stray far from the point of the narrative, as to do so would require a tome of more scholarly dimensions than Blood River offers. After some initial teething troubles, Butcher realises that he will need motorbikes for a large portion of the journey, and that his passage down the river will require considerable input from locals.

For me, it is at this juncture that the wheels start to come off the wagon (often in a quite literal sense) for Butcher. This is a departure from the fiction I tend towards, but the initial histories kept me quite interested. I had, in fact, begun to assume that this might be not dissimilar to a literary version of 'The Long Way Round' (the motorbike explorations of Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman) or Michael Palin's various travelogues. My expectations, then, were of a narrator who would engage my interest in the places, recount the trials of the journey and tell the story of the people.

From the initial chapters it became clear that Butcher's interest in the people was very much of secondary importance to how absorbed he became in completing the journey. What is glaringly obvious from the text is that the expedition would have been impossible were it not for the assistance from locals and foreign aid workers that he receives throughout. What is also glaringly obvious is that Butcher little realised how much he was unwittingly mimicking Stanley's famously imperialist attitudes: despite an awareness of how difficult it was to procure motorbikes for the initial leg of the journey (and how dangerous the trip was), Butcher blithely persists in pestering aid agencies and civilians to assist him and, in doing so, knowingly puts them at risk. This insouciant attitude to the Congolese as a people continues throughout the book; towards the end of the journey he recounts seeing a ten year old boy savagely beaten to a bloody mess by a mob for pickpocketing. By his own admission, Butcher 'was too preoccupied by my own emergency to worry about the boy's plight...so I turned my back on the boy.' This reprehensible pursuit of his own success in the face of another's suffering is eerily reminiscent of the prevailing attitude amongst men like Stanley, who believed the Congolese to be a useful but essentially expendable commodity.

In honesty, the book quickly loses appeal because Butcher is simply not enough of a character to sustain it. He makes some salient points about the Congo as a region; exploring the idea that the DRC is one of the few places on Earth where the (theoretically relentless) march of human progress has proved to be all too reversible, resulting in the jungle reclaiming not only colonial-era buildings and infrastructures, but also the social mores that accompanied them. Ultimately, though, despite being in a uniquely qualified position to write a fascinating account of the historical decline of the Congo and its surrounding regions; the culture; the current political and social instability, Butcher fails utterly to make any kind of real connection with either the place or its people. Even the aid workers who risk their lives at the start of the book to courier him on their motorbikes remain very insipid and largely anonymous characters; Butcher somehow manages to recount their histories without giving the impression of getting to know them as individuals.

By the end of the story I'd stopped caring whether Butcher completed the journey or not. He details a sense of urgency about making his various connections and logistical arrangements but somehow fails to transmit this to the reader. His quasi-colonialist tendencies and failure to establish an empathetic relationship with the country conspire to make him seem spoilt, self-aggrandising and, at times, ruthless. Leaving its failure as a narrative aside, the book fares only slightly better as a travelogue. Each chapter is headed by a childishly drawn map with handwritten place names and directions. No doubt the author was aiming for quirky charm, but I found it deeply irksome. Maps, I think, embody a certain kind of eccentric beauty and are fascinating for their codification of the unknown. A scribbled drawing speaks volumes about the patronising attitude and lack of commitment the author seems to hold towards the place. A few photographs are included (including some where the author juxtaposes a picture of himself being chauffeured on a motorbike with a picture of a colonial-era explorer being carried by natives and yet *still* determinedly refuses to make a comparative connection) and Butcher strives to faithfully document the sights, smells and atmosphere of each location he visits or passes through. Unfortunately, though, his perspective is often skewed by negativity. The overriding emphasis is on how much nastier, dirtier and smellier everything is than what he is used to as a white European. That this is true would appear obvious but his bleating manner of recounting it makes Butcher seem petulant and imperious. Finally, the book left me with no real sense of the place. An account of this kind should surely aim to transmit a lasting impression, tempered and coloured by the narrator's experience. Blood River was, for me, an exercise in determined self-promotion rather than an exploration of 'Africa's broken heart.'

In summary, as an account of the recreation of Stanley's most epic journey this book can be viewed as a success and Butcher deserves at least some praise for testing the boundaries of modern exploration. To those with a scholarly interest in Stanley, therefore, this may prove a fascinating report. Those who wish to read a sympathetic and catholic chronicle of travels through the Congo will be dismayed that £7.99 buys only the most superficial of inquiries and a great deal of navel-gazing.

ISBN: 978-0-099-49428-7




If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home. ~James Michener

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Summary: Post-Imperialist travelogue