Trish's Reviews > Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart

What is it with me and muggy, hot, equatorial places and rivers? Like the book The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann, Blood River recounts the tale of Tim Butcher's crazy obsession to the trace the routes of a great explorer, Stanley in this case, through the Congo. While the rest of the world has become more accessible in the past half century, these two equatorial locales on different continents show that winning a battle (finding a route, establishing a forward post, or even building a city) is not winning a war (creating a functioning state). Vegetation has reclaimed much of the railway in the Congo, and once busy trading hubs have fallen into disrepair with no functioning services. Rule of law is unknown. Despair is endemic.

In a way, the Congo may be a perfect example of how bad things can get when a state goes so wrong that great wealth of a few is squandered in the face of the unbounded poverty of the majority. And the resources are there for everyone to share in the future. All I could think was to have millions and millions of people descend on the Congo at once--the equivalent of holding a thrashing baby to silence it--and rock it into silence, until it unclenched enough to learn and notice there might be a better way to get what one needs. It is a terrible waste. Mankind is not always to be admired. We need to find a way to bring out the best in the Congo.

----------------
August 2014

I am embarrassed by this review now that I have listened to King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild. I did not know when I wrote this what a horror was perpetuated there, and how many slaughtered. Survivors continued the unbridled greed, notably President Mobutu Sese Seko and his offspring. I am aghast at my ignorance and the horror of what the Congo has had to live with.