Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World’s Most Dangerous Country
- ISBN13: 9780802144331
- Condition: New
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Published 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 recr
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Don’t Look Behind You!: A Safari Guide’s Encounters with Ravenous Lions, Stampeding Elephants, and Lovesick Rhinos
- ISBN13: 9781599214696
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Join Peter Allison for a riveting, rollicking, behind-the-scenes dose of everyone’s dream experience?going on safari?and coming through amazed but, thankfully, without a scratch. In Don’t Look Behind You, Allison recounts adventures few would live to tell.
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Review by A. J. Cornish Bowden for Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World’s Most Dangerous Country
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Fifty years ago the Democratic Republic of Congo — then just ceasing to be the Belgian Congo — had a modern network of roads, railways and river transportation, with adequate accommodation available in all of the main centres. Today none of that exists, and the only practical way of getting about is by air, and that with difficulty and even danger. As Tim Butcher remarks at one point, “I looked at the sickly child and tried to think of another country in the world where a baby born in the same place half a century earlier had more chance of surviving than today” (the last few words are quoted from memory, and hence are probably quoted inaccurately).
So when he decided to follow Henry Morton Stanley’s land route in the 1870s from Lake Tanganyika to the River Congo and then follow the river to Boma, on the coast, this was not the trivial task it would have been in the 1950s, and many experts on the country said it would be impossible and dangerous and that he would almost certainly be killed if he attempted it. In some ways he had an even more difficult task than Stanley, with no Zanzibari bearers to carry all his stuff, and no guns to shoot anyone who tried to thwart him. Nonetheless, he largely succeeded (with considerable help, it must be said, from a series of aid workers and United Nations representatives), apart from flying about a quarter of the total distance, from Mbandaka to Kinshasa (“no capital city in the world more unrepresentative of its country”), when he felt to ill to continue. He describes Mbandaka as “a sad collection of ruins”, but unfortunately this description applies equally well to almost everywhere he went.
Apart from its interest as a modern adventure story, Blood River is well worth reading for what it tells us about the modern Congo, and how it got that way, with much information about Stanley’s initial colonization, exploitation as the personal property of King Leopold, later as a Belgian colony, and now independent, with essentially permanent armed conflict.
Review by R. M. Peterson for Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World’s Most Dangerous Country
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Tim Butcher was the African correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, the newspaper that sponsored two of Henry Stanley’s African expeditions. Butcher got the notion to re-trace Stanley’s trek across the Congo, from Lake Tanganyika to the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic Ocean. In 2004, during a relative lull in the bloodshed and anarchic mayhem that has convulsed the interior of the Congo for decades, Buther took six weeks to make the journey, by motor-bike, UN river boats, pirogue, helicopter, and jeep. BLOOD RIVER is his account of his trek, interspersed with history of the Congo, from the initial colonization of the Portuguese, to the brutal and greedy rule of King Leopold and the Belgians, to the post-colonial era, during which the rape and exploitation of the country, and the attendant bloodshed, has continued apace, perhaps at times even intensifying.
There undoubtedly is much of interest and value in BLOOD RIVER, but there are three overriding problems with the book. First, I have the sense that Butcher tends to be sloppy with his facts. For example, he implies that ebola was one of the tropical diseases that confronted 19th-Century European explorers and he states that Joseph Conrad, when he came to the Congo for his one mission there (the basis for Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness”), was “a professional skipper of steamboats.” Minor errors, to be sure, but they force me to take all of Butcher’s factual pronouncements with a grain of salt.
Second, Butcher’s writing is ordinary. He is prone to needless repetition, and far too often his writing is cliched and overly melodramatic. For example: “That moment when I left the east bank of the river was special for me. I had achieved something that many people had thought impossible by crossing overland from Lake Tanganyika all the way to the Congo River, through some of the most dangerous terrain on the planet. With my own eyes I had peered into a hidden African world * * *.” Or: “I sat in the darkness, thinking of my journey so far and how remote this area had become. A yachtsman on the southern seas or a climber in the Himalayas had more chance of rescue than I did.”
Third, Butcher is not what you would call self-effacing. He is mightily impressed with himself and he tries mightily to make sure that we are equally impressed. Time and again, he writes about how dangerous and unprecedented, even reckless, his trip was. To be sure, for six weeks he had to endure tropical heat and insects, eat unappetizing native foods such as cassava, wait in squalid quarters while he made arrangements for the next leg of his journey, and be harassed by some officious and arrogant Congolese. But nothing life-threatening or especially painful actually happened to him.
Reading BLOOD RIVER is not a waste of time. In particular, it reinforces the principal point I have taken from other books on contemporary equatorial Africa, namely, that conditions now are worse than they were a third of a century ago and there is little reason to believe they will improve in the near future. But, whether you are interested in the Congo or the genre of adventure travel, there are other books out there that are more worth your time.
Review by Mary Jo Loehle for Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World’s Most Dangerous Country
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Tim Butcher’s book BLOOD RIVER was recommended by Amazon last summer and I bought it because I am fascinated by the Congo. Having read King Leopold’s Ghost,In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, Heart of Darkness as well as The Poisonwood Bible, I was intrigued by an update on the Congo, especially by someone adventurous (I did think crazy)enough to try to follow Stanley’s journey across Africa from east to west in the current political/savage climate.
Mr. Butcher is a journalist, so he knows how to use words to convey a mood, or a place or a person. And in this book, he is at his best. You are tugged along almost reluctantly on his trip,knowing that he obviously survived, but wondering how he could have possibly made it all the way. Everyone told him not to try it, but somehow there were also very helpful people along the way.
The one man who begged him to take his four year old with him, the guys on the motorbikes, the pirogue pole guys and the captain of the boat are all unforgettable. I especially liked that Mr. Butcher would bring in historical asides, liked the making of the African Queen and Katherine Hepburn in the hotel that is no longer there, or the travel guide that his mother had. He brings in all the hard historical stuff also, like the Belgians and the hand cutting, as well as the slavery trade.
If you want a book that has it all, plus pictures, get this book and hop on behind Mr. Butcher as he pursues a dream/nightmare journey through Africa.
Review by S. McGee for Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World’s Most Dangerous Country
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“In August 2004 I booked a flight from Johannesburg to the Congo, wrote my first will and kissed Jane goodbye.”
On that note, Daily Telegraph reporter Tim Butcher set off on what can only be described as one of the most quixotic expeditions imaginable. In the early years of the 21st century, he had somehow fixated on the idea that he should follow in the footsteps of a former Telegraph reporter — 19th century explorer and colonialist Henry Stanley (he of “Dr Livingstone, I presume” fame) — and travel overland and on water the length of the Congo river, thousands of miles to the point where this massive river finally reaches the Atlantic.
Easier said than done. To start with, there is the fact that for the last half century or so, Congo is a country that people try to get out of rather than into. (At one point, a resident of Kisangani tries to persuade Butcher to take his four-year-old son back with him to South Africa, because there is no future for him there.) Aid workers and diplomats thankfully leave the day their postings expire, while members of the UN mission (the longest-running of its kind) exist in tiny airconditioned enclaves in the equatorial jungle and similarly count down the days. Almost the only non-Congolese who seem to enjoy life in the country are those who have come to exploit its mineral assets — cobalt, diamonds and gold, among other products. They, as Butcher shows, live in protected compounds in Kinshasa.
Indeed, it’s that legacy of “asset stripping” — which Stanley helped ignite — that Butcher chronicles as he somehow manages to battle his way from one community to the next along his pathway. From the Arab slave traders who raided from Zanzibar in the East to the horrific Belgian colonial regime (read King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa for more of that ugly saga), and later to the excesses of Mobutu, Congo’s post-colonial dictator, the scores of tribes that collectively make up what we know as the Congo have had little chance to prosper from the growth in global wealth. On the contrary, as Butcher shows repeatedly and eloquently, with every year that has passed since the first eruption of post-colonial war in the 1960s, they have less and less contact with the rest of the world. Jungles have taken over hospitals that once were leaders in tropical medicine and grown over railroad tracks so completely that it is impossible to see where they once led. Highways have become tracks that barely accomodate bicycles laden with mountainous loads of palm oil, that vendors will push for a 600 km, six-week long round trip in exchange for a $50 profit. Only imported ornamental plants show where once the comfortable villas of the Belgians once stood.
Indeed, the value of Butcher’s adventorous yarn (and it’s so suspenseful, it’s almost impossible to put down) is to show us what happens to people that the rest of the world exploits and then ignores. The plight of the Congolese is worse than if Stanley had never mapped the Congo in his famous expedition; today, any vestiges of a rule of law (whether colonial or tribal) has vanished and anarchy rules. Even subsistence has become nearly impossible. Butcher notes the absence of animal sounds from the jungle canopy; there aren’t enough animals in the jungle to satisfy the need for meat and protein, however, and the staple diet of Cassava leaves the Congolese emaciated, he notes.
The story of this starvation and abandonment of any hope; of the violence lurking just around the next bend in the river or the jungle pathway; should serve as just as much of a call to arms as did the famous reports of Morel and Casement a century ago. (Their denunciations of Belgian King Leopold’s horrific regime led to public pressure forcing him to turn over what had been his personal fiefdom to the country as a formal colony.) Everyone Butcher encounters is stunned that he has been able to cover the terrain he has. “It took me a while to convince him I was not lying,” he says of one such meeting. In some cases, the reader can detect, lurking just beneath the surface, a sense of astonishment at what they may view as a self-indulgent Western journalist embarking on some esoteric historical project at a time of such chaos.
Thankfully, Butcher himself is alert to the danger that his white face may mean for the aid workers and locals who help him along his way. In one town, he is ushered out even before daylight, as the priest who shelters him for a few hours tells him that the mai-mai (or armed gangs) will learn of his presence. And with this book, and its moving look at the life of a country that is actually reversing the course of progress, he has, in my opinion, transformed what may have started as just a foolhardy and self-centered expedition into something more valuable. With the publication of this book, there is no excuse for the horrors of today’s Congo to continue to go unnoticed in the global community.
Review by David Donelson for Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World’s Most Dangerous Country
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When Tim Butcher describes a city in the modern Democratic Republic of Congo as “a sad collection of ruins,” he could well have been describing the entire country, whose endless struggle over control of its rich resources during the past 100-plus years has left it mostly in shambles. This highly readable account of Butcher’s attempt to follow the path of Henry Stanley’s 1784 expedition to map the Congo River gives ample testimony to the difficulties of not just travel but of daily life in this sadly exploited nation.
Review by Paul Lawrence for Don’t Look Behind You!: A Safari Guide’s Encounters with Ravenous Lions, Stampeding Elephants, and Lovesick Rhinos
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The sequel to Peter Allisons’ first book `Whatever You Do, Don’t Run’, this release sees him reliving more of his adventures as a safari guide working in sub-Saharan Africa.
The first book was a laugh riot, really a page turner that had you chuckling at some combination of tourists and animals – surely a sure fire recipe for disaster if ever there was one – or the foolish escapades of the author and his sometimes equally manic co-workers. On top of that it showed a glimpse of the essentially somewhat lonely and dull life of the safari guide occupation in their remote locations existing away from so many of the creature comforts so many of us take for granted.
The reason that book was five stars and this is only four stars is that this is more full of encounters with wildlife that aren’t exactly funny even if they be entertaining and given the hilarity of the first book was its main drawcard the fact there isn’t as much of it here is a tiny let down. Also the remoteness of the occupation is delved into a tiny bit more here and this makes the book more of a dense read if you take my meaning, not to mention the fact that understandably enough Allison has used his best stories in his first book leaving him with less rib tickling moments to regale is with this time around.
Having said that I still found this book a page turner and that is coming from someone with no real interest in African travel. So if that is your particular weakness travel-wise perhaps you’ll give this book five stars as well. It’s definitely a good gift for any travel maniac in your inner circle.
Review by Myra Kopinski for Don’t Look Behind You!: A Safari Guide’s Encounters with Ravenous Lions, Stampeding Elephants, and Lovesick Rhinos
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“Don’t Look Behind You!” is a purchase you won’t regret. This is definitely the most enjoyable book I have read in a long time and is great to read when traveling. The stories are fairly short, so you are able to stop and continue easily. However, I found it very difficult to stop reading any of these amusing stories.
If you haven’t already, I recommend you read the first book, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Run”.
Review by Rebecca C for Don’t Look Behind You!: A Safari Guide’s Encounters with Ravenous Lions, Stampeding Elephants, and Lovesick Rhinos
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I loved this book, he is a great writer and makes you feel as if you’re right there in Africa – if not, you’ll certainy feel like going after reading these amazing tales of escape, hysteria and several unfortunate (yet highly exciting) events!
Review by B. Kipper for Don’t Look Behind You!: A Safari Guide’s Encounters with Ravenous Lions, Stampeding Elephants, and Lovesick Rhinos
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Allison’s book allows the reader to escape back to the bush. He is an engaging writer who captures the bush’s ever present the smells and sounds and then adds the drama of the “once in a lifetime” wildlife encounter. Especially in his description of a prolonged chase by an enraged female elephant the reader comes away thinking “Gee I’m glad I got to read about that but not so sure I would have liked the first hand experience!” “Don’t Look Behind You” is a marvelous book .
Review by James N Simpson for Don’t Look Behind You!: A Safari Guide’s Encounters with Ravenous Lions, Stampeding Elephants, and Lovesick Rhinos
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This is Peter Allison’s second collection of stories from his time in Africa as a guide, camp manager and unique to this one, when he was before the Botswanian Courts for operating without a guide licence. This isn’t a sequel to Whatever You Do, Don’t Run it is simply different collection of tales to the ones Peter told is in that first collection. These stories don’t happen time wise after the ones in that book, they are from his entire career in Africa, like with Whatever You Do, some of these stories occur in South Africa, some in Botswana and there’s even some entries from Mozambique and Namibia as well.
This isn’t one of those average encore books sold on the success of the first but not in the same league where all the good stories were in the first one. There are great stories in this book too, the only difference being a bit higher percentage of them revolve around his experiences in Africa outside of just the wildlife encounters. Such as being arrested while on Safari and the subsequent dealings with the various Botswanian law enforcement and court officials as well as getting lost driving to a few destinations including a remote baboon research facility where the researchers had gone a bit insane. There’s still plenty of wildlife encounters including a leopard entering his sleeping quarters while he was reading a book, and an elephant who wasn’t impressed with him trying to pull a hair from its tail.