Blood River (40 page)

So while the war remains officially over, the humanitarian
crisis in the Congo claims lives on a staggering scale. The most
recent assessment, published in January 2006 by the eminent
British medical journal, The Lancet, suggests that 1,200 people die each day in the Congo as a direct result of endemic violence
and insecurity.

Furthermore, the Congo's malign influence continues to leach
across the region. An attempt in 2006 to persuade the Lord's
Resistance Army in Uganda to accept a peace deal failed because
many of their militia slipped across the border into the Congo,
where they found sanctuary in its lawless jungle. And its
influence has been felt in the worsening crisis in Sudan's Darfur
region, where some rebel groups have financed their operations
by selling ivory and rhino horn illegally poached from Sudan's
southern neighbour, the Congo.

The most important single development in the Congo since my
journey has been the attempt by the international community to
install democracy. It cost more than four hundred million dollars,
was boycotted by a major opposition party and took place two
years behind schedule, but on 30 July 2006 the Congo held an
election to choose both president and parliament. The first
meaningful poll in the Congo since the 1960 general election that
brought Lumumba to power, it was enthusiastically embraced by
Congolese voters. Ballot boxes were delivered by dugout canoe,
motorbike courier and helicopter to 46,693 polling stations across
the vast country. Villagers trudged for days to take part amidst a
mood of optimism that the election might just end decades of
instability and reverse the spiral of decline.

It is too early to say if these hopes have been fulfilled, but the
initial signs are not good. Fighting erupted in Kinshasa hours
before the results were to be announced. Official reports said
twenty-three people died on the streets of the capital, although
other estimates put the death toll five times higher. The fighting
was so bad that the head of the UN mission and fourteen foreign
ambassadors were holed up in the house of a presidential
candidate overnight before a special MONUC squad rescued
them. The result was so close that a second round of voting had
to be held in October 2006. Joseph Kabila was declared the winner, although the loser, Jean-Pierre Bemba, continues to
dispute the result.

Where possible I have tried to keep in touch with many of
the people I met on my journey. All of the foreign aid workers I
met have moved on, as if duty in the Congo is a tough but
necessary career rite of passage. Tom Nyamwaya, the Care
International employee who made my trip possible by providing
me with motorbikes through Katanga, left his post in Kasongo in
2004 and moved to a new aid job in Sudan. After Benoit's
contract with Care International ended, he moved back to his
home near the Congo's border with Rwanda, but his motorbiking
partner Odimba remains in his birthplace, Kasongo. In Kalemie,
Georges Mbuyu continues to work for his pygmy human-rights
group in the ramshackle house he calls his headquarters. It
became even more ramshackle in December 2005 when Kalemie
was hit by a powerful earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter
scale.

When I got home to Johannesburg I was disappointed by the
lack of interest in my journey from two of my most prominent
Congolese contacts. Congo's ambassador to South Africa had
talked enthusiastically about my journey when signing my
laissez-passer before the trip, but when I tried to contact him to
tell him how I had got on, he did not return my calls. And
Adolphe Onusumba, the rebel leader I had courted before the
journey, underwent a radical change. We had been exchanging
emails and telephone calls regularly, but a few months after I got
home all communication ended. I then found out that the former
rebel had been co-opted into the government of his erstwhile
enemy, President Kabila, as Defence Minister. I concluded that
the ambassador and minister were too ashamed to hear what I had
discovered about their failed state.

My own work took me to Jerusalem, from where I now cover
the Middle East region for the Telegraph. I might have moved, but
my obsession with the Congo - the daunting, flawed giant that symbolises Africa's triumph of disappointment over potential -
remains stronger than ever.

Tim Butcher

Jerusalem, October 2006

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From West to East, 1990, Blandford

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- Les Nouveaux Predateurs, 2003, Fayard

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Verney Lovett Cameron: Across Africa, 1877, Daldy, Isbister and
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Peter Forbath: The River Congo, 1977, Harper & Row

Alan Gallop: Mr Stanley, I Presume? The Life and Explorations of
Henry Morton Stanley, 2004, Sutton Publishing

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the Belgian Congo, Brussels

Ernesto `Che' Guevara: The African Dream - The Diaries of the
Revolutionary War in the Congo, 2000, The Harvill Press

Richard Hall: Stanley - An Adventurer Explored, 1974, William
Collins Sons & Company

Blaine Harden: Africa, Dispatches From a Fragile Continent,
1991, HarperCollins

Adam Hochschild: King Leopold's Ghost, 1998, Houghton Miffin
Company

Mike Hoare: Congo Mercenary, 1967, Robert Hale

Richard Lawson: Strange Soldiering, 1963, Hodder and
Stoughton

Sven Lindqvist: `Exterminate All the Brutes', 1997, Granta

Blaine Littell: South of the Moon - On Stanley's Trail Through the
Dark Continent, 1966, Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Roger Louis and Jean Stengers: E.D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement, 1968, Clarendon Press

Frank McLynn: Hearts of Darkness - The European Exploration
of Africa, 1992, Pimlico

- Stanley: The Making of an African Explorer, 1989, Constable
and Company

- Stanley: Sorcerer's Apprentice, 1991, Constable and Company

Conor Cruise O'Brien: To Katanga and Back, 1962, Hutchinson &
Company

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& Nicolson

Andre Pilette: A Travers L'Afrique Equatoriale, 1914, Oscar
Lamberty

Colonel Jerry Puren: Mercenary Commander, 1986, Galago

Henry Morton Stanley: Through the Dark Continent, 1878,
Sampson Low, Marston & Company

- How I Found Livingstone, 1872, Sampson Low, Marston, Low,
and Searle

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Stanley and Alan Neame, 1961, William Kimber & Company

Jeffrey Tayler: Facing the Congo, 2000, Little, Brown and
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of Disaster, 2000, Fourth Estate

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Barbara Kingsolver: The Poison wood Bible, 1998, HarperCollins

V.S. Naipaul: A Bend in the River, 1979, Andre Deutsch

Georges Simenon: African Trio, 1979, Hamish Hamilton

Blood River taught me how the seemingly solitary process of
book-writing depends on many people.

Without the bravery and generosity I encountered from
strangers in the Congo, the project would have failed. Those to
whom I owe a particular debt include Georges Mbuyu, Benoit
Bangana, Odimba Ngenda, Bishop Masimango Katanda, Dr
Adolphe Onusemba Yemba, Clement Mangubu, Oggi Saidi, Brian
Larson and his Care International Colleagues, Tom Nyamwaya
and Lynn Heinisch, Tommy Lee and his International Rescue
Committee colleague, Andrea De Domenico, Father Leon and
his fellow Missionaries from the Order of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus, and Michel Bonnardeaux and his colleagues from
MONUC, Marie-France Heliere, Ann Barnes, Robert Powell,
Commander Jorge Wilson and Lieutenant Commander Sazali
Yusoff. I also owe thanks to others who cannot be named for
reasons of security and whose names had to be changed in the
text.

During my research I received help from many including Paul
Salopek, Rae Simkin, Kate Nicholls, jean de Dieu Wassoo, Robert
Mwinyihali, Franck Meriau, Ambassador Bene M'Poko, Gaston
Ntambo, Gerald Sadleir, Paul Connolly, John Loubser, Nick
Alexander, James Astill and Jason Stearns.

And the long leg of the journey that began after I returned from
the Congo was made possible by the love and support of Lisette
and Stanley Butcher, Patrick and Marilyn Flanagan, Anthea
Stephens and Stuart Huntley; the backing of kindred spirits at the
Daily Telegraph; the courage of Camilla Hornby at Curtis Brown, and the skill of Rebecca Carter and Poppy Hampson at Chatto &
Windus.

Finally, my eternal thanks and love to Jane for her unstinting
enthusiasm and to Kit, who joined us halfway through the
writing, for being such a good sleeper.

p.viii Maps by Paul Simmons

p.30 Drawing of the Lady Alice taken from H.M. Stanley's
Through the Dark Continent, 1878, Sampson Low,
Marston & Company

p.52 Advertisements from The Guide to South and East Africa
(for the Use of Tourists, Sportsmen, Invalids and Settlers),
1915, Sampson Low, Marston & Company

p.118 Drawings of east Congolese hairstyles taken from H.M.
Stanley's book, as above

p.154 Photograph of European explorer crossing eastern Congo,
circa 1913, taken from Andre Pilette's A Travers L'Afrique
Equatoriale, 1914, Oscar Lamberty

p.212 Drawing of Stanley Falls taken from H.M. Stanley's book,
as above

p.232 Poster for the film The African Queen, 1951. With kind
permission of ITC PLC (Granada Int'L)/LFI.

p.254 Drawing of the lowest cataract in the Stanley Falls, taken
from H.M. Stanley's book, as above

p.292 Drawing of a Pike, taken from H.M. Stanley's book, as
above

For more pictures, see www.bloodriver.co.uk