Blood River is a fantastic and truly impressive book. Almost two decades after its initial publication, Tim Butcher’s distillation of history and his observations made travelling the most dangerous country on earth remain incredibly informative and sadly relevant.
In Blood River, Butcher recounts his forty-four day journey across the Democratic Republic of Congo, recreating the route charted by Henry Morton Stanley (the first European to ever chart the mighty river) in the 1870s. The picture Butcher assembles of the Congo is astounding. Put simply, he says of the country: “The normal laws of development are inverted here in the Congo. The forest, not the town offers the safest sanctuary, and it is grandfathers who have been more exposed to modernity than their grandchildren. I can think of nowhere else on the planet where the same can be true.”
Butcher’s journey begins in the east of the country, a region subsumed by chaos and violence. From Butcher’s arrival in Kalemia, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, until he arrives in Kindu, the journey is one over land. This horrifying motorcycle ride through the jungle features everything from roadside gunmen to villages sprinkled with human bones to encounters with honest, hardworking Congolese traders who risk starvation and murder to walk hundreds of kilometers through untamed bush, dragging palm oil or cheap fabric with them just to make a pittance. The next leg of the journey, down the Upper Congo River, eventually finds Butcher languishing miserably in Kisangani, just one of many examples of Congo’s crumbling cities consumed by corruption and dysfunction, so much so that Butcher develops a mantra that in Congo, cities are bad and open spaces are good. The journey from Kisangani to Mbandaka, and ultimately to Kinshasa and the Atlantic Coast goes by much more quickly as Butcher is able to trace Stanley’s route by boat, helicopter, and car.
While the threat of dehydration, execution, or even being eaten alive by a colony of Congolese ants gradually recedes as Butcher makes his way west, the narrative does not get any less compelling. His observations are eye-opening and his discussions with the locals, aid workers, and clergymen he meets along the way will force readers to think deeply about the history of the Congo, how things could have gone differently, and who can and should take responsibility for the country’s future. And the truly compelling angle this book presents is that the answer is not always what you may think. Butcher makes it very clear that the crises roiling the Congo run so much deeper and are so much more complicated than what a simple anti-colonial diagnosis can offer. Butcher’s book weaves together an analysis of history, geopolitics, and culture, to try to explain why the Congo he encountered in the early twenty-first century was “a country where [he] had seen human bones lying too thick on the ground to be given a decent burial; where a stranger like [him] was implored to adopt a child to save him from a life of disease, hunger, and misery; and where some people are so desperate they actually pined for the old and brutal order of Belgian colonial life.”
Blood River is one of those books that you can pick up with very limited knowledge of the subject matter and come out feeling like you have been well-educated and also inspired to keep learning more. Butcher’s tale is a thrilling and moving snapshot of a failed state that has earned its title as the birthplace of the very concept of “crimes against humanity,” of devastating tragedies, and of the simultaneous strength and fragility of the human spirit. Some parts of the narrative itself are less exciting than others, but I suppose it goes with the territory, but I was never bored, and even before I finished the book I found myself looking up more recent statistics, news stories, and images of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and taking mental notes of additional material I hope to read, such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost.
The Once and Future Lit 