Butcher - Blood River: the Terrifying Journey Through The Worlds Most Dangerous Country

Praise for Blood River:

Some travel is inspired, some courageous, some insane. And every now and then someone undertakes a trek that is all three, as happened when Butcher traveled the length of the Congo River.... A gripping account of [Butchers] perilous journey through the heart of Africa and its embattled people.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Devastating yet strangely exhilarating ... [Butchers] tale is chock-a-block with gruesome details about the brutal Belgian rule of the late-nineteenth century as well as the casual disregard for life on the contemporary scene. Part travelogue, part straight-forward reportage, Butchers story is a full-throated lament for large-scale human potential wasted with no reasonable end in sight.

Publishers Weekly

A masterful description of a country moving backward.

Foreign Affairs

Full of well-drawn vignettes... Read this book for valuable lessons in how noble ambitions fall in the absence of accountability, how corruption destroys hope, and how collapsing societies default to atrocious violence. I recommend it.

New York Post

A satisfying real-life adventure.

The Wall Street Journal

An intrepid adventure. In making and describing this journey, Tim Butcher has followed in the footsteps of Stanley and Conrad. It takes a lot of guys to yomp through the Congo and he obviously has plenty of those. But it is the wit and passion of the writing that keeps you engrossed.

Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland

Tim Butcher deserves a medal for this crazy feat. I marvel at his courage and his empathy with the unfortunate Congolese when he reenacted Stanleys appalling journey across the continent.

Thomas Pakenham, author of The Scramble for Africa

This is a terrific book, an adventure story about a journey of great bravery in one of the worlds most dangerous places. It keeps the heart beating and the attention fixed from beginning to end.

Fergal Keane, author of Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey

Gripping.

Esquire

Its a fine book, and I greatly enjoyed it. Its a story of the extraordinary courage, tenacity, and endurance of two men: H. M. Stanley and Tim Butcher, who wrote it. The DR Congo is one of the most dangerous and unpredictable countries on Earth, and to have penetrated into the depths of its darkness and described it so fully is a great achievement. It even left me with more of an affection for Stanley than I have ever felt before. As for Butcher, I have nothing but admiration for him.

John Simpson, author of Simpsons World: Dispatches from the Front Line

A grim and gripping read.

Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times (London)

From his adventure, [Butcher] has plundered a wealth of terrific stories and survived to recite a rosary of unstinting horror.

Nicholas Shakespeare, The Daily Telegraph

Butchers twenty-first century eye gives a whole new slant on [Stanleys] African expedition.

Sunday Express

Both stirring and thought-provoking.

Anthony Daniels, The Sunday Telegraph

What makes Blood River such a compelling read is the fact that the journey becomes an exercise in mental terror, the author skillfully conveying the exhaustion of six weeks on tenterhooks, wondering what might happen just around the next bend.

Jim Blackburn, Wanderlust

A remarkable travelogue of exquisite proportions... nothing short of a modern-day masterpiece.

Aesthetica Magazine

It throws light on a place that lives in such extreme darkness, most of us have lost sight of it completely. In doing so it reminds us that travel writing can still be exciting, uncompromising, and politically relevant.

Anthony Sattin, The Spectator

Butchers account of his journey down the Blood River is terrific in every sense.... It is an extraordinarily compelling book by a talented writer with something to sayand I suspect that Conrad would have liked it very much indeed.

Geographical Magazine

Blood River

The Terrifying Journey Through the Worlds Most Dangerous Country

Tim Butcher

Copyright 2008 by Tim Butcher

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

First Published in Great Britain in 2007 by
Chatto & Windus
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V2SA

Printed in the United States of America

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4909-2

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

For Jane

I stirred in the pre-dawn chill, my legs pedalling for bedclothes kicked away earlier when the tropical night was at its clammiest. I could hear African voices singing to a drum beat coming from somewhere outside the room, but my view was fogged by the mosquito net, and all I could make out around me were formless shadows. Slowly and carefully, so as to not to anger them, I reached for the sheet balled next to my knees. It stank of old me and insect-repellent as I drew it over my shoulders. I was not just looking for warmth. I wanted protection. Outside was the Congo and I was terrified.

On the grubby floor next to the bed, my kit lay ready in the dark. There were my boots with their clunky tread and sandy suede uppers. Two thousand dollars were hidden in each, counted carefully the day before, folded into plastic bags and tucked under the insoles. There was my rucksack, packed and repacked several more times for reassurance with my single change of clothes, a heavy fleece, survival bag and eight bottles of filtered water. Explorers who first took on the Congo in the nineteenth century brought with them small armies bearing the latest European firearms and the best available medicines to protect against ebola, leprosy, smallpox and other fatal endemic diseases. The only protection I carried was a penknife and a packet of baby-wipes.

I was in a large town called Kalemie, but all was dark outside. It lies on the Congos eastern approaches, a port city on the edge of Lake Tanganyika, once connected by boat with Tanzania, Zambia and the world beyond. Forty years of decay have turned it into a disease-ridden ruin and its decrepit hydroelectric station could barely muster a flicker. As with the rest of this huge country, the locals in Kalemie have long since learned to regard electrical power as a rare blessing, not a permanent right.

Now too anxious to sleep, I got up and dressed, taking special care not to ruck the dollars as I slipped on my boots. The charcoal burner, used to warm the gluey brick of rice I had eaten the previous night, glowed as I unlocked the double padlock on the back door and pushed open the crudely-welded security gate. I was staying in a bleak building, cloudy with mosquitoes and lacking running water, but the fact that it housed an American aid group made it a target in a country where acute poverty makes lawlessness routine. Against the lightening sky in the east I could make out a crude line of jagged bottle fragments cemented to the top of the high perimeter wall.