Blood River by Tim Butcher

Author:Tim Butcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446420935
Publisher: Random House

7.

Up a River Without a Paddle

Abandoned paddle-steamer, upper Congo River, August 2004

I WISH I could say my first glimpse of the upper reaches of the Congo River was a moment of dramatic revelation. For days spent clinging to the back of various motorbikes and plodding up hills through Katanga and Maniema, I had tried to picture the scene when I reached the river. In my imagination I hoped for an instant when the rainforest would fall away from a craggy hilltop to reveal, spread out before me, Africa’s mightiest river churning through rapids, cloudy with spray, as it gathered itself for a 2,500-kilometre descent to the Atlantic.

I was disappointed. The moment came during another long day of motorbiking as we picked our way along a section of track not noticeably different from the 600 kilometres that went before. We simply turned a corner and there, unheralded, in front of me, lay one of the natural wonders of the world. The object of so much mystery for generations of outsiders, and the thing that had fired my imagination through years of research, oozed lazily downstream between two thickly forested banks almost a kilometre apart. The midday sun was directly overhead, my least favourite time of day in the Congo when all the colours of the trees are washed out and the heat is at its most suffocating. In the flat light, the river appeared viscous and still. Conrad likened the river to a serpent uncoiling right across Africa. In these upper reaches, the snake was fat and lifeless.

I struggled to recognise Stanley’s lyrical description of his first sight of the river:

A secret rapture filled my soul as I gazed upon the majestic stream. The great mystery that for all these centuries Nature had kept hidden away from the world of science was waiting to be solved. For two hundred and twenty miles I had followed one of the sources to the confluence and now before me lay the superb river itself! My task was to follow it to the Ocean.

I was vainly searching for the rapture in my soul when our track petered out on the river bank. My first encounter with the Congo River and it was already an obstacle. Our track continued over on the other bank and there were no boats in sight.

I watched as Odimba propped the bike on its stand and went off to negotiate with a group of men sitting in the shade of some nearby trees. Odimba was quiet, even shy, in comparison with Benoit, but over the days we spent biking together I found him utterly reliable. To be entrusted with one of Care International’s precious motorbikes was a matter of prestige and Odimba responded with pride. He looked after the bike meticulously, insisted on not sharing the riding with me, and rode with great skill in spite of appalling conditions. Sometimes I would notice that his eyes were rheumy and sore. The concentration needed to avoid obstacles was intense and all day long his straining eyes were bombarded with dust and tiny insects.

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