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September 08, 2008

Blood River

My review of Tim Butcher's Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart runs in the Sept./Oct./Nov. issue of Bookforum. Butcher was the Telegraph's Africa correspondent when he set out, in 2004, to retrace H.M. Stanley's 1874-77 journey along the Congo River. It's almost as dangerous a trip now as it was back then, and it takes guts to attempt it.

The corruption, misery, and decay that Butcher encountered along the way makes for eye-opening reading about what's happened to the country post-independence. (It's not pretty.) But I had some quarrels with the book as travel lit. A bad trip isn't the same thing as a good story. More worrisome to me was Butcher's decision, at the end of the book, to issue a continent-wide call for "the people of Africa" to take responsibility for their postcolonial problems. Just how far have we come since the imperialist generalizations of 130 years ago?

Posted at 01:04 PM in Adventurers | | Comments (0)

August 27, 2008

Small Wages. Bitter Cold.

No, it's not a job in journalism. The Guardian reports that some intrepid Brits are looking for a hardy soul to accompany them to the South Pole in honor of the 100th anniversary of Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod expedition:

A hundred years after the appearance of one of the strangest and least enticing advertisements in newspaper history - "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success" - a single brave soul is being sought to shuffle along in the heroic footsteps of Ernest Shackleton.

Shackleton's probably my favorite polar explorer, neither dour (Amundsen) nor doomed (Scott). The 2008 expedition includes Shackleton's great-grandson and other descendants of members of the original crew, and they're likely to have a slightly easier time of it than their predecessors did. Tempted? Apply here.


Posted at 07:11 AM in Adventurers | | Comments (0)