Folly and Madness in the Congo

 

 

A review of The Last Expedition – Stanley’s Mad Journey through the Congo by Daniel Liebowitz and Charles Pearson, W. W. Norton, NY, 2005.

 The popular facts - In 1886 word began to spread that Emin Pasha, a German national who was the governor of Equatoria Province of Egyptian Sudan, was under siege by Mahdi jihadists who in 1885 had executed British Governor General Charles Gordon and stuck his head on a pole in Khartoum. The British public was outraged by this atrocity so rallied to support the relief of Gordon’s last remaining lieutenant.  Because the Mahdists controlled the Nile, an overland expedition was conceived designed to resupply Emin Pasha and to offer him an escape from the marauding jihadists. The best-known explorer of Africa, Henry Morton Stanley, was designated to lead the expedition.

It began to go wrong from the beginning.  The major decision that backfired was Stanley’s bullheaded determination to approach Equatoria from the west, that is starting at the Atlantic Ocean. The shorter alternative was from the east along the slave caravan trails from Zanzibar.  Stanley’s iron will prevailed and the column of nearly a thousand men – nine Europeans, some Sudanese soldiers, some Somali fighters and hundreds of Zanzibari porters, augmented by hundreds of African carriers – both hired and enslaved – began the 2000-mile journey from the mouth of the Congo River, up the river and its Aruwimi tributary. They hacked through hundreds of miles of oppressive, dank, dark, wet jungle to Lake Albert. Beginning in March 1887, they sought to transport hundreds of tons of ammunition, weaponry, and supplies as well as an eighty-foot-long metal boat. Materiel was divided into sixty-pound loads carried by men. Those who survived the rigors of the journey finally arrived at the Lake in December 1887.

The going was hell. Rivers became impassable. The Ituri jungle was impenetrable, and native tribes, including pygmies, cannibals, and indigenous slavers, were hostile. Harassment and conflict plagued the column. Food ran out and little was available. Men starved, were wounded, weakened, and became susceptible to disease. Hundreds died. Stanley badgered and berated his officers. He brutalized slackers and laggards, and had thieves and deserters hung. Given the almost insurmountable obstacles, it is amazing that the column crept onwards, seemingly empowered by Stanley’s unbending will.

Upon finally reaching Lake Albert, the southernmost part of Equatoria, Stanley and Emin Pasha finally met.  Each privately recognized the irony of Pasha rescuing Stanley rather than the other way around.  However, Pasha exercised diminishing control over his Egyptian troops who, at first, refused to believe that their sovereign the Khedive of Egypt had abandoned them.  Secondly, they opted to rebel against Pasha and his so-called savior Stanley. Pasha was a weak, indecisive administrator and while he dithered, Stanley returned into the forest to reclaim what was left of his rear column and supplies. That took a year!

Finally, back at Lake Albert Stanley set a deadline and Pasha realized he had no option. He had to leave. Another huge column set out for Zanzibar. This column moved excruciatingly slowly as well but did not suffer from the horrors of the jungle. Twelve hundred miles later on December 4, 1889, they arrived at Bagamoyo, on the Indian Ocean coast across from Zanzibar Island.  There during a joyful welcoming dinner celebration, Emin Pasha unwittingly stepped out of a second story window and smashed his head on the stones below. (Pasha survived but never left Africa). Stanley, who had more than enough of the dithering gentle soul, left him and returned to a tumultuous reception in England. 

Reality – The authors of this book recount the facts of the expedition but reveal the maneuvering, the backbiting, the antagonisms, the politics, the scheming, the betrayals, the bravery, the motives, the competence, the incompetence, and the character of all involved. The first narrative of the expedition was Stanley’s best seller In Darkest Africa. In that book Stanley painted himself as hero and protagonist without peers. In fact, Stanley was aloof, selfish, and haunted by his humble origins. He was motivated by the prospects for fame and fortune. He focused on results. He had no friends or colleagues on the expedition, only subordinates.

Later publications of letters, diaries and memoirs by his British companions cast considerable doubt on Stanley’s version of events, especially his leadership and management styles. The authors of the book used the various accounts of the expedition throughout the saga to paint an authentic portrait of the expedition, of its people, of the hardships, and of the decisions made and not made.  Especially revealing are the roles that Stanley’s British subordinates played. Indeed, without them – and Stanley gave them little credit in his opus – the expedition would not have survived.  Major Barttelot, William Bonny, James Jameson, Arthur Jephson, Dr. Parke, Lt. Stairs, Herbert Ward, and even notorious Arab slaver Tippu Tib, all played important roles in the expedition’s various fortunes.  Consequently, The Last Expedition provides contemporary readers with an accurate recitation of the reality of the expedition to rescue Emin Pasha. It is terrific readable history!

Afterword – Readers will note various citations, not just from Stanley, but from others mentioned above, employed to underline points in the text. Indeed, as the authors later explain, in the years after the expedition was completed, the contrasting points of view provided fodder for Britian’s popular press. The sanctimonious anti-Stanley hoopla certainly tarnished his reputation but could not refute the fact that he was the 19^th century’s most intrepid explorer.  

Murder in Central Africa

 

A review of The Soul Murderer by Timothy Lenderking. 

This novel set in a fictious country that closely resembles Equatorial Guinea tells an embellished tale of men with fictious names who were involved in a murder inside the U.S. embassy. The real event happened in 1971 after which principal officer Alfred Erdos was convicted of stabbing to death his administrative assistant, Donald Leahy. Author Lenderking’s telling of the story tracks the facts even though he goes way beyond them to enhance the plot, fill in backgrounds of the victim and murderer and their families, plus spin new elements into the turbid and never completely understood saga. The author adds twists and turns to the event – as if it weren’t sensational enough on its merits – that transform a good foreign service story into an interesting novel. It is worth a read. 

Wonderous Feet, Remarkable Journey!

 

A review of Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gapah, Simon Shuster, NY.

 

This imaginative and intriguing novel relates tales from the group of Africans who accompanied and/or were employed by Dr. David Livingstone on his final voyage into central Africa.  Livingstone died while on the journey. His team debated before deciding to carry his body, his maps, and papers fifteen hundred miles across forbidding terrain to the coast so that everything, especially the corpse, could be returned to England.

The novel is written in the voices of Livingstone’s companions. First his cook Halima, who cynically observes all around her, their foibles and motives. Secondly, the pious Jacob Wainright who struggles between leadership, Christian morality, and his own failings. Truly, these voices see Africa from their own perspective, and with great insight.  The mystery that is never satisfactorily unraveled is why? Why cart a desiccated corpse for months? Plausible explanations are offered as to why this disparate group would undertake such an arduous journey – loyalty, devotion to the doctor, fear, superstition, Christian faith, confidence in each other – but there is no definitive summation, just the complexities of what they did.

The plot aside, the novel offers a realistic glimpse of Africa in the latter part of the Nineteenth century. The slave trade was ever present. Its terror loomed over the land. Territories and villages were controlled by warlords or chiefs.  Negotiations were necessary for all travel, and no one could be hurried. The group dynamics of the bearers are intrinsic to the story.  The author invents marvelous scenarios of how they coped with the task before them and with each other.   

Author Gapah, a Zimbabwean, has done a remarkable job of weaving together the strands of known history with the fictional reality of how they did it. Out of Darkness, Shining Light is an impressive read.    

Kudos for Finding Kony

 

Robert Gribbin, Finding Kony: A Novel.  A review by Alan G. Johnston.  Note:  both Robert Gribbin and Alan Johnston were in the Peace Corps group that arrived in Kenya in October 1968.  They both spent many years in Africa.

 

On March 5, 2012, a U.S.-based NGO, Invisible Children, Inc., released a short documentary film called Kony 2012.  The intent of the film, meant for world-wide distribution, was to make the infamous Ugandan warlord, Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), so famous that he couldn’t hide.  The goal was to have him arrested and brought to justice by the end of 2012. The film quickly went viral, garnering more than 100 million views and becoming the most “liked” video on YouTube.

The film highlights the announcement by Barack Obama in October 2011 that the U.S. would be sending 100 Special Forces military advisors to assist the Ugandan Defense Force in the search for Kony.  The African Union quickly authorized a force of 5,000 military from Uganda, D.R. Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan to carry out the hunt for Kony, with communications, intelligence, and logistics support from the U.S. advisors. By this time, Kony and his LRA had fled from Uganda to somewhere in Central Africa.

In the end, the hunt proved futile, although the LRA as a fighting force was greatly diminished.  By April 2017 the United States concluded that the LRA no longer posed a threat to Uganda and the Special Forces were withdrawn.  This is where Robert Gribbin and his new novel, Finding Kony, steps in.  He calls on his protagonist, freelance journalist Paul Simmons, to take over the search.  Gribbin calls on his lengthy experience throughout Central Africa to provide an authentic context for this dangerous adventure.  We have met Simmons before as he risked his lifetime after time pursuing stories in South Sudan during a civil war (in Serpent of the Nile).  He is a Black American former Peace Corps Volunteer and now freelance journalist based in Mombasa, Kenya.  Once again, he gets himself into some very tricky positions interviewing victims of LRA atrocities in Uganda in search of hints as to how to find Kony. He eventually heads off first to Chad and then by land through Sudan into Central Africa, illegally crossing more than one border, in his search to find and interview Kony to find out what Kony has to say about his goals and motivations.

Gribbin is particularly adept at providing a realistic and convincing picture of the complex environment of embassies, customs and immigration agencies, UN organizations, peace-keeping forces, NGOs, traditional leaders, and para-military groups.  It is clear that Gribbin has visited refugee camps and knows his way around the isolated and dusty towns and villages through which his fictional journalist must track his quarry.

This is a tale of adventure intertwined with real world humanitarian issues and the quest for justice.  The International Criminal Court has indicted Kony for crimes against humanity.  Is that case any closer to being resolved?

4/17/2023

 

Finding Kony is here!

 I am pleased to announce the publication of my newest novel. It is entitled Finding Kony. Obviously, for folks knowledgeable about Africa, it is a story about Joseph Kony, the now long-missing messianic leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Under Kony's leadership the LRA arose in the mid-1980s to challenge Museveni's takeover of the Acholi homeland in northern Uganda. Channeling spirits, Kony appealed both to Acholi mysticism as well as their fear of Museveni's army to rally thousands to his cause. Despite initial success, LRA fortunes soon waned. Consequently, it turned to terrorism - violence against civilians, mutilations, pillaging homesteads, and kidnapping of children compelling them to become fighters or sexual slaves. Such actions soiled the LRA in the eyes of the world and it became a pariah. Yet it remained a fearful opponent.

After resolution of the civil war in neighboring Sudan in 2005, the LRA fled west from Uganda into desolate regions of southern Sudan, the Congo and the Central African Republic.  A military force from affected states joined by the United States carried the fight to those regions. Over the years under pressure the LRA wasted away and became defunct, but Kony, who had been indicted by the International Criminal Court, was never apprehended. He is still out there.   

This is the framework for my novel. My hero, Paul Simmons, a freelance journalist based in Kenya, pursues a quest to find Kony, and to interview him. Along the way he learns much about Kony, about the LRA, its victims, and its adherents. Complementing Paul's efforts is a parallel plot of murders in contemporary Uganda. It all eventually comes together even as Paul heads into the wilds of western Sudan on the trail of the elusive general.

The book is available from Amazon.com in both ebook and paperback.  Enjoy

Opportunity: If any readers of this blog volunteer to write and post a review of the book on Amazon or elsewhere, let me know in the comment section below and I'll send you a copy.

 

Explorers' Trials and Tribulations in the Search for the Nile

 

River of the Gods – Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, by Candice Millard, Doubleday, NY, 2022.

 

River of the Gods is an in-depth investigation into the lives and psyches of explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke.  The author did an astonishing amount of research and artfully employs quotations and citations from hundreds of letters, journals, and official records from the era.  The sheer amount of material available gives evidence to a pre-electronic culture where people wrote things down.

The two protagonists in this epic were men of strong views and towering egos. They connected first in an effort to explore the Horn of Africa. Failures and misunderstandings there festered for years and resurfaced later when the two joined to find the source of the Nile. Departing from Zanzibar with a huge caravan of porters, they headed into the interior of what is now Tanzania. Their safari was rife with obstacles, bad weather, insects, desertions, hostility from indigenous tribes, sickness, and inadequate supplies. Once on the shores of Lake Tanganyika they were determined to prove that it had a northern outlet which was the Nile.  They were unable to make that determination. Exhausted in spirit and body, and out of supplies they began the trek back to the coast.  While Burton lay ill, Speke mounted a trek to a northern lake.  He subsequently spotted Lake Victoria, which he named in honor of his queen, and proclaimed it the source of the Nile.

Returning to England the two bickered openly about the facts. Ultimately Speke was funded for a second expedition to determine the truth. Accompanied by James Grant he did circle Lake Victoria and verified that the Nile exited from it.  Even so, Burton and Speke’s personalities and standing in society continued to clash leading to a planned public debate in England on the issues. However, on the day prior to the encounter, Speke died in a hunting accident.

The value of this book is not so much its recitation of the facts of the explorers’ journeys, which have been well described elsewhere over the years, but in the in depth look at the personalities of the two men – their foibles, passions, strengths, and prejudices.  It is a fascinating study.

I have, however, several quibbles with the book. First the cover contains a photograph of Murchinson Falls on the Nile, a sight that neither Burton nor Speke ever saw.  Why imply that they did? Secondly, the author refers throughout to the lake as Lake Victoria Nyanza without noting that ‘Nyanza’ is a local term for lake. So, Lake Victoria Nyanza is ‘Lake Victoria Lake.’  Finally, she neglected to tell the after-the-fact story that the British colonial government erected a statue of Speke overlooking Owen Falls, where the Nile begins, with a plaque stating that Speke was the first man to ever see that sight. Shortly after independence the new Ugandan government dismantled the monument noting that Ugandans had been seeing the sight for centuries.

My quibbles aside, this is a book worth reading.

 

Abduction in the Serengeti

 

A review of The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian, Doubleday, NY, 2022

 

This novel is a thriller with an ostensibly simple plot. A group of movie stars is kidnapped while on safari in the Serengeti in 1964.  Alternating between flashbacks (mostly boring) to key moments in their lives, the protagonists struggle with their captors against the backdrop of vicious wild animals. Death lurks on all sides – from ruthless Russian captors or leopards, snakes, or hyenas. Plenty of people die.

The Africa setting, that is descriptions of the game reserve park are accurate, but geography is way off – equating an easy drive, for example, from the Serengeti to Albertville, Congo. Oops! that is hundreds of miles distant and there is a huge lake in the way.  The motive for kidnapping slowly leaks out as the novel moves forward. It is implausible, but it does keep the tale going. Afterall this is fiction.

The author inaccurately described a wrecked land rover when one character insists that another roll up the windows, so the dead inside won’t be eaten by scavengers.  Land rovers in the 1960s all had sliding windows, not roll-ups.  Similarly, the author describes a leopard attack that probably could never occur. But again, cut him some slack. It is fiction.

As improbably as the story is, I enjoyed the novel.