The author is a journalist. And that is a good thing. He knew how to write. He has been writing about conflict areas in various parts of the world, so he knew what he was getting himself into. This is not one travel blogger wanting to just write about the "real Congo". Rather, his motivation is different. He wanted to follow the path of Henry Morton Stanley, who took the route following the Congo River from the east all the way to its end at the Atlantic Ocean. And boy this was one heck of an adventure. After all, this is one of the most dangerous areas of the world to travel through, given all of the circumstances.
And as I progressed through the book, I actually learned a lot more about Congolese history. I learned about how the Congo Free State was back then the personal property of the Belgian monarch, and only later was it converted to a colony of Belgium. I learned about all the oppression that the Belgian colonisers have imposed on the land. I also learned about the Congolese independence in 1960, and how it descended into chaos as Mobutu Sese Seko has usurped power. I learned about his personality cult, and how he murdered his enemies while chartering Concorde flights to Paris just to do a shopping trip, and in order to fly in expensive champagne to be drunk in palaces he built in the middle of the jungle. And I learned about how so many Congolese people are now in poverty.
I learned about the massive rampant corruption. I suppose if you're only earning one USD a day, then it is not surprising that you try to stack your pockets will money every time you have the opportunity to do so, especially when you see a foreigner walking down the street. The thing is, the author traveled there in 2004, and you would think that there would be economic development that improves the country. Yet as the author remarked, in Congo, it seems that time goes backward and not forward. It was a more modern experience if one visited in the 1950s compared to the 2000s.
Overall, I learned a lot about an unknown part of the world from this book. And no, I definitely do not want to travel there. Reading this book fills that gap though. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
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