In 2009, a friend loaned me a book, Blood River, A Journey to Africa’s Broken
Heart, by Tim Butcher, a British journalist. The book was about Butcher’s, (in
his own words “foolhardy”, in others “suicidal”) attempt to retrace the journey
of the Telegraph journalist, Henry Stanley, in tracking down David Livingstone
in the Congo in 1871. Despite being named a Richard and Judy bookclub book, it
is actually quite brilliant! Butcher travels overland through an inhospitable
and, most often, menacing terrain, writing about the country, its history, the current conflict (thousands dying every day and no one seemed to notice), the
people (he meets a guy in the middle of the jungle taking his goods to sell on
a bicycle) and development, or its retreat. At one point he stands in the
middle of the jungle (everywhere is the middle of the jungle), and describes
how 50 years ago, beneath his feet, was a railroad, the metal tracks now either
stolen, or covered up by the encompassing jungle. It is probably, he writes,
and I paraphrase as I no longer have the book, the only place in the world
where a country has fallen so far backward so quickly.
Some critics see elements of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in Blood River, in that it sort of chronicles
one man’s struggle to see how far he can push himself, how deep he can go into
his own darkness, and there are indeed moments of despair, of illness and
malaria, of fear at what might happen, where he feels he cannot go on, but he does …
Anyway. I was riveted and so when I handed
it back to my friend and he asked what I thought, I said: “I want to go to the
Congo”. And he replied: "You are the only person I know who would be inspired to go there
after reading that book.”
But there you go. I don't know why I was inspired, but I was. I can’t remember when I first started thinking about Africa, although I
have a latent memory of knowing, or thinking I knew, that kids in South Africa
lived in rubbish bins, but perhaps that was one of those didactic stories told
by parents: “What? You want your own room? You’re lucky to live in a house. Think
about those children in South Africa who have to live in rubbish bins ….”
But of course, growing up British in the
70s and 80s, the romance of colonial Africa was part of our culture. There was Born Free, the tear-jerker film about
the British couple who raised an orphaned lioness in Kenya and then set her
free in the wilderness. And books such as Karen Blixen/Isak Dineksen’s Out of Africa, and certainly as a girl,
my favourite, Elspeth Huxley’s memoirs of growing up in Kenya, Flame Trees of Thika, and the Mottled Lizard.
I didn’t think much about Africa after
that. But then in 1994, I was sitting in a small bar on Koh Tao, an island off
the coast of Thailand, having just come up from a dive, and relaxing with a
beer. I picked up a copy of Time magazine,
weeks out of date of course, and flicked through it: “The Killing Fields of
Rwanda” was the main story. Below
is an excerpt from that article, taken from the Time website.
“As the tales
of murder began to filter out, it became clear that there were no sanctuaries:
blood flowed down the aisles of churches where many sought refuge; five priests
and 12 women hiding out in a Jesuit center were slaughtered. A Red Cross
ambulance was stopped at a checkpoint, the six wounded patients dragged out and
bayoneted to death. Toddlers lay sliced in half, and mothers with babies
strapped to their backs sprawled dead on the streets of Kigali.”
I remember sitting there, reading and
crying. “Why has no one done anything? Why am I only reading about this now?” was
what I thought at the time.
It is one of the moments that you reach
back to and with hindsight can recognised that something changed in you. I knew
then that that’s what I wanted to do; I wanted to write those stories, although
I didn’t know why. I went back to
the UK, I trained as a journalist and I started to report on the stories which I
thought went underreported.
I travelled and worked my way through South
East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, and for the most part I loved what
I did. But then, while working at the National in Abu Dhabi, something felt
flat, and I felt that I had lost my connection to humanity. And then my friend
gave me Tim Butcher’s book, and there it was again: Africa.
I applied for a job working for Journalist
for Human Rights, in Liberia, West Africa. JHR is an NGO that trains local
journalists. I got through to the second round of interviews. I saw a psychic,
who told me I would get the job, told me she could see me in Africa (actually
she said a country beginning with A, which technically means Angola, if we are
talking on the continent) and I was ready to go. But I didn’t get it. I demanded my money back from the
psychic.
Then I planned a trip to Namibia. I would
spend three weeks over my birthday, driving through the red, red desert and up
into Etosha National Park where I would see giraffes, a dream of mine. And
then, out of the blue, I was offered a job in Afghanistan. Africa, again put on
hold.
In Kabul, a friend and I sat in our garden, drinking champagne, and
talked about my future. I confessed to the DR Congo dream, and we agreed,
drunkenly, I would go there, in fact, we agreed I would just show up, without
any work. I thought that a bit rash, and stored the thought. Instead, I
returned to the UK to study international development, thinking Africa would
surely be a focus. But it always seemed to slip away. I told everyone I wanted to go to Africa, but they said I
would end up in China.
It wasn’t until my course ended that Africa
began to look like a reality. I made the leap to come to South Sudan, and I
managed to get some consultancy work with UNESCO. But it never felt
sustainable. But last week, after
three interviews over five months, and a rather humbling test, I was offered a
job with BBC Media Action, the charitable arm of the BBC, as a project manager
for a girls education programme. I will help to create programmes to convince families it's a good thing to educate a girl.
It’s a two-year position that will start in
May, just as the UNESCO one finishes. So, this is it. Maybe I
should return the money to the psychic.
1 comment:
I loved his book about Sierra Leone and Liberia: Chasing the Devil
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