Mar 20, 2013

Africa


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.

For those interested Blood River: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-River-Journey-Africas-Broken/dp/0099494280

1 comment:

Bronwen said...

I loved his book about Sierra Leone and Liberia: Chasing the Devil