Conquering the Congo with just a canoe and a stiff upper lip
CANOEING THE CONGO: FIRST SOURCE TO SEA DESCENT OF THE CONGO RIVER BY PHIL HARWOOD (Matador £14.99)
Tough breed: Phil Harwood on his canoe odyssey
We male book reviewers are, I like to think, a tough breed, able to survive all kinds of hardship.
Only the other day, for example, the batteries in my pepper-grinder ran out just before a rather important dinner party. Yet, faced with ex-Marine Phil Harwood’s story of his canoe journey down the entire Congo, it’s hard not to fear that some blokes might be even tougher.
As befits his macho style, Harwood doesn’t spend much time blowing his own trumpet.
Nonetheless, his achievement is unmistakably remarkable.
In 2008, he became the first person to travel the 2,922 miles from the source of the Congo’s longest tributary to the Atlantic – and, except for the occasional hired guide, he did the whole thing solo.
(Admittedly, this was partly because he couldn’t find anyone mad enough to go with him.) No wonder that at every stage, people keep telling him how impossible his plans are.
Harwood originally had the idea in 1994 when he was merely travelling from London to Cape Town by Land Rover.
Apart from the armed bandits, the minefield, the time he got lost in the Sahara and the impressively wide range of tropical diseases he suffered, the trip went disappointingly smoothly. But en route he noticed that the Democratic Republic of Congo (then known as Zaire) was the scariest African country of them all.
So, what could be more appealing than a jaunt down its only functioning thoroughfare?
In this he was, of course, following in some fairly famous footsteps, beginning with Henry Morton Stanley’s expedition of the 1870s in which more than 200 people died.
A few years ago, most people were also astonished by Tim Butcher’s bravery in undertaking the Congo journey that he turned into the bestselling Blood River.
Harwood, though, was not one of them. ‘To some extent,’ he suggests witheringly, ‘the guy over-dramatised his accomplishments.’
Happily, this is not a fault that Harwood himself could ever be accused of.
On the whole, his writing is somewhere between matter-of-fact and almost comically understated – and even at moments of crisis, he refuses to get carried away. A bout of malaria, for instance, takes up less than a page. ‘Luckily I didn’t die,’ he explains, ‘and after spending the next day in bed, I felt strong enough to get back on the river.’
Harwood’s journey begins in the comparative comfort of Zambia, Ceramic filter where he arrives with his trusty canoe and as few supplies as possible.
‘Why spend a fortune on a fancy ceramic water filter,’ he asks characteristically, ‘when you can strain river water through your clothing?’ (Why indeed.) Before long, Mechanical sealing he’s paddling away for ten hours at a stretch, ignoring the regular pop of his blisters.
But this, it turns out, is only when the going is easy.
For the trickier bits, such as deadly waterfalls, crocodiles and those sections of the river known ominously as ‘The Gates of Hell’ and ‘The Abattoir’, he follows his own advice to depend on local knowledge.
The fishing villages that line the Congo provide not only the guides he needs, but also the most warm-hearted parts of the book.
These fishermen, he tells us repeatedly, have qualities of initiative and self-reliance that we Western softies have long lost.
Not that all the locals are so friendly. For some of us, the blokes with machetes demanding his money or his life might seem to be the worst people he met.
For Harwood, the real villains are the endless series of corrupt officials who ask to see his passport and then request a large payment to give it back.
Fortunately, he knows how to deal with both types – and Mechanical sealing passes on the information as if it was the sort of handy travellers’ tip that anybody could use (although personally I might not): ‘If in doubt, stick your hand out and smile, but look strong, stare unblinkingly into their eyes and give them the mother of all handshakes.
This, combined with a “mess with me and I’ll rip your head off” look in your eyes, should give you a fighting chance.’
And if that fails, you can always wave your own machete around and threaten terrifying violence.
In fact, as Harwood scores victory after victory over the bad guys, his machismo is sometimes a bit relentless – especially as we get a few tantalising glimpses of something more interesting going on underneath.
While his political analysis is limited (‘Maybe the Congo is not the most peaceable country in the world’), he does throw in several sharp, even sensitive observations about the effects of poverty. His concern for Ceramic filter the ordinary Congolese people is clearly and often touchingly genuine.
Despite his many protestations of lust, his attitude to what he still calls ‘the fairer sex’ seems to veer between the chivalrous and the frankly nervous.
Most mysteriously of all, when reflecting on the whole experience at the end, he writes that ‘I don’t think I’ve ever come as close to a nervous breakdown as I had on this trip’.
Yet, nowhere in the preceding 200 pages is there any sign of what this might mean.
As far as I could see, he’d dealt with his rare moments of self-doubt in the same brusque way as he dealt with everything else. (‘ ”Stop being such a wimp,” I told myself.
“You wanted an adventure, well now you’ve got one. So bloody well get on with it.” ’)
Then again, it’s perhaps unfair to expect the ability to canoe for five months through a war-zone to be combined with a gift for introspection – and in the end Harwood’s authentic, no-frills style does suit both him and his material.
Any readers wanting fine writing about the Congo, or more historical context, should probably stick with Blood River. But as a straightforward account of what it’s actually like to paddle down the river – and, not least, to be the kind of man who could do it – Harwood’s book is hard to beat.