Democratic Republic of Congo

Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo

In 2005 Kate Jackson ventured into the remote swamp forests of the northern Congo to collect reptiles and amphibians. Her camping equipment was rudimentary, her knowledge of Congolese customs even more so. She knew how to string a net and set a pitfall trap, but she never imagined the physical and cultural difficulties that awaited her.

Culled from the mud-spattered pages of her journals, Mean and Lowly Things reads like a fast-paced adventure story. It is Jackson’s unvarnished account of her research on the front lines of the global biodiversity crisis—coping with interminable delays in obtaining permits, learning to outrun advancing army ants, subsisting on a diet of Spam and manioc, and ultimately falling in love with the strangely beautiful flooded forest.

The reptile fauna of the Republic of Congo was all but undescribed, and Jackson’s mission was to carry out the most basic study of the amphibians and reptiles of the swamp forest: to create a simple list of the species that exist there—a crucial first step toward efforts to protect them. When the snakes evaded her carefully set traps, Jackson enlisted people from the villages to bring her specimens. She trained her guide to tag frogs and skinks and to fix them in formalin. As her expensive camera rusted and her Western soap melted, Jackson learned what it took to swim with the snakes—and that there’s a right way and a wrong way to get a baby cobra out of a bottle.

Heart of Darkness & Selections from The Congo Diary

With an Introduction by Caryl Phillips
Commentary by H.L. Mencken, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chiua Achebe, and Philip Gourevitch

"Heart of Darkness," which appeared at the very beginning of our century, was a Cassandra cry announcing the end of Victorian Europe, on the verge of transforming itself into the Europe of violence," wrote the critic Czeslaw Milosz.
        
Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring--and harrowing--works of fiction. Written several years after Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel tells the story of Marlow, a seaman who undertakes his own journey into the African jungle to find the tormented white trader Kurtz. Rich in irony and spellbinding prose, Heart of Darkness is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890--the first notes, in effect, for the novel which was composed at the end of that decade.
Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad, "His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash. . . .  He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life."

Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring--and harrowing--works of fiction. Written several years after Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel tells the story of Marlow, a seaman who undertakes his own journey into the African jungle to find the tormented white trader Kurtz. Rich in irony and spellbinding prose, Heart of Darkness is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890--the first notes, in effect, for the novel which was composed at the end of that decade.

The Ponds of Kalambayi

As a Peace Corp volunteer, Mr. Tidwell spent two years in the grasslands of south central Zaire trying to teach the benefits of fish farming in some of the poorest villages on the continent. His task was not easy. One villager was convinced that fish would stock the ponds naturally, since they come to earth in raindrops. Others suspected that the ponds were just another way for whites to exploit black labor. When he finally made headway, the fish farmers gave away nearly half their harvest to relatives, and Tidwell learned one of many powerful lessons: tradition takes precedence over profits. While the tragic poverty and disease faced by the villagers was daunting, Tidwell found that their adherence to heritage and their celebration of tiny triumphs and daily satisfactions revealed a life richer than he had ever known.

The Last Expedition: Stanley's Mad Journey Through the Congo

A noble rescue mission descends into a nightmare of cruelty, starvation, and cannibalism, bringing to a close the European exploration of Africa.

Henry Morton Stanley undertook the greatest African expedition of the nineteenth century to rescue Emin Pasha, last lieutenant of the martyred General Gordon and governor of the southern Sudan. Emin had been cut off by an Islamic jihad to the north and was at the mercy of brutal slave traders. Instead of ten months, the trip took three years and cost the lives of thousands of people, as Stanley's column hacked its way across the last great, unexplored territory in Africa.

Stanley's secret agenda was territorial expansion on the model of Leopold's Congo or the British East India Company, and what is revealed so vividly in the diaries of those who accompanied him is the dark underside of both the man and the colonial impulse. The expedition took whatever it wanted from the Africans, and when Africans were killed defending their possessions, they didn't even rate an entry in Stanley's journal. 8 pages of illustrations, 2 maps.

East Along the Equator: A Journey up the Congo and into Zaire (Traveler / Atlantic Monthly Press)

Swimming in the Congo

A Passage to Congo: Photographs by Doctor Emile Muller 1923-1938

A Passage to Congo is a collection of photographs taken by Doctor mile Muller (1891-1976) in the Congo provinces of the Kasa< and Katanga, territories of the Chokwe, Luba, Bashibushong and Basalampasu tribes. For these people, he was not the boss, but he who cured, who gave relief, who listened. He could move easily between the tribes without having to tackle the reticence that has denatured so many ethnic photographs. The privileged witnesses of esoteric ceremonies that are rarely photographed, his images are precious from an ethnographic and historical point of view, and reveal a fine aesthetic sense and profound humanity. Veritable living masks, as in the remarkable portraits of young Chokwe girls, astonishing initiation rites, scenes of divination, wild rhythmic dances responding to the beat of the large slotted drums, sculptural bodies decorated with tattoos and refined headgear recall the beauty and riches of these cultures, now lost in the modern world. Although some of Muller's negative

DRUMS ALONG THE CONGO PA

Adventuring in East Africa: The Sierra Club Travel Guide to the Great Safaris of Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Eastern Zaire, and Uganda

Africa Solo: A Journey Across the Sahara, Sahel, and Congo

Feeling the need to reorient his inner compass, filmmaker Kevin Kertscher set out on a personal journey across large expanses of the African continent.