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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant and accurate description of life in the Congo, September 15, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: No Mercy: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo (Hardcover)
Having lived in the Congo for ten years, I believe this is the first book I've read that accurately describes what life there is actually like, both for foreigners and for the Congolese. It makes you feel that you are there: the difficulty of daily living, the despair, fear of sorcery, unfailing good humor, poverty, and strong family obligations of the Congolese come through clearly and are on target. O'Hanlon is a quick learner - many foreigners stay there for years and never leave the European lifestyle; he depicts the side of life that is seen only by living with the people. If you want a taste of what life in Congo is like without actually going there, this is the book.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Heart of Darkness, Redux, September 14, 2005
O'Hanlon has written two other similar books ("In Trouble Again" about the Amazon, and "Into the Heart of Borneo") about his adventures in the jungle, but this book turns into something more than a quirky travelogue. His other two books are very entertaining, especially his first book on Borneo. But this journey to the Congo turns away from nature, bumbling white-man in the jungle, and admiring the survival skills and personalities of the natives sort stuff, and turns into a book about a journey through hell-on-earth caused by the local people.
The title "No Mercy" should give you a clue. The book starts with O'Hanlon and his companion-du-jour, an American academic named Lary, as they try to plan a trip in the jungles of the Congo. The usual 3rd world problems of bribing the corrupt government officials, avoiding getting killed and robbed, and finding local guides ensue. Entertaining and normal.
O'Hanlon hires the Congolese Minister of Nature or some such thing who brings along extended family members as workers. Marcellin (the government minister), Nze, and Manou then take over the book. The American provides needed sanity to the first part of the trip as they go up the river in a fetid, crowded steamboat and begin their travels. Dead bodies float by frequently. Murderous natives who mostly want to murder O'Hanlon's guides and night-time escapes from danger become more and more frequent. Then O'Hanlon's companion has to leave and O'Hanlon is left at the mercy of his guides and Congolese society as he journeys to an isolated lake where reports of a Lochness-like creature abound.
The book then gets deep into the psyche of the guides and their world of fetishes, witch-doctors, murder, jungle spirits, venereal diseases, slavery, promiscuous sex in every village, and constant attempts to wheedle money out of O'Hanlon.
By the time you get to the end of this absorbing descent into hell, you feel nothing but despair. Every aspect of this place is nasty. The government indoctrinates and corrupts, the tribal leaders rob and bully, and even the extended family becomes a tool used by the alpha-male to plunder and subjugate the rest of the family. Any resident at any time may irk the wrong people and end up being tortured and killed. Men use women as they wish, taking extra wives or abandoning them on a whim. Each group looks down on another group, and literal slavery is still very much alive in the Congo.
This is really a great book, but it is not a light and entertaining read. I recommend it highly but don't expect to leave "No Mercy" laughing and uplifted.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Only Way I'll Ever Get to The Congo, May 11, 2006
Another excellent book from Mr. O’Hanlon. I previously read Into the Heart of Borneo and In Trouble Again. This is just as good and just as important. I wondered at first –the start was so abrupt and desultory. But I was soon taken in by the exotic setting, the bizarre but engaging real-life characters, and the curious, almost dream-like parade of events. If this were fiction (and it does read like a novel), an accurate label for it might be magical realism. I am perplexed at O’Hanlon being touted on the cover as ‘By far our funniest travel writer’ and ‘As funny as ever’. Sure there are some very amusing incidents in the book, but why are yaws, malaria, sleeping sickness, abject poverty, and crippling intellectual superstition considered funny? Not to mention bedbugs (in Biblical numbers), Congo floor maggots, driver ants (again in Biblical numbers), HIV and Ebola fever. O’Hanlon certainly does not play up the humour angle. On one level this is a book of horror to me. Stephen King should read it to get fresh ideas. On another level this is a positive, inspiring work. O’Hanlon is good company –he is brilliant, talented, compassionate, and a genuinely good man. So is his American travel-mate, Lary Shaffer. Shaffer had been totally incapacitated with multiple sclerosis in the past and had fought his way back to health. He seems almost super-human at times in his endurance and unflappability. These are people you would be honoured to have as friends. It hurts them to see the suffering and waste in the human beings and animals they see along the journey. They do what they can to help, but two guys with backpacks, no matter how smart or how well prepared, can only do so much. And there is so much to be done. The Congo is such a messed up place.
The Congolese that O’Hanlon travels with are an interesting but mostly unsympathetic group. Marcellin Agnagna, the ‘educated’ representative of the government, is a bullying, arrogant and verbally abusive individual. He says his job is to protect the forest elephants, which are being slaughtered into extinction for their ivory, but his main focus seems to be to fleece O’Hanlon for as much as he can. His secondary focus, which he shares with the cock-eyed, syphilitic Nze, is to copulate with as many young women along the way as possible. O’Hanlon is constantly berated, ridiculed and insulted for being a representative of the white race which enslaved and transported the blacks in the past. No matter that the Bantus in the outback towns ‘own’ pygmies and treat them as slaves right now, in the 21st century.
This is a difficult book to read at times because of what it documents, but you learn so much from reading it. In addition to the wonderful exotic biology, there is much valuable knowledge casually shared between O’Hanlon and Shaffer in their conversations. O’Hanlon also goes off periodically on informative and poignant tangents, such as his last visits with his friend and fellow author Bruce Chatwin, who died in the late 1980s of AIDS. Chatwin’s last advice to his friend was ‘Never kill yourself. Not under any circumstances. Not even when you are told you have AIDS.’
This is a wonderful, honest, magical book. It will make you feel very uncomfortable at times, and glad you have what you have and live where you live. The author went through a lot to bring it to you.
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