Customer Reviews

No Mercy: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

but I am glad I read the book.

I bought *No Mercy* based on reviews I read in Amazon.com. I was enticed by the notion of a travel writer-naturalist (if that is a label fitting O'Hanlon) traveling hundreds of miles on a months-long trip to one of the most remote and wildest spots on the globe, at the end of which was a chance to view the legendary cryptid critter of the Congo, Mokele-mbembe.

I lap this stuff up-high adventure in the wilderness, extreme camping at its extremest. And O'Hanlon an informative and entertaining guide.

But the book is about so much more. O'Hanlon is a travel writer by trade, and although there is a very remote possibility his readers would choose to travel upriver to the deepest part of Africa, it does make a fascinating read. So many aspects of life in Africa jump off the pages ---death on the river, traveling in an antique steamer up the Congo River, tense interactions with armed militiamen, the diet of the Congo, taro root and bushmeat (mostly monkeys), constant gift-giving and bribery, the politically volatile region, ready to explode at any minute---and you are as perplexed and exhausted as the travelers are, except you're reading in the comfort of your living room.

I lent this book to my brother-in-law, Goog. He likes off beat stuff. But it wasn't his cup of tea. Perhaps it was the book's languid pace. I guess it is a little like *Heart of Darkness* in a way.

Yes there are grim and ugly parts of the journey, but I, like O'Hanlon, kept slogging along in the hope of catching a glimpse of the mysterious Mokele-mbembe. No Mercy opened my eyes to what Africa suffers through as it crawls into the twenty-first century with so many disadvantages.

I'd read other books by O'Hanlon, just for the joy of hearing his description of animal behavior while suffering unspeakable hardships and indignities

This is an extraordinary book. Beautifully written, funny, excruciatingly honest, it does indeed show no mercy. I've read it twice so far, and am troubled and haunted by it. Redmond goes too far in for comfort; he shows more than one can know and still rest easy. This is a truly great book.

I had read Redmond O'Hanlon's previous books and I expected more of the same- hapless Englishman out of his depth in the tropics having real jungle adventures, but with a strong comic element. And indeed at the beginning, the book seems to follow that formula. But by the end, there is little comedy and the reader is faced directly with some of the deepest issues of human life. It is a shattering conclusion and there is indeed no mercy for anyone, possibly no mercy anywhere in this world. It is a long book and maybe has a few too many descriptions of birds and such, yet it is a classic travel memoir, a journey both physically and to the deepest part of one man's mind. And to a place outside the comfortable civilized rational view of life, to someplace completely more scary, that may very well be inside all of us. A unique and thought provoking journey.

The author travels to the Congo, down tributaries of the Ubangi, to Lake Télé in search of Mokélé-Mbebé, possibly a living sauropod atavism. Accompanied by pragmatic, homesick Lary, an American; educated Marcellin, a government employee, torn between his Western education and the supernatural spirit world of Africa whose power he fears; gentle Manou; and wild-eyed, hard-drinking Nzé, he chronicles all he sees. This allows for observations of much flora and fauna, especially birds and apes, as well as meditations on human behavior. The Africa O'Hanlon "discovers" is a world of sorcerers, fetishes and tribal rivalries, where slavery exists in fact, diseases ravage whole tribes, and pragmatic Western ideas like gutters and medicines are absurdities rather than possibilities. It's a great book, full of humor and learning, equal parts natural history and the kind of insight into the foreign mind that the best travel writing can offer. It's a bit grim to think how mired in ignorance and the supernatural Africa still is, but funny scenes like one with a clingy baby gorilla keep the reader enthralled with O'Hanlon's trek.

This is the first O'Hanlon adventure I have read. I certainly will read his others. The book is a swirling, mesmerizing account of his trek through the swamp forest in search of a legendary dinosaur, of the natural wonders of the Congo and of his fears, thoughts and dreams. I found myself totally emersed in the vivid detail provided while telling his tale. I could see, hear and sense what he did. It had me dreaming of adventure and of writing so well about it! An awesome adventure and recounting of it!

Redmond O'Hanlon's book is stunning. As funny as it is penetrating, he offers so much more than an incredible physical journey. He is expert at evoking the feel of the claustrophobic jungle of the Congo, plunging the reader knee deep in vines and choking on the smell of 3rd rate 3rd world motels. But more importantly, he credibly takes us into the minds of his Congolese guides and travlling companions. It is O'Hanlon's own struggle with his thoughts and fears as he undertakes his journey that provides the real meat of this narrative. And the writing here is distrubing and seductive. By recreating the hardship of life in the jungle for the reader, he effortlessly takes us into the head of someone faced with those experiences. The result is nothing less than mind altering. An incredible journey into a dangerous country and a slippery mind. Amazing.

_No Mercy_ by Redmond O'Hanlon is an interesting, at times quite good, but for me ultimately frustrating travelogue of the author's journey into the deep interior of The People's Republic of the Congo (not to be confused with Zaire).

The book started out very strongly, recounting the vivid first impressions of O'Hanlon and his travel companion Dr. Lary Shaffer in Brazzaville, consulting a feticheuse (a type of fortune teller), negotiating the complex and tangled government bureaucracy, and trying to arrange an expedition into the deep interior. Why go into the jungles of the country, far up the Congo River one may reasonably ask? O'Hanlon wanted to journey to the remote northern forests of the country, meet the Pygmies, journey by dugout boat to the headwaters of the Motaba River, abandon the boats, walk east through a vast and poorly known swamp jungle, and eventually make his way to a very remote lake, Lake Télé, reported home of Mokele-mbembe, a dinosaur reported to be alive today in the Congo. That's all. Well O'Hanlon did at any rate, Shaffer had evidently planned to leave the expedition before O'Hanlon and his future companions set out for Lake Télé. Shaffer, continually reminded O'Hanlon he couldn't believe he was in the Congo to begin with, let alone heading up the Congo and proceeding on foot through a portion of its dense tropical forest.

His expedition plan sounded quite adventurous to me, if not always accepted by government bureaucrats; one asked, "his voice full of hostility, "you have come to investigate some kind of dinosaur? To make fun of us? To mock the African?" Eventually though permission was granted and O'Hanlon, Shaffer, and several other locals set on their way.

Much of the expedition, particularly early on, was quite interesting, if merely just describing what the author saw. His account of traveling on a virtual floating city, the steamer _Impfondo_ with its attached barges was quite vivid, a town that slowly made its way upriver, different areas of the steamer and the attached barges inhabited by different social strata, of men, women, children, people fishing, selling things, trading with people in dugouts that met the boat from various villages along the shore, sometimes trading for a time, other times tying up and journeying with the entire configuration for some ways. People were born on the boat-barge combination, and unfortunately people died as well.

Unlike many travel writers, O'Hanlon was evidently keenly interested in natural history, particularly birds, and never failed to point out fascinating animals he saw and more interestingly provide good descriptions of them and many times some facts about them. He saw hammerkops for instance, "[a] bird with a genus all its own, its place in science almost as mysterious as its role in myth," at one time thought to be related to herons, flamingos, or storks. Many in Africa leave the hammerkop alone, its very name often taboo, believed to be a sorcerer among birds, able to compel birds of other species to come and build its massive nest. He spied the Congo blue-breasted kingfisher, a "freak of a kingfisher," a species that never goes fishing but rather lives in the forest and makes meals of insects, spiders, toads, and millipedes. A huge rodent, an enormous, white-bellied, grey-backed Giant Gambian rat nearly gave him a heart attack one night as it accidentally made his way into his sleeping chambers one night before bounding out in a panic. He was driven out of another hut by a huge mass of driver ants, moving colonies of ants that according to Shaffer can travel in groups twenty-two million strong, much larger than the "mere two million" that number South American army ant swarms. The author also noted interesting plants from time to time, such as the oil-palm, so vital to many in the Congo region, as oil can be obtained from both the flesh of the nut and the seeds, its oil being used for cooking and in making soap and margarine, its sap collected to make ready-made palm wine.

The book's first half was riveting to me and I looked forward to what new sights would greet the expedition as they went further upriver, leaving the _Impfondo_, proceeding on much smaller boats, and eventually on foot. However, at some point, the book really started to bog down for me. More and more the narrative related the sometimes funny, often just tedious fights, complaints, and bickering of his three local companions, which by the end of the book the reader becomes pretty well familiar with. There is Marcellin, educated overseas, a scientist, but clearly frustrated by many aspects of life in Africa, by the burdens of being a "big man," of out of work relatives feeling that the success of one of their own is their success and Marcellin obligated by societal mores to lets his relatives move in, eat his food, and just make themselves at home. He also seemed frustrated by his African companions, complaining that they were clearly uneducated men, but Marcellin by his words and deeds showing that he was very much a part of that culture as well, as like the others he was continually seeking female companionship every night in every village they visited and while scoffing at some supernatural beliefs, such as fetishes, seemed to accept others (when one friend asked how a local sorcerer who could shapechange into an elephant every night might affect his elephant studies, Marcellin appeared to seriously consider the problem). Manou, another companion, was a much more gentle soul, not as brash or as sex-crazed as Marcellin, but even more frustrated as he would never get the education that Marcellin had and anything he owned was taken outright from him by his elders. While these portraits were interesting they tended to take up too much of the book as it neared its end, overshadowing more interesting aspects of the expedition and were sometimes just plain annoying.