Back to the Congo - Hardcover

Joris, Lieve

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333543696 ISBN 13: 9780333543696

Publisher: Humanity Press/prometheus Bk, 1992

Synopsis

In 1985 reisde Lieve Joris naar Zaïre, op zoek naar sporen van haar heeroom die missionaris was geweest in de Kongo. Te midden van oud-kolonialen voer zij met de Fabiolaville naar de vroegere Belgische kolonie. In heerooms voetspoor trok zij door de brousse. In deze rimboe riepen oude paters en zusters herinneringen op aan haar Vlaamse kostschooljaren. Maar langzamerhand maakt Lieve Joris zich los van haar blanke gidsen en ontdekte het huidige Zaï zij ontmoette president Mobutu's vertrouwelingen en critici, trok de zwarte cité in waar article 5, de vermaarde Zaïrese corruptie, de toon aangeeft en waar het dansen doorgaat tot de ochtend gloort. In een oude roestige boot voer zij ten slotte de Zaïrestroom op, naar Conrads 'Hart der Duisternis'..

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Dutch

From Publishers Weekly

"I didn't come here to find fault with Mobutu's regime, or to justify it. I wanted to explore life behind the newspaper headlines," explains this adventurous Flemish journalist, indignant and frightened when she is taken into custody with a photographer friend by Zairean police merely for plying a camera and talking with the locals. A childhood vision of the country, evoked by the tales of her missionary uncle, led to Joris's desire to see the Congo. She finds guides and friends amongst those who remember her uncle, and also through her own gregarious and empathetic nature. She gets deep into the country through bush, forest, villages and cities, dances all night in a local dive, takes a boat up the river, encounters pygmies, befriends depressed European-educated intellectuals and cynical bureaucrats, sleeps in native hotels, and observes the unresolved struggles of a country on the far peripheries of the Western world whose intrusion has left its superficial imprint on traditional ways without a synthesis. Not the country her uncle described, the Congo--both people and land-- becomes palpable in Joris's engaging and disturbing report.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Humanity Press/prometheus Bk
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0333543696
• ISBN 13: 9780333543696
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1