Many Rivers to Cross – Congo

The Congo River is also known as the Zaire – after the county in which ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ took place. It’s a heavyweight in its own right over 2,720 miles long and ranging from half a mile to ten miles in width, depending on the location and the time of year. But that’s not all. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean, feeding a river basin that covers over 1.6 million square miles and discharging up to 1.2 million cubic feet of water per second!

It’s a river of contrasts and surprises. Between its banks are more than 4000 islands, over fifty of which are ten miles or more in length and it is these huge islands that make some stretches of the Congo all but unnavigable, and when there aren’t islands there are any number of cataracts, in particular at Livingstone Falls, which make navigating the river in any reasonable sized craft. Not only that, but the Congo basin's wildlife, which generally lives in the Congolese forest, is very different from the wildlife found in Africa's savannah grasslands – and is under threat from refugees and guerillas – you can explore the fate of the Congo’s rhinos, mountain gorillas and elephants by reading about the daily lives of Park Rangers at http://www.wildlifedirect.org/ - believe me, these people live lives of adventure that are mind-boggling! With compass, gun and iron rations, they protect some of the most endangered animals in the world from some of the most dangerous animals in the world – humanity.

In the 1870s, Henry Morton Stanley, after ‘finding’ Livingston, set out to sail the entire length of the Congo River in a pirogue, a kind of canoe. This journey was controversial and adventurous. Stanley's three white companions, Frederick Barker and Francis and Edward Pocock, died during the expedition and for his brutality and gut determination Stanley himself was nicknamed Bula Matari, ‘the rock breaker’. After sailing down the Livingstone (now renamed Congo) River, he reached the Atlantic Ocean on August 12, 1877. And in 1902, the Congo was the river on which Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was based and in calls on his brief experiences piloting a Belgian steamer on the river.

Congo photograph by futureatlas, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

© blueworldgardener.co.uk