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A review by liralen
Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa's Deadliest War by Ben Rawlence
4.0
Although Rawlence set out in search of a particular Congolese town -- Manono, once a luxurious colonial outpost, now an impossibly remote ghost town -- this is not a book about that town. Rawlence gets there, eventually, but first he walks and boats and is chauffeured on motorbikes most of the way across the fractured country.
He notes, as he goes, how isolated these towns and villages are; the inhabitants are wary after years of war, and often their only external news comes by radio. Outgoing radio reports, meanwhile, often have short reaches. News from Manono, then, is hard to come by.
I'm not actually convinced that Rawlence met his objective. He made it to Manono, yes; he witnessed the changes since its colonial heyday. But it sounds like Manono's news, at least when he was there, might best have been encapsulated in the stories of individual lives there -- small news; daily-life news. There are some of those stories from Manono, but there are far more from elsewhere across Congo. This is not a criticism; those little moments add up to a lot of interesting, localised images. He conveys a lot about the way the country is put together and the way things work on the ground level. But I bet it also would have been interesting if he'd spent (as I originally expected) far more time in Manono, getting to know people there.
He notes, as he goes, how isolated these towns and villages are; the inhabitants are wary after years of war, and often their only external news comes by radio. Outgoing radio reports, meanwhile, often have short reaches. News from Manono, then, is hard to come by.
I'm not actually convinced that Rawlence met his objective. He made it to Manono, yes; he witnessed the changes since its colonial heyday. But it sounds like Manono's news, at least when he was there, might best have been encapsulated in the stories of individual lives there -- small news; daily-life news. There are some of those stories from Manono, but there are far more from elsewhere across Congo. This is not a criticism; those little moments add up to a lot of interesting, localised images. He conveys a lot about the way the country is put together and the way things work on the ground level. But I bet it also would have been interesting if he'd spent (as I originally expected) far more time in Manono, getting to know people there.