Congo: Mr Kurtz Is Alive And Well

One Hundred Years of Darkness
The history of the Congo/Zaire since the Belgian colonisation has been an unending nightmare and the war that has been going on since 1998, costing an estimated four million lives, is largely forgotten and unreported. Award winning photographer, Marcus Bleasdale has just produced his second book, One Hundred Years Of Darkness, with horrifying images of the cost of the conflict to its citizens. In the foreword, author John Le Carre writes, ” The continuing human tragedy of Congo is not a statistic. It is a continuing human tragedy. It is fourteen hundred and fifty tragedies every day. It is countless more than that if you include the orphaned, the bereaved, the widowed, and all the ripples of truncated lives that spread from a single death. It is you and me and our children and our parents, if we had the bad luck to be born into the world this book portrays.
But Congo has one secret that is hard to pass on if you haven’t learned it at first hand. Look carefully and you will find it in these pages: a gaiety of spirit and a love of life that, even in the worst of times, leave the pampered Westerner moved and humbled beyond words.”
November 2, 2009 | Posted by Andy Carling
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