Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
for religion onto his son, and later an MP under Zaïre's - later, the Democratic Republic
of Congo's - Mbutu regime. In 1993, as Boston told me, tragedy struck, when his fath-
er died under mysterious circumstances. 'Poison,' Boston declared as we followed Amani
aimlessly through the forest. 'He was probably murdered, although I'll never know. That
was the year I became a soldier.'
After Boston's father died, Boston became the head of his family. When he was only
seventeen years of age, his mother encouraged him to take up arms and head out to fight
the roving gangs that plagued eastern Congo and protect their family ranch. In no time at
all, Boston had become head of his own militia, commanding some 300 troops, and it was
with these men that he joined the then-rebel forces led by the future president, Laurent-
Désiré Kabila, in 1996. Boston's unit were instrumental in taking the cities of Kisangani
and Lubumbashi from government forces, and bringing about the end of the Mbutu reign.
In 2005, eight years before we met, Boston had fled the Congo. His flight followed
months of targeted assassinations of former soldiers and activists like himself, and escal-
ating violence against his family. His 'home' was now in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.
Boston would accompany me on my journey that far, but there we would part ways, I on
my journey ever north, Boston back to the comforts of his wife Lily and their three chil-
dren.
Around us, the jungle was becoming denser, and the trickle of water seemed to be
ebbing further away. With it impossible to keep the river - if this could truly be called a
river - in sight, the only really effective method was to look around at the mean height of
the trees and estimate which way was downhill. By following invisible contours, I hoped
we would stay abreast of the water. The theory seemed to work, albeit slowly, but by the
time we stopped to refuel with lunch we'd covered only five hundred metres in a straight
line, despite our GPS having logged a distance of 4km walked. We hadn't completed our
first day of this journey, and already I had a sign that I was actually going to walk much
further than the 4,250 miles I'd planned.
'We need to cover more ground,' said Boston, with an ironic smile pointedly directed at
Amani. 'It is not even hard going! It reminds me of my time in the Congo, but there it is
much thicker.'
There was an element of malice in Boston's voice, and I could tell that he was trying to
provoke Amani in some way. Boston, the proud fighter, didn't want to cede any authority
to this skinny Tutsi who, he believed, was leading us in circles. 'You know, Lev,' he went
on, 'we Congolese are jungle people. We know the forests. Rwandans, well, they just look
after cows. They know nothing of trees. Do you know what they call snakes in DRC?'
I hadn't a clue.
'Go into any restaurant in Kinshasa and you can ask for two types of fish. Water fish
and tree fish.'
