A person who has lost his direction in life might possibly find it again in helping people who have desperate needs, according to Tom Davis in his book Scared: A Novel on the Edge of the World. Stuart Daniels is a photographer whose sense of purpose has been disturbed after witnessing horrific events in the Congo gets a new perspective on life when sent on an assignment to cover the AIDS epidemic in Swaziland.
The story starts with Stuart’s assignment in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1998. Unfortunately there is a bit of a reality gap here, as he lands in Kinshasa in the rainy season and drives straight to a village in the war zone, North Kivu. In fact, North Kivu is on the far side of the country, about six days’ drive from Kinshasa on dirt tracks which are impassable when it rains. Anyone visiting the war zone would have landed in Goma, Kisangani or Bukavu, not in Kinshasa. Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai features in the story, but she was a Kenyan, not a Congolese. Accuracy seems to improve when the setting moves to Swaziland, which the author has visited, but the characters still do not have a very African feel to them.
Notwithstanding these inaccuracies, the author tells a powerful and important story. The brutalities and disregard for human rights and life are true. Even the aid agency which turns up at the scene of a tragedy for the photo opportunities rather than to provide useful help is true-to-life. People suffer in conditions which we must not allow to continue. But the answer is not simply to send money; aid needs to be designed very carefully and strategically to ensure that it brings lasting benefits.