The Last Rhinos by Lawrence Anthony

The Last Rhinos by Lawrence Anthony with Graham Spence was another great book from the writers of The Elephant Whisperer and while the first effort excellent for it's depiction of animals in the African wild, this one struck me with it's descriptions of people in Africa, including largely lawless areas both rural and heavily populated, and interactions with African warlords.

The ostensible topic of the book was Anthony's efforts to save the Northern White Rhino from extinction, with reportedly fewer than 15 remaining in the wild, all in the Garamba National Park on the border with Sudan in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. The book felt to wind up being more about the interactions Anthony had while trying to save the animals, with him first in the city of Kinshasa in the Congo and then engaging with people from the Lord's Resistance Army led by the infamous Joseph Kony. Kinshasa, which hosted the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle fight between Gorge Foreman and Muhammad Ali, was described by Anthony as home to 8 million people, with only 1M affluent by African standards, 2M making ends meet, 3M living in shantytowns, and 2M on the streets. Descriptions in the book of the city and the lives of the people who lived there, many of them seeming to hang on by a thread, were wild.

Anthony recounts how while in Kinshasa he encountered huge bureaucracy in his efforts to protect and save the rhinos, and as a last resort of sorts engaged Kony's LRA, known as the army that captured youth and turned them into child soldiers. His idea of going to the LRA was to get them to agree to not attack the guards in Garamba National Park, so the guards could fend off poachers, and Anthony went to Juba in the Southern Sudan where there were to be peace talks between the LRA and the government of Uganda whom they had been fighting for some twenty years. After initially rebuffing his entreaties, the LRA said they open to working with Anthony and later asked him to travel for a meeting, which led him on a voyage from Nairobi through Juba, Maridi, Eidi, Nabanga, and finally into LRA territory and Ri-Kwangba in Garamba National Park in the Congo, just across from Southern Sudan where Anthony met with LRA deputy-leader Vincent Otti.

It was compelling reading of the voyage and it's dangers along the way, including siafu or driver ants, and the LRA agreed to help with the rhinos and asked for Anthony to assist in peace efforts. In part due to Anthony, talks were progressing in 2007, until Kony killed his second in command Otti, and the LRA was attacked in December 2008 by Ugandan forces with US backing, resuming the full-scale war. The events described by Anthony came across as very tribal and raw, and so very different than in the western world. The book closes out back in Thula Thula with how life in Africa continues on, both beautiful and wild, and includes mention of the events covered in a heavily viewed YouTube video, as well as of the Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization.