BORN THE SAME by Antony Dunford

BORN THE SAME

Antony Dunford (antonydunford.com)

Hobeck (hobeck.net)

£9.99

Colm Reid is writing twelve puff pieces a day for a dying Dublin newspaper when his soon-to-be-ex-editor convinces him to go and cover a story in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s remote Garamba National Park. He will join Norwegian conservationist Kennet Haven on his hunt for the world’s last northern white rhino. Accompanied by Haven’s sister, Jane, Belgian journalist Fatou Ba and a group of heavily-armed park rangers, Colm heads into the wild to discover that Garamba National Park is in the middle of a war zone, and that the white rhino aren’t the story at all.

Born the Same is a prequel to Antony Dunford’s first novel, Hunted, which features Jane Haven in a starring role. Here she is relegated to a much smaller – if somewhat scary – role alongside her brother, while the two journalists visiting Africa for the first time take centre stage. Through the eyes of Colm and Fatou we watch as this unfamiliar landscape unfolds, and meet the people who call it home. Even when he’s standing in the middle of it, Colm can’t get his head around the scale of Garamba, coming from an island thats barely 300 miles from top to bottom. Haven’s hope of finding anything in such a vast space seems impossible from the outset. And his determination to do so seems almost suicidal in the face of the rebel groups who also call Garamba home.

The real story here, as the journalists quickly discover, is the story of the rangers, and of the violence that they face every day in discharging their duties. Between rebel groups who live in the park, and fight each other, and the rangers, openly and on a regular basis, and poachers hunting for illegal trophies these men face an almost insurmountable obstacle. And it’s this to which the book’s title alludes: these men – and they do seem to be mostly men – are all from the same villages and towns, and all face the same challenges in life, so what is it that makes one man want to hunt animals and let nothing or no-one stand in his way, and another take up arms to protect those same animals and become legitimate targets in the process? Dunford poses this question to us as readers without ever trying to answer it. Instead he introduces us to men on both sides, and asks us – and the journalists at the story’s heart – to decide for ourselves.

Dunford imbues Born the Same with an incredible sense of place, and fills us with a sense of wonder as we explore this piece of the planet that many of us will never experience in real life, and which climate change and poachers are slowly but surely wiping out of existence. We feel disgust on finding the elephant killed for its ivory, and in the senseless and cruel violence it suffered to give up its treasure. We also feel a sense of awe as we trek around a herd of giraffe, trying not to disturb them in case they give us away to others nearby that might have nefarious intentions. In many ways, this is an unexpected Africa – lush and verdant where our preconceptions tell us to expect desert; plagued by torrential rain when we might expect heat and drought. This is a reminder that Africa covers a vast area, and is as diverse as any other region on the planet, and that the people have as many – if not more – cultures and identities as do Europeans or Asians. Born the Same asks us to check our (un)conscious biases and consider that we’re in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or indeed South Sudan, and not, as we sometimes seem to generalise, “in Africa”.

There is a warmth and wit in Dunford’s storytelling that gives this novel a character all of its own. It is by turns terrifying and hilarious. This is helped along by characters who feel real and about whom we genuinely care. Fellow Northern Irishman Colm feels like someone I might have met, and his backstory makes him someone that I worry about while he is on his adventures. Fatou Ba comes into her own when the novel reaches the halfway point and the focus shifts to her for part of the story. But it’s the park rangers – Mak and Kwame and Hannington and the rest – that hold our attention the most, as we try to understand what makes them do what they do when all the odds are stacked against them.

Born the Same is an incredibly accomplished novel. It is at once gripping and educational and opens a window onto a very different world to the one we’re used to. As a prequel, it requires no prior knowledge of Dunford’s work (though based on the brief glimpse we get of Jane Haven, I’ll definitely check out Hunted), so is a perfect jumping-on point. It’s one you won’t want to miss.