Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen

An Ordinary Family's Extraordinary Tale of Love, Loss, and Survival in Congo

By: Lisa J. Shannon

Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie

Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

International human rights activist Lisa Shannon spent many afternoons at the kitchen table having tea with her friend Francisca Thelin, who often spoke of her childhood in Congo. Thelin would conjure vivid images of lush flower gardens, fish the size of small children, and of children running barefoot through her family's coffee plantation, gorging themselves on fruit from the robust and plentiful mango trees. She urged Shannon to visit her family in Dungu to get a taste of real Congo, peaceful Congo, a place so different from the conflict-ravaged lands Shannon knew from her work as an activist.

But then the nightly phone calls from Congo began: hasty, static-filled reports from Francisca's mother of gunmen from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, which had infested Dungu and began launching attacks. Night after night for a year, "Mama Koko" delivered the devastating news of Francisca's cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, and neighbors, who had been killed, abducted, burned alive on Christmas Day.

In an unlikely journey, Shannon and Thelin decided to travel from Portland, Oregon, to Dungu to witness firsthand the devastation unfolding at Kony's hands. Masquerading as Francisca's American sister-in-law, Shannon tucked herself into Mama Koko's raw cement living room and listened to the stories of Mama Koko and her husband, Papa Alexander, as well as those from dozens of other friends and neighbors - "Mama Koko's War Tribunal" - who lined up outside the house and waited for hours, eager to offer their testimony.

In Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen, Shannon weaves together the family's tragic stories of LRA encounters with tales from the family's history: Mama Koko's early life as a gap-toothed beauty plotting to escape her inevitable fate of wife and motherhood; Papa Alexander's empire of wives he married because they cooked and cleaned and made good coffee.

©2015 Lisa J. Shannon (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

A real Congo story.

Many books are written about Congo and its horrors. I have read many books about Congo DR and they never really tell the story of the Congolese themselves.
This book is different. It takes the reader so close into the fabric of Congo and its beautiful people . The author doesn't hide the terrible horrors that are happening there in the north eastern corner of DRC. But she makes the people human. She pulls you into their world and takes you on a journey that is full of sadness and pain but also full of love and detail about the lives they lived and how war is destroying their normal lives. This book doesn't focus on the politics or on the plundering of Congo. It focuses on the people of Congo.

Heart wrenching.

I had to stop listening many times because it was too painful to continue. I'm not squeamish; I'm a physician. It was too painful because it was home. I was raised on the other side of the DR Congo in the 1970s. So many things of everyday life sound so familiar; the food, words in Lingala, descriptions of little things, little snippets that would make me homesick. Then the descriptions of the inhumane atrocities that just make my blood boil. My emotions are on a roller coaster right now, so I'm not able to write all that is swirling through me.

Mama Koko was well written. I appreciate the recommendations of how to get involved at the end. Thank you for writing this family's story.