Somewhere Between Countries - Part II

A short story of a long journey between Tanzania and Malawi.

So, medal winners, procrastinators and bored people – welcome back! The second installment (but probably not the last) of the Mukuba Express/Shady Bus Experience/Don’t Travel at Night in Malawi... is here. If you have no idea what this is about, maybe read the first one. It seems weird to be writing about something so trivial when the East Coast is on fire, but I needed a distraction from the insanity of what I’ve been seeing – and maybe you do too. If so, hope you enjoy.

Where did I leave you last time? Ah yes, I think it had something to do with a piss-coated bathroom? There were other unsavoury things left behind too, but it’s best to ignore that. It does give some level of perspective for you though – it was REALLY important not to touch the toilet, walls or floor. Except the door, which you had to keep a hand or foot pressed up against, to stop people barging in while you’re hovering, mid-wee. And the showers – the ad mentioned showers… I never did find them. Maybe they were in a different carriage, or maybe you were just meant to get showered in piss. Who knows? I opted to stay a stinky sweaty mess for the whole journey and relied heavily on copious amounts of deodorant.

Interesting side note about deodorant – the price in Tanzania (and I’m assuming many other countries) was phenomenal. It was that horrid ‘Mum’ style stuff and it was hexxy, and it was kept locked up like the spray paint at Bunnings. You had to get an attendant from the store to come and unlock the cabinet. This sucked for two reasons – the first is that finding someone to help was troublesome, the second was that they stood there as you made your choice, and you couldn’t do that cheeky spray and sniff you usually do in the shop, so you had to rely on the label giving you an accurate description of the contents. I did not choose wisely. The shop attendant’s sharp inhale and raised eyebrows as I picked one out should have been the giveaway, but I was feeling brave.

The rest of the afternoon was relaxing as the sounds of the train lulled us into almost a trance, interrupted only by the squeaking brakes as we pulled into yet another tiny village to allow passengers off and new passengers to board. At some of the larger stops, the area would come alive with people rushing up to the train windows with bunches of bananas over their shoulders, baskets filled with mangoes, paw paws, charcoal-grilled corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes and all manner of other unknown food stuffs. We attempted to haggle with the vendors like the locals did and were given a stern look and a higher price. The mangoes were beyond the amount of cash we had left in the local currency, so we settled for a small bunch of tasty bananas.

Further up the train carriages, bag after bag of coal was being loaded by hand through an open window, people on rickety old bikes arrived with bundles of sticks which were also loaded, along with numerous bags of onions, potatoes and other produce. Once the cargo was on board there was a great deal of shouting and gesticulating, a price was then agreed upon and money changed hands. So much better than any television show.

It was a truly amazing afternoon, but I did have the constant desire to ask the driver to stop so I could take a photo of that obscure little tree sticking out of a rock, the goat with three legs, the mudbrick house built on a 45 degree hillside, or random wild grasses… I’m sure he would have obliged, right? It was also tempting to get off the train at the designated stops and have a wander about and take photos of the unfolding organised chaos, but there didn’t seem to be a great deal of communication given when the train was about to set off again – and as much as I loved the small rural villages, I wasn’t too keen on being stranded in one; especially since the only shelter seemed to be an acacia tree and a piece of sheet metal held up by some branches, plus there were no cars and the train only ran twice a week. You may think it would be easy to jump into a slow moving train (especially if you grew up watching Hollywood movies like I did – thanks Indiana Jones), but given that I almost fell out backwards when I tried to board it the first time due to the massively high step, and my massively stunted legs… I decided to stay on the train.

We smiled and said hello to our cabin neighbours who were quite shy, but who engaged in a small conversation with us out of politeness (massive change to the insane party animals they transformed into later that night….) and made small talk with other people passing by the cabin. We left the door open most of the journey so that we could have views from both sides of the train, and it was a good choice – so many people stopped and looked in and smiled, had a quick chat with us, and carried on further down the train. It was like a little bouncy confined housing community. Most people would ask us if we had been to their country before? Did we like it? Where are we going next? Where are we de-boarding? Has everyone been kind to us? The answers were: Yes, Yes, Malawi, Mbeya, Yes. It was nice to have so many people go out of their way to make us feel welcome.

Standing in the hallway of the carriage, you got to look out at the vast openness of the regions we were travelling through. I was hopeful as I knew the train passed through a pretty fantastic National Park – the Sealous Game Reserve, although, I had no idea what time that might happen, or where on Earth we were at that point, but we were lucky enough to spot quite a few antelope, warthogs and other meals on legs. Occasionally off in the distance we could pick out the unmistakable long slender necks of giraffes (a group of giraffes is called a tower… who knew?). We kept our eyes alert and focused, hoping to spot a big cat or something else equally exciting, but it was joy enough leaning against the doorway, chatting about life and planning our Malawian diving adventure as the train chugged along and the warm breeze worked its way through the train. Bliss. While it was still daylight, we had a shower in a can, changed our stinky clothes, and watched people going about their daily business, as they watched us pass them by with an equal measure of curiosity.

Dinner was an interesting affair; we weren’t feeling brave enough for the mysterious looking stew that was available from the food carriage, so we tucked into our dinner of tinned food. My choice was baked beans in a few pieces of slightly stale wholemeal bread, with some tepid water to wash it down. I had already had that at lunch time, but it seemed like a decent choice again, and it was all I had bought. Dom, in some wild moment of madness while in the shopping centre, had decided that Spam (yes, you read that right…. SPAM) was going to be his meal choice. No amount of protestations from me could convince him that he would not enjoy spam, that I would not enjoy the smell of the Spam, and that he would end up eating my rations of food, instead of his Spam.

He assured me it was going to be lovely and that he didn’t want my gross baked beans and that it was going to be delicious. Well, Dom opened the Spam and the whole cabin, and one can assume the whole carriage, suddenly filled with the smell of a dog fart after it has eaten one too many cans of Pal dog food (which is only one can by the way). It was rank. It was heinous. It was odious. I’m pretty sure it was off. I gagged and thought about spraying some of my Mum deodorant, but then I recalled how bad that smelt, imagined the two smells mixed together and almost threw up again.

Not one to back away from a challenge, Dom kept a calm poker face and persisted, his hand, and the plastic spoonful of Spam, wobbled with the lack of confidence it had earnt as he raised it to his mouth. ‘He won’t do it’ I thought to myself, ‘No way he’ll do it’. Oh he did though. He did it, he put that Spam right in his mouth and swallowed it. My stomach was rising to my mouth, so I can’t imagine what Dom’s was doing at that point, but his face gave away a little of what he was thinking. Eventually his resolve cracked and he erupted into gagging, coughing and some wild facial expressions. Two bottles of water later, the Spam went in the bin and a can of baked beans was opened for Dom.

Our gaseous dinner was interrupted by the occasional stinky nappy whizzing past the window by the occupants of the cabin two up from us. Apparently it was common practice to just throw your rubbish out the window. I found this quite sad for obvious reasons, but also because the train service had employed staff who regularly visited your cabin to ask if you had any rubbish and to sweep the floors and they did a damn good job too. Shame they avoided the toilet, although to be fair, I wouldn’t go in there either… The rubbish being flung from the train would sometimes land in the ingenious little vegetable patches that were dotted right alongside the train tracks. Some gardens even had little irrigation channels dug out to direct the flow of water. I’m not sure if these were ‘clandestine’ veggie patches or not, but either way, they were amazing – the plants looked to be flourishing, and I’m sure the produce helped to feed many families, so win-win, apart from the scabby nappies and plastic bags of course.

The hours ticked by and before we knew it, the sun was almost at the horizon – and that night we saw a sunset that lit the sky on fire. I don’t think I will be fortunate enough to see a sunset that incredible ever again, I can still remember it and the feeling of awe I had. Maybe it was just because we were on a new adventure, with an exciting destination ahead of us, that made us perceive it differently, but I don’t think so… the next night’s sunset was nowhere near as lovely. The temperature dropped as rapidly as the sun did, so we set about getting out jumpers and unfolding the cosy fleece blankets.

I’m not sure how many of you have been camping off-grid before, with no power and no electronics to keep you entertained once the sun goes down, but for those of you who have – you can relate to how boring things can get REALLY quickly after sun down – it’s a bit the same on an overnight train. I hadn’t packed any cards and the overhead lights were so dim you couldn’t see the palm of your hand, let alone read a book. We chatted for a while, got our single beds ready with our sleeping bags and blankets and kinda just stared into space. The train seemed to have stopped with the crazy bouncing around (mostly) and was taken over by that lovely calm muted sound that you get on a red-eye flight once they turn the lights out. I mean, it’s never fun for me because I can’t seem to sleep on a plane and end up listening to Dom snore for the next seven hours, but it’s still kind of peaceful. You know what I mean, there was that respectful quiet, with soft voices, some gentle music from a transistor radio and the occasional cry from a baby. Every now and then a stretch of track would remind us who was boss, tossing us out of our beds and having us gripping onto the vinyl with white knuckles, but we became accustomed to this and just rolled with it (train puns for the win).

Dom was out like a dirty nappy from a train window in no time, so I figured I should give sleep a go as well. I laid back in my fold down bed, pulled up the musty fleece blanket and fell asleep to the sounds of the African bush hushed by the clacking of the train.

That idyllic scene lasted for probably about two hours, before the first knock on the cabin door at around 9pm. Voices we didn’t recognise were calling out names we also didn’t recognise, so we ignored them and they wandered off again. Every now and then they would knock again, followed by some giggling and the footsteps wandering away. This became the norm for a few hours. At one point there was some incessant knocking on the door which just wouldn’t stop, so I yelled out in a severely pissed off voice “WHAAAAAAT?!” and a timid voice replied with ‘housekeeping’. We opened the door with endless apologies; she advised us to lock our cabin doors because it could become unsafe at night (we had already put the padlock on) and reminded us not to leave the window unlocked, because there was a fairly good chance someone would climb in through the window and mug us with a weapon. She then wished us a good night’s sleep and left. Excellent.

We both tried dozing off again and got in a few restless hours trying to block out the jaunty music which had increased slightly in volume, before more knocking started. They continued their knocking so I made the assumption it was housekeeping again. I dragged my ass out of bed and went to see what was so important at 11:30pm. Just kidding… I woke Dom up and made him answer the door. All I could see were two silhouetted male figures who were asking Dom if ‘Neema’ or ‘Grace’ were in our cabin. I surely hoped they weren’t, because I hadn’t invited them in… I started to wake up properly then and realised two things – the first was that we were no longer bouncing down the train line, we were in fact completely still; and the second was the realisation that I had been magically transported onto a musical party train – one with African pop music blasting from about five different cabins in our carriage – each competing with its neighbour for who could be the more obnoxious. There seemed to be a number of ‘house-parties’ going on, and people were doing a pub crawl up and down the carriage, stopping in at each one. Unfortunately for us, they were under the impression we were part of this moving party, so the knocking continued throughout the night. Don’t get me wrong – I love Tanzanian music, and no, I’m not kidding. It’s fun, it makes you want to dance and it’s just really ‘happy’. We heard a lot of it on our travels and it was always able to lift your spirits. But not at midnight through to 3am. At those hours, it can fuck right off.

We opened the window shutters to see if we could get some idea of where we were, and why we had stopped. Of course that didn’t help in the slightest – it was pitch black, but we could see off in the distance a pretty size-able bonfire with some pretty loud music wafting over with the breeze. There were a few cars parked a small way from the train with their headlights on, and a few groups of people – some were walking towards the bonfire and others were just standing around casually chatting. To this day I have no idea why we stopped, we did ask a few people and got a different answer each time – like ‘the train has broken down’ and ‘we hit an elephant’ and ‘bandits are trying to take the train’. Maybe they were all true – maybe we hit an elephant, the train subsequently broke down and then got held up by bandits. Whatever the reason, we were there for hours. I like to think the train drivers got so bored of driving that they spotted a Sub-Saharan Savannah Rave in full swing and decided to go and have a beer at the bonfire instead. It makes me happy to think of us laying there getting more and more agitated with Tanzania’s Top 50 blasting from the neighbours, while the drivers got more and more tipsy. I really hope that’s what happened.

At some bullshit time in the morning the train lurched back into movement (how rude) and we were on our way again – I did notice the distinct lack of music at that time, which was a fantastic relief. Those Tanzanians know how to party like it’s 1999. It was a MUCH quieter train when I walked the hallway to get to the toilet at 6am… it was also a MUCH more devastating scene in the toilet than it had been the day before. Christ Almighty. It smelt like a cattle truck that had sat in the roasting sun for a week. It was moments like these, I wish I had a detachable penis – 90’s music fans will get that reference – King Missile – look it up.

Ok, well, it’s midnight real time, and Dom’s snoring is calling me like a siren calls a sailor to the rocks. Apparently we are going fishing at stupid o’clock in the morning, so once again… that’s all for now.