Somewhere Between Countries - Part III

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

I woke to heavy grey skies that veiled the top of the mountain range we were passing through. The air was damp, but the complimentary blankets provided a much needed buffer against the chilly morning air. The flat expanses and acacia covered plains from the previous day had been replaced by rolling green and brown hills, lush vegetation and the occasional maize or banana plantation. We were somewhere in the midst of the Tanzanian Southern Highlands whose peaks reach up to 2960 metres. We didn’t need to worry about that though, the highest we reached was around 1600 meters. The railway engineers back in the 1970’s made the executive decision to just bore through a few mountains rather than make the arduous climb over the top. Economically it was a good choice – it cuts the travel time considerably and obviously reduces fuel consumption.

Not great for the nerves though…

Sometimes you would see a tunnel approaching and watch in horror as it swallowed the preceding carriages into its inky depths, other times it would creep up on you as the train rounded a tight bend and you wouldn’t have quite enough time to get a torch, so you would spend the next minute or so fumbling around in the dark trying to find a light switch.

I’m not sure how many of you have travelled through the middle of a mountain, but it’s quite an experience. Some passes only lasted a minute or so, but there were some which I thought would never end. Sounds become muted, the air gets thicker and harder to breathe, the smell of the damp and dank earth overwhelms you, and you get a sudden rush of heat as the humidity and lack of fresh oxygen takes over. I felt my old friends panic and anxiety tapping incessantly on my shoulder, so I distracted myself with a new movie ideas. I think the best one was ‘The Mukuba Express and the Tunnel of Doom’ – I imagine it would be a cross between a Poirot murder-mystery on a train and Indiana Jones outrunning a train with too many of his shirt buttons undone. Sems do-able.

Just as I thought my head and lungs would explode in panic, I would spot a shimmer of light up ahead; the air would gradually start to clear and after another five or so minutes, the train would emerge and the sweet clean air would fill your lungs. As I thrust my head out and inhaled deeply, I spotted a few other passengers doing the same – we exchanged a look that said “thank Christ that’s over” and smiled a broad smile at one another – until we spotted the next tunnel. Then we would give a brief nod and retreat back into our cabin to start our meditative breathing once again. Language is no barrier when fear or happiness are involved.

If playing a game of rock, paper, scissors where the new options are tunnels, bridges, derailment… I would happily play the 'tunnels' hand every time. Most bridges were quite sturdy looking and comprised of copious amounts of concrete and heavy steel, but there was one that looked like a cacophony of chopsticks arranged in a haphazard fashion, and plonked down into a valley of dizzying heights with a lazy river snaking its way along the base. I’ve always wanted to fly, but preferably not while seated in a 1970s train as it plunges off a bridge.

I’m clearly being overly dramatic, but some of those bridges were seriously high. I know they were built well, because here they were, still standing 42 years on. And I knew our driver had decent skills, because our train hadn’t derailed yet, so if you look at it in a logical way, it was a safe passage, but logic doesn’t come into it when you are sitting atop a bridge which is precariously stilt-walking over one of mother nature’s open wounds. I was happy when the last one was traversed safely and my stomach could untwist itself.

Passing through more small villages we once again saw the industrious and inventive nature of the residents on display – something we saw regularly across every country we visited. In place of such poverty and so little opportunity, we saw people taking action and finding a way to make money, or to save money. Roadside mowing was done manually by two hands and a massive scythe. Most houses had their own plantations - row upon row of maize was planted in meticulously straight rows, like little blocks of communist housing; tall, straight and orderly. And why buy bricks, when you can make your own? At each site of a new home being built, there was a small quarry off to one side, a pit dug in the greyish black soil, with a 44 gallon drum filled with water, a few rudimentary tools and two people, toiling away, making perfectly uniform bricks which were stacked in formation under the baking sun to dry.

As we neared the next town, the landscape once again flattened out and the houses grew in size. They were no longer mud brick homes with thatched roofing, but brick and mortar with metal roof sheeting. We even spotted one which would have looked right at home in my hometown; its white rendered exterior and grand columns stood out like a sore thumb in comparison to the other, more modestly built homes. There’s always one show off in the neighbourhood… I was disappointed not to see any concrete lions guarding the perimeter though – missed opportunity.

The afternoon passed rather uneventfully, we ate our last remaining food at lunch time thinking that we would pick up some more once we reached Mbeya, but keeping some bananas as an emergency back-up.

A few new characters stopped by to have a chat with us which helped to pass the time. One in particular sticks in my mind; he was a middle aged man wearing khaki coloured dress pants and a white polo shirt tucked over his soft middle, with an old style Nokia clipped onto his brown leather belt. He had closely cropped hair, a wide smile that showed off his perfect white teeth, and a pair of twinkling eyes. He stopped at our doorway and asked the usual round of questions about our journey. After a while he stepped into the cabin and while gesturing at my bench seat asked ‘do you mind if I sit?’ “of course, please sit” I replied. He introduced himself and asked what we did for work back home. We gave our boring responses.

“I am a police officer” he stated proudly. I was pretty interested to hear more about being a police officer in Tanzania, so I asked him if he was on the train for work, what it was like being a police officer, was it scary, how long had he been a police officer for? The answers he gave were extremely vague, which I’m not sure if it was because he was some kind of undercover policeman (which if he was, he blew his cover when he told me – rookie mistake), or if perhaps he hadn’t been entirely honest with us. He stayed for quite a while longer and asked about where we were staying in Mbeya. I explained that we hadn’t booked anywhere yet, and that we were just going to find a place when we arrived. “You have no place to stay?!” he exclaimed, looking genuinely surprised by this admission. “I will give you the name of a very nice hotel, do you have some paper?” I dug around in my backpack and produced my little travel journal, handing it to him. He flipped through some of the pages I had written on, briefly reading my thoughts, and picked a blank page at the back. He proceeded to write down the name of the hotel, along with his full name, address and phone number… As he handed it back to me, I thanked him for his help and generosity. He decided that would be a good time for him to place his hand on my thigh.

My right eyebrow raised sharply and I glanced at Dom out of the corner of my eye to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Dom was just staring in disbelief. I honestly didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there rigid and motionless as he patted my leg. His twinkling eyes and big smile seemed far less charming than they had 20 minutes ago. My senses finally kicked back in and I feigned a sudden and violent coughing fit, giving me an excuse to stand up, find some water and escape Mr Hands. He seemed completely nonplussed by the whole thing and stayed seated with a grin plastered on his face, while I tried to think of a reason to get him to leave. I think in the end I settled with “I need to get changed, so you and Dom have to leave the cabin now”. Dom gave me a look that said “Nooooo, don’t leave me with this asshole”. But I did it anyway. Just in case he was still at the door when I reopened it, I grabbed the worst smelling dirty t-shirt out of my laundry bag, rubbed it along the floor and walls, and then put it on. Perfect. Luckily, he had gone to harass some other witless young lass by that stage and Dom was waiting on his own. We decided to keep the door pulled shut from then on.

I began to get a little nervous as we watched yet another sunset and realised we were no closer to our destination. The train had been scheduled to stop in Mbeya at 1:30pm. Sunset was at 6:30pm. We asked a few other passengers if they knew where we were, or how far Mbeya was. “Oh, a few more hours” they replied “maybe more”. I knew that this had been a possibility, but I was really hoping not to arrive in a foreign place late at night, with no place to stay and no food to eat.

A knock on the door from the catering staff was welcomed whole-heartedly by Dom. He ordered the brown stew and nsima. I looked at him with wide eyes, aghast.

“You aren’t seriously going to eat train food are you?” “Of course I am, you want me to order one for you too?” “Pffftt, get real. Have you seen those toilets… who knows how much longer we’re stuck on this train” “Don’t be such a wuss” he said.

Now, a bit of back story here – this holiday began in Zambia and my first meal after the boring plane food was welcomed with open arms. I didn’t question anything and I ate every last morsel on my plate. I thought I was still bullet proof, like the first time I had travelled to Africa and eaten street food and not gotten sick once. I was no longer bullet proof at age 30. The ensuing food poisoning was not as welcomed as the meal had been. I sat through a boat safari on the Zambezi, a game drive in Botswana (yep, did a border crossing while sweating profusely – it’s amazing I didn’t get pulled aside for a drug test) and three days of agony writhing around in bed with my ass cheeks clenched as tightly as I could manage, creating a ‘sweat angel’ on the bed sheets. I was too stubborn to take one of the two stomach-bug tablets we had purchased from the travel doctor prior to leaving, and in my delirium I thought “better out than in”. It wasn’t better. In the end Dom pretty much had to shove the tablet down my throat because the staff were threatening to call the town doctor to make a house call. Within two hours of the tablet hitting my stomach, I was feeling better.

So, I feel like my apprehension to eat a mystery stew that had been cooked for the previous night’s dinner was pretty well founded. The nsima did sound amazing though. It’s called different things in other regions and countries, such as Pap, Shishima, Ngima and Ugali. There is very little nutritional value in nsima, but it fills you up and it is tasty as hell when mixed with a stew or sauce. It’s just maize (or sometimes cassava) ground up into a flour and cooked into a sort of doughy porridge.

Dom’s food arrived and it smelt heavenly. I ate a banana and scowled at him from the opposite side of the cabin. He offered to go and get me a serving of brown. I declined, but I did agree to eat some of the nsima and sauce off his plate. Man was it good. Too stubborn at admit I was wrong when he offered again to bring me a plate, I lied and said I was full. What an idiot. If I could go back in time, I would order two platefuls of that stuff and eat it with glee.

We arrived at Mbeya in the darkness. With no idea what time it was, we flagged down a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the hotel that had been recommended to us on the train by the overfriendly and handsy ‘policeman’.

The taxi driver spent the next 10 minutes trying to convince us that we would prefer his Uncle’s, Cousin’s, Brother’s hotel much, much more. But we insisted he take us to the hotel we had asked for. When he told us we had arrived, neither the description we had been given, nor the name of the hotel matched what we were sitting in front of, but it was late, so I got out and left Dom with the bags, to see if they had a vacancy. Now, I use the term hotel quite loosely. It looked like a house from the front, but more like an old time pub as you walked in – all timber paneling and warm tungsten lighting, with brownish/tan coloured carpet.

The hotel manager looked up uninterested from a magazine and said ‘Eh’? I replied with “Do you have a room for tonight?” Him: “No Vacancy” Me: “For two people, myself and my husband.” I’m not sure why I thought adding an extra person into the equation would help the situation, but I tried it anyway. We weren’t married at the time, but there were some cultural taboos surrounding non-married couples sharing a room. For example – to book the train cabin together I had to tell them we were married, otherwise we would have been separated into gender-specific cabins. Him: “No Vacancy” Me: “Umm, ok. Thanks. Can you recommend someone else?” Him: Me: “Thanks again, have a good night.” Him: “Ughhhhhhh”

I trudged back to the car shaking my head at Dom… and the taxi drivers smile widened… We were swiftly taken down potholed alleyways and deserted streets to arrive at the taxi drivers recommended hotel. It looked pretty decent from the front and my spirits lifted.

I left Dom with the bags again and went to ask about a room.

Me: “Hello, do you have a room for tonight?” Hotel manager & friend: Give each other a surprised look and both look back to me with no answer. Me: “It’s for me and my husband” – I lifted my ring finger to prove my authenticity with the fake wedding band I had on. Hotel manager: “No Vacancy” Me: “Please?” I begged “I don’t care about the room or the bed. It’s really late, the train arrived late and we just need a room for one night. Please, I’m so tired. Please” Hotel manager: “We are full, No Vacancy. We only have one room available – a double bed.” Me: Hotel Manager: Me: Complete confusion…. “Ummm, yes please, can we book that room?” Hotel manager: “But it’s a double bed” Me: “That’s ok, I can smother Dom to death when he snores if I need to.” I’m kidding, I didn’t say that. Not out loud… Hotel manager: “It’s very expensive, $18 US dollars a night.” Me: “Um, I think that should be ok – I’ll go and check with my husband.” Hotel manager: Big smiles to his friend that made me slightly confused… “Ok, you come back with your husband.”

That's it for now. Part IV coming soon.