An African Train Ride of a Lifetime
When I worked as a foreign correspondent and journalist in Africa over half a century ago, one of the most action-packed 24 hours of my life was spent rattling aboard an old steam train from Dar es Salaam, on Tanganyika’s Indian Ocean border in the east, to Mwanza on the shores of the wave-washed mighty Lake Victoria in the west.
In those days, air traffic between centres in this former U.N. Trust Territory was virtually impossible, particularly as Mwanza and many other similar centres had no airfields to speak of.
As soon as I climbed onto the old rusting pre-First World War railway carriage to find my seat, I immediately realised I was in for a number of interesting hours in my life.
Already inside my designated compartment were a breast-feeding African woman and her crying child; a baby goat in a large grass handmade basket with its legs tied; and an elderly African missionary who was reading aloud to himself and all and sundry.
After having to move yet another basket with a frightened clucking chicken in it, I eventually sat down with my luggage on my lap, only to be told by a highly anxious tribesman in full regalia that my seat was actually his. On inspection, I realised we had mistakenly been double- booked by the same sullen faced train station booking clerk.
This dilemma resulted in a hurried search for the train’s on-board ticket examiner who quite casually told us that this “little matter” happened regularly as a “matter of course.”
After some extended conversation in a local lingo other than Swahili, which I then only partly understood, the tribal fellow was re-seated elsewhere down the train together with his overladen dried sheep’s bladder bags and a collection of coloured ceremonial sticks — quite a sight to behold. He was apparently off to some tribal fest in the wastelands of Western Tanganyika.
On returning to my seat, however, some further bedlam prevailed as the baby billy goat held captive in its basket was happily enjoying my seat instead of his former place on the floor at the entrance to our compartment. His owner must have thought that I, too, had been re-seated elsewhere.
As the train eventually rattled its way out of Dar es Salaam, known as East Africa’s “haven of peace,” and eventually started to climb into the green rolling hills of Morrogorro, I was reinforced by the realisation that I really was in for a railway journey of a lifetime, not actually realising just what was yet to come.
Like a miniature Hornby wind-up toy train of my schoolboy years, the steam engine, taking me 900 kms right across Tanganyika from east to west, had to forcefully stop every now and then. Instead of having to be wound up by hand and key like my toy train, my steam driven full-size engine on this line was forced to stop to get up a bigger head of steam so as to negotiate any of the hills and mountain passes, we had yet to encounter.
On one occasion, my train was forced to come to a sudden and immediate grinding halt as a herd of about eight elephants nonchantly decided to cross the railway line ahead of us, without as much as a side-glance. They must have thought that their group was far bigger than our old-fashioned train.
The various enforced and other stops we made were good, as they gave me, as a passenger new to the route, more time to take in the sometimes stationery landscapes as well as those passing us as we huffed and puffed our way by.
As a devoted train passenger, I have always believed that one of the beauties of this form of travel is that trainlines do not generally follow motorways built by necessity across bland scenery. Instead, they traverse sights impossible for us to see and enjoy from all other means of transport.
I was well into my journey when my train suddenly screeched to yet another standstill with a mighty jerk transmitted through the length of all its carriages. On looking out of the dusty window, I saw to my surprise a number of African and White policemen hastily climbing into the carriage adjoining that in which I was seated.
Being a curious newsman, I naturally decided to investigate and saw a team of policemen starting to unscrew all the ceiling boards above the carriage walkway. “What in heaven’s name is happening here?” I asked one of the African officers. “Oh, Bwana,” I was told, ” we are taking from the train over a ton of coffee in small packets which someone has hidden here.”
I thought at first that the perpetrator of this apparent misdeed could at least have been dealing in bars of gold instead of simple packets of coffee. It turned out, however, that a railway engineer was caught smuggling coffee out of Tanganyika into the nearby Congo where it fetched far higher prices.
While being serviced in Dar es Salaam’s train workshops, the engineer apparently had the chance to hide in the train his illegal load which was to be picked up at the train’s destination by another railway worker accomplice and then illegally sold across the border with the Congo.
After I spent some time trying to work out the economics of smuggling coffee into another country, my train’s next official station stop coincided with the evening meal hour. As my ‘puffing billy’ had no cafe facilities on board, all we passengers had to rely on buying meals through the open train windows from shouting salespeople standing on the station platform with outstretched hands offering tasty eats for a price.
I chose to buy what appeared to me as being a giant hamburger. It quickly satisfied my hunger, and I thought that the wholesome meat inside the baked wheat bun was one of the best meat meals I had to that point enjoyed in Tanganyika. I was in fact sure that my burger contained a top quality and best cut of pork.
Feeling happy with the meal I had purchased, I settled back in my seat to once again enjoy the passing scenery. As the train started up with a mighty jolt and chugged its way out of the station, I suddenly saw literally scores of long animal skins drying in the African sun. They were attached to a wire fence preventing people from crossing the railway tracks.
For something to say, I casually asked my companions which creatures these skins had come from. Without a second lost to concern, I was offhandedly told they were from pythons which abounded in the area, and the skins were being dried for sale to leather makers overseas. And then came a final indigestible sentence, advising me that I had just eaten python meat in what I quickly dubbed to be my very last railway ‘shamburger’ for all time!