Because the MV Limba was not running down lake Tanganyika, we had to backtrack. This involved figuring out how to get back from Kigoma or from Kigoma down to Zambia. The easiest and now timeliest option (Justin is running out of time) was to fly back to Dar $160 and take the Tazara train to Zambia. This is a 45 hour journey crosses Tanzania and most of Zambia. So basically we headed back to Dar where we spent two uneventful days doing errands and preparing for 45 hours on a train. If you ever go to Rwanda, change all your money back to dollars before you leave. You cannot exchange Rwandan Francs anywhere, in my effort to exchange them I was promptly relieved of them by a shyster…this added to my already distasteful experience in Rwanda.
Along the way we met a few interesting folks, of note was this little guy traveling with his father and a friend in Kigoma and staying at our hotel. I think he was about 7 or 8, but after we met them at the hotel we could not shake him. He was a little Indian kid who had all kinds of wild tales, by wild tales I mean he would vary from retelling a discovery channel show to describing near death experiences with baboons and would rarely allow you to get a word in edgewise. Either way he followed us everywhere and was quite a character, I felt like I had one of Indiana Jones’ little helpers for about 24 hrs. I guess this is a precursor to India. He is in the midst of an entertaining tale here.
So on to the train, we boarded after 2 hot and sweaty hours in waiting in the 1st class lounge which was a misnomer because outside the 1st class lounge was decidedly more comfortable than inside. We had packed provisions which consisted of a couple bottles of wine, a bottle of vodka and some peanut butter. The train was 16 of the sorriest cars I have ever seen, of which we were sharing a 1st class sleeper with two Zambian accountants for the railroad Louis and Ben, both really nice guys.
So at about 3:30 on Friday we departed. We did not take the express, so we stopped just about every 45 min to pick people up or drop off. Just like the buses, whenever the train stops anywhere there is a crowd of locals that converge on the passenger compartments to beg for money or sell fruit, drinks etc. This is typical.
According to Louis the railroad like many other infrastructure projects in Africa was built by the Chinese. Now that they are a 2nd-1st world country they have to contribute more heavily to IMF and World Bank, one way they reportedly do this is through infrastructure projects. They contribute equipment and cost of materiel, and in turn have the Tanzanians pay for the cost of labor (their engineers) the hence they create jobs abroad for their people and meet their contribution requirements. I though this was interesting. All over Tanzania we saw Chinese engineers working on Roads and infrastructure projects.
Rail is definitely the way to go, you can get up, go the bar car, take a shower, go to the bathroom all the luxuries that are absent on a bus. For some crazy reason is was cheaper as well. Our sleeper tickets were 60,000TSH maybe $40 and I saw the Dar-Lusaka bus ticket was 80,000TSH - $60. Who would elect to spend 30 hrs on a bus vs 45 on a train I have no idea.
So we passed the time by looking at the scenery and chatting with Louis and the other passengers. Louis is a older Zambian Mike Tyson look alike by the way. In chatting, Louis revealed the size of his family (this is pretty common in Africa, the first thing everyone asks you is how many kids you have) He is one of 5 brothers, two have passed away but between the five boys they have produced 27 grandchildren for his mother. 2 to 27 in two generations, talk about population growth.
Zambia and rural Tanzania are beautiful and this is definitely a good way to see the country. The locomotive broke down on night two, so our 45 hour journey turned into a 54 hour one. It was comfortable relative to taking a bus, but way too long. By evening number three I broke into the Vodka.
This was a typical scene from our compartment when we stopped at a village.
While at one of our stops we had the metaphor for African Aid moment. Little kids (mostly 5-8yrs old) are yelling and begging outside the window. “Give me money Mzungo” I don’t give them money, but we have some bananas so I toss those down and then have to admonish the kids to share. I’m sure they don’t understand English. More kids show up, I dig around in my bag and pull out a candy bar and before I can toss that down to the kid who didn’t get a banana, some teenager sneaks up and steals it out of my hand and takes off down the tracks as I yell at him (he is clearly not going to share it) so the little kids are still left empty handed. I consider getting out of the train and pursuing him to reclaim the chocolate bar. About this time Justin gets into the fray and pulls out a 3/4 consumed jar of green olives. He tries to hand this down to the little kids, they fight over it, then drop it and the glass breaks. They are picking the olives off the ground and eating them, it is apparent they don’t really like olives. So we start yelling at them to watch out for the broken glass on the tracks because they are all barefoot. Why is this a metaphor? You see a person in need and try to help, but your first donation is not shared. They next time you donate a crook steals your donation, on the third donation as an unintended consequence the people you are trying to help get hurt or don’t need what you give them. Hmmm….
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