Ridin' the Rhodesian Rails

It's 439km from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls. Takes about seven hours, give or take, by car. A slow bush taxi might add another couple hours.

Then there's a train.

The train takes 14 hours. It's crammed like a cattle car full of people, each with their own accompanying food, children, and varying levels of hygiene. The cars are decades old, and it's been years since they've seen anything other than the most basic of maintenance.

So why take the train? First class, baby!

Those train cars that haven't been updated in decades? That's part of their charm. The first class sleepers on the line from Bulawayo to Vic Falls are something out of another era. Richly varnished wood lines both compartments and cabins. Dark green interiors are offset by brass coat hooks and silver mirrors inscribed with twin, interwoven Rs – Rhodesian Railways.

Inside these luxury digs, you're transported back to an earlier era, but one that still exists in Zimbabwe today. The train crawls through small towns and villages, stopping occasionally at former railway stations, overgrown with grass and weeds, before picking up steam again to race through the bushveld. At night, you can stick your head out into a warm, evening wind and pick out every star in the sky.

Your porter for this evening is David. He's been working the rails for 34 years now. David is in his late fifties, five years away from retirement and a pension. He's was working in the yard until five years ago, when they made him a porter, riding the evening train every night up to one of the seven natural wonders of the world. His skin is tight, pulling his lips over bright, symmetrical teeth in a perpetual smile. A newsboy cap sits atop his head, and you wish he were your grandfather – a sprightly, happy chap who will give you a toffee “just as long as you don't tell your grandmother.”

Your train manager is right next door. A man named Chegworth. You're eternally grateful to him for working it all out for you – giving you the private coupé because you didn't get to the station early enough to book a first-class seat. He's a big man, but one of few words. He'll neglect to charge you for the ticket upgrade, but say he was coming all along when you stick your head out the window as the train stops for coffee and tea at 6:30 in the morning.

The beds are comfortable, even if they're leaking stuffing from several large holes. The fold-down sink has been chained to the wall. You don't think these cars have had water in years. The toilets empty right out on the track, so be careful with your phone. If it goes, you're never getting it back.

The window closes all the way and latches, the intertwined Rs reminding you that even though you're in Zimbabwe, this country isn't everything it seems. We used to call it Rhodesia, after a mythomaniacal man who dreamt of one world, a union of people and states under the benevolent colonialism of the British Empire. It had a past, but even those dark days created some beauty. The engraved window closes, but not the shade. There isn't anything but starlight out here to keep you awake. It's just you and the night.

The train stops occasionally. You stick your head out. Meet the people in the next cabin, but no matter what, you can't figure out why we're stopped. It never last long, and on we go. Maybe a cow on the track, or an elephant. We're certainly far enough out to see some. Every once in a while, there are people standing alongside the rails, waiting with large bundles on their heads, a child in tow. You look around, cannot for the life of you tell where they came from – there's no sign of human settlement in sight, but you know that somewhere, in the tall grass or beyond the acacias, there's a village, and in that remote community, they need something, so they've come to the closest mode of transport they can get.

They know the train will stop. No one on it has any particular time constraints. If they did, they wouldn't have taken the train.

Instead, they ride for the rails. For the ka-ka-chink, ka-ka-chink of steel rolling over steel. For the rush of air from a door that's just been carelessly left open, so watch your child. If she goes, she's gone. For the attempt to pee while rocking both forward, backwards, and side to side. Standing up probably wasn't a great idea. It really fucks with your aim.

For the $1 cheese sandwiches with a mug of tea in the morning. For David, your porter, who's going to check in on you throughout the night, making sure everything is going smooth. For Chegworth, the train manager, even if it seems like David's doing all the work.

For the romance of the rails and a time gone by, looking at the stars as they streak on by, reading your newspaper by the light of a dim incandescent, and waking up to a morning sun rising over the plains. You hear the world wake with you: a door sliding open, then closed again, a voice in the hall, and the clack of wheels.

And as you pull in to the station, you can see the mist above the falls, 'the smoke that thunders' and masks the gorge cut over millenia by the steadily flowing waters of the Zambezi. You hear the train hiss, spy a few baboons creeping over the cars, waiting for the porters to drop their guard so they can raid the train for anything left behind.

You walk through the ticket hall and underneath an arch, the same as passengers did a century ago to greet the warthogs and the storks mulling about the grounds. This is Victoria Falls. Your train ride is over. Welcome back to today. Enjoy your stay.

On the Right Side of the Tracks

It worked out like this: I met Abdul in Harare. He was there on business, buying stock and meeting with wholesalers to supply his shop in Bulawayo. The man, by his own admission, cannot function without his tea, something like ten or more cups a day, and that's how we ran into one another, over his third cup of tea at one of the only backpackers in town.

We'd exchanged some pleasantries. With my disgusting hippy traveler beard, Abdul thought I was a fellow Muslim and offered to take me out to the Matopos if I ever made it back to Bulawayo. I was headed back that way anyway, and I was excited to see a part of the country that I couldn't get to on my own. When I met up with Abdul, however, he had a different plan.

"My friend has been doing restoration work on the train car that brought Cecil John Rhodes' body from Cape Town up to the Matopos for his burial. It's one of a kind. You have to see it. Then tomorrow we can go out to the Matopos."

Trains? That sounded about as exciting as a trip to the glue factory, but if it meant a free trip to the Matopos, then I couldn't really turn it down. I can suffer through trains for an hour or two; it's not like it'll kill me.

Okay, so it MIGHT kill me.

When we rocked up to the museum, the guys running the place seemed genuinely surprised that they had visitors. A dollar bought us entrance, and it came with a free postcard commemorating some of the most famous trains in the museum. So...great, a post card. I'm going to continue to be a whiny child for this entire experience. Let's just see some friggin' trains, already.

"Oh, and by the way. We don't have insurance, so if you want to climb on the trains, you do so at your own risk."

Wait, what? We can climb on top the trains? 

F***ing rad.

Abdul, true to his word, had a friend who'd spent the past several months volunteering at the museum. A lot of restoration work had gone into the carriage that transported Cecil Rhodes' body from Cape Town to the Matopos Hills for internment in 1902, stopping off at every city and small town along the way. It was Rhodes' dying wish to be buried at World's End, a rocky outcropping in the UNESCO-listed Matopos Hills, one of the most peaceful and beautiful places I've ever been. 

Also a brilliant place to hold an impromptu ad shoot for Coca-Cola (Call me!)

The funeral carriage is one of a kind, an American Pullman car built to carry one of Africa's most famous and controversial colonial figures. Inside, it's all leather and silver, dark wood and shining brass. It's the type of place where you can almost smell the smoke from old cigars, where you can almost taste the imported Scotch. Where, if you listen closely, you can almost hear brash trumpet roar of racist imperialism, of "Empire" and oppression.

As a historical artifact, the carriage is interesting in and of itself, but the real treat is outside, in the rail yards, where dozens of train cars, engines, and rail ties sit out slowly collecting dust and rusting away in the African sun. 

I'd forgotten how awesome trains are. I don't mean that in an awe-inspiring sense, nor do I mean it how most Americans use it, i.e. as a replacement for 'cool.' No, I'm giving voice to my seven-year old boy self, when I say, "Trains are AWESOME." Think about it. When did you last spend some time around old trains? I lived in London for the last couple years. I used trains quite frequently, but when it comes to your morning commute or your trip down to Brighton, the train becomes nothing more than a bus on rails. You're not cognizant of the power of a single engine pulling ten or twelve steel tubes full of people while rolling along two thin rails. You don't really think about the wonders of engineering that it took to lay track across hundreds of miles - over fields, across rivers, even winding around mountains. It doesn't really hit you, in the modern train, that for nearly a century, these behemoths belched coal and hissed steam like some metal dragon. Modern trains glide on electric rails, the cars are soundproofed, and arriving at a station is little different than stepping off a bus in the suburbs. Those older locomotives, however, were the pinnacle of Industrial Era engineering. They combined power and comfort. Disembarking onto a platform, where the porters took your bags and conductors whistled departures while glancing at gold pocket watches, this is part of the romance of that era, one that may never have existed but nonetheless exists in my mind. 

The beasts that slept in the Bulawayo train yard were from a different era. All of them saw Rhodesia declare unilateral independence from Great Britain. All of them witnessed the handover from Ian Smith's minority rule to Robert Mugabe's majority dictatorship. Their faded paint harks back to the Rhodesian Railways, in the first half of the twentieth century, a different time. Some might argue, a different place.

One of the oldest, a smaller green and red engine that looked like it'd be right at home with Thomas, Oliver, and all the other trains on the Island of Sodor, logged over a million miles as it built the rail lines from the Cape all the way up to present-day Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. It even had a name, Jack Tar, that gave it the character and personality of a robust, Victorian adventurer.

Other than this old adventurer and the Rhodes' carriage, everything else in the museum sat open and uncared for. It was as if the railway just dumped their old equipment here when it stopped working. The museum is essentially a junkyard, but like any good junkyard, the lack of barriers, guards, and restraints opens up opportunities for discovery and play unavailable in a typical museum. Engine compartments stood open, giving us access to switches, levers, wheels, and pulleys. Suddenly, I was driving a train (figuratively) rushing passengers up on the night train to Lusaka, or hauling coal to the power plants in South Africa. Forcing a door led me into an engine room, where I was a greasy mechanic, covered in engine oil and coal dust, trying to jerry-rig a fix on the move so we could get the antibiotics to the cholera patients on time. I was a porter delivering coffee to some early risers on sleeper to Vic Falls. I was on the Orient Express; there was a mystery to solve. I climbed on top of some old passenger cars, and suddenly, I was Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade: "It belongs in a museum!" I was James Bond in Skyfall, running across the carriages to retrieve the list of NATO agents from the nameless assassin. 

I can't tell you how desperately I wanted to break into this one.

I don't know what came over me, but there is something undeniably exhilarating about being able to tap into your inner child and lose yourself in play. By the end of the day, I was covered in a combination of grease, coal dust, and dirt. My hands were black. I wouldn't be surprised if I had smudges on my face as well. As the sun set, I hopped on a handcar and ran it up and down the rails, only to spy a small kid watching, smiling, shy. It was obvious he wanted to play too, but he was too small to run the handcar, so I chucked him up and ran it back and forth until we nearly crashed it into another locomotive. 

I said NEARLY. After all, jackasses like me have to protect these sites for future jackasses.

If you'd have told me a month ago that one of the best experience I would have in Zimbabwe would take place at a nearly defunct railway museum, I'd have looked at you like you have two heads. After all, this is a country with five UNESCO World Heritage sites. It's home to some of the most beautiful scenery in Southern Africa as well as some of its nicest people.

It's evidently also home to a dusty, broken down train museum, one that, if you allow it, may help you unlock your inner child.

West Africa Redux

Whenever I meet new people on the road, I try not to mention the fact that I've been traveling by myself for over six months, if only to avoid the inevitable ten-minute repetition of my past two years. (I continually mention my two years in West Africa here both because anyone who reads this can look back and get the whole story in one long afternoon and because you can't ask any follow-up questions!) But for those who are really curious, those whose eyes widen a little bit whenever I mention Mali, Ghana, or Sierra Leone, the inevitable question is usually, "What was your favorite place?"

And my usual gut reaction is "Are you kidding me?" Ask a student of literature for her favorite book. Ask a film historian to name his favorite flick. Ask my friend Patrick for his favorite paranoid, evil personality from 1928 - 1957. Maybe you could help him out by asking him only to focus on Europe, but really, there are just too many from which to choose. Asking me to choose my favorite place in West Africa is about like asking me to choose my favorite digit. My first inclination, I think I'd have to go with right-hand thumb, but that doesn't mean I'd be fine losing any of the rest.

Instead of launching into this diatribe, however, I usually cock my head and ask, "Of which country?" The truth is, I've seen and done a lot in my two and a half years in West Africa. I can't really give a definitive answer, but I can give you my list of my top travel descriptions. Apologies for continuing to neglect Morocco, but hopefully this Cliff's notes version of my trip can help guide any future questions for whenever I return home. Thus, in chronological order, I give you Sterling's Personal Guide to West Africa.

Abomey, Benin - the old seat of the Dahomey Empire, Abomey is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but its red-earth palaces, symbols of a kingdom built on slavery, is slowly crumbling back unto whence they. This is one of the best places, though, to look onto the sadistic side of the African slave trade and examine how this bloody, black institution set tribe against tribe to tear one another apart.

Boukoumbé, Benin - a hike deep into the hills reveals the land of the Betammaribé tribe, who resisted slavery by living independently as family units protected by their small, fortress-like houses. Spend a night with a family in a tata house surrounded by rolling green hills and towering baobob trees and you'll feel like you're in the Shire. Just try not to hit any old hobbit women with your slingshot (or blame it on a kid if you do).

Klouto, Togo - deep in the hills and jungle of southern Togo, Klouto is filled with coffee plantations that you can hike through while on the search for beautiful butterflies. If you don't have an inner lepidopterist, you can always check out the abandoned European castle hidden in the trees...

Green Turtle Lodge, Ghana - an ecolodge working on community development along one of the most beautiful stretches of beach in West Africa. A sure place to meet Peace Corps types and to get crunched by some seriously awesome waves.

Kumasi, Ghana - home of the Ashanti, one of the most well-known West African ethnies, famous for their colorful and highly-prized kente and adinkra cloth.

N'guigmi, Niger - not much there but pure white sand. Too bad the nearest ocean is thousands of kilometers away. Go and you'll feel like you're at the end of the earth, or at least the end of your travels. With genocide to the east, a batshit crazy dictator to the north, religo-ethnic conflict to the south, and general famine all around, you'll definitely start to rethink your privileged status as a developed country national.

Banfora to Sindou Peaks, Burkina Faso - I rented a motorbike and took it the 100km there and back all in one day, and what a day it was. The dirt piste is lined with trees the entire way, and hiking around the peaks is a bit like stepping into the scenery from Fraggle Rock. Those who remember that reference get bonus points for having a great childhood.

Dogon Country, Mali - take the road up from Ouaghiya to the Falaise de Bandiagara and get into some real hiking. This is one of the most unique cultural areas in all of Africa, but due to its location in rural West Africa has remained relatively untouched by mass tourism. And the stars...if only you knew.

Sunset Beers on the Niger - whether it's in Niamey, Mopti, Gao, or Gaya, a cold Flag on a hot desert night is pretty unbeatable with those beautiful African sunsets. And with fresh fish brought in that hour by colorful characters in even more colorful pirogues, you're sure of a good meal to go with your beer.

Festival du Desert, Mali - one of the greatest concerts I've ever been to, bar none. A celebration of Tuareg culture, and a great revenue resourse for a severely impoverished people, the Festival du Desert brings together some of the greatest acts in West African music alongside musicians from all over the world. But the focus is definitely the desert, and you won't ever forget that when you're freezing your ass off on your third night in the Saharan winter.

Yamoussoukro, Côté d'Ivoire - check out the previous post on this one from sometime in January. The city was built to glorify former president Houphouet-Boigny's ancestors, but from the looks of it, the only thing the city glorifies is how much money one man can dump into a swamp.

Monrovia, Liberia - maybe less of a tourist hotspot than a fascinating look into a community still trying to rebuild itself after nearly two decades of civil war. Let's examine the amenities: no electricity, no running water, unsafe tap water, and streets that most embassies have put off limits after 9 pm. But if you dare to brave them (carrying no more than $20 at any time) you can have a great night drinking with awesome people on the streets of this awesome town.

Tiwai Island, Sierra Leone - home to eleven different species of primate, including the rare Diana monkey, all on one easy-to-trek island in the middle of the Moa River. Go looking for rare pygmy hippos (good luck), walk through dense jungle, take a river swim (just watch out for the oyster shells), and finish it all up with a fresh-grilled fish caught that morning by your boat guide.

Freetown Beaches, Sierra Leone - by far the best beaches in all of West Africa, and there's something for everyone. Choose any color of powdery sand from pure white to yellow ochre, even sand that turns your feet black. Your food choices may be limited to lobster, oysters, barracuda, and mango, but who needs anything else? And while all the beaches may be beautiful, only a few have phosphorescent water...

Kamakwie, Sierra Leone - So why does Sierra Leone rank so highly? Well, when you have savannah, mountains, beaches, and jungle, it's kind of hard to choose just one place. Kamakwie wins out because it's close to Outamba-Kilimi National Park, but it's really only a good place to sleep if you've got awesome friends who work for a local NGO. Try camping in the park instead.

Doucki, Guinea - it's more than just a great name. Doucki is a village perched on the edge of a cliff in the Fouta Djalon region of Guinea, the ancestral home of the Fula people. This would only be mildly interesting without the incomparable Hassan Ba, who leads some of the most fun trekking I've ever done in this part of the world. Gorges, waterfalls, and more animals hiding in the rocks than you could ever imagine. What more could you want?

Kedougou, Senegal - I have to admit, some of these are brilliant only because of the people I met there. I spent a week laid up in Kedougou after I hurt my foot. It's a laid-back, chill town: the perfect place to see Senegalese/Fula culture on the everyday level. But there's enough nature about (including the nearby national park) to keep you busy even if you don't have the Peace Corps connections.

Bijagos Archipelago, Guinea-Bissau - a unique culture hidden amongst the dangerous currents of the turquoise seas surrounding the islands. White powdery beaches and a Portugese influence makes this country unlike any other in West Africa.

Chinguetti, Mauritania - stuck right in the middle of the desert, and one of the holiest cities in all of Islam, Chinguetti is a great place to start your camel trek, be it two days, four, or fifty (if you're keen to take it all the way to Timbuktu). If nothing else, a trek into the desert will provide one of the most beautiful sleeping experiences you'll ever have, especially with a full moon.

Chôum to Nouadhibou Express - the ultimate travel experience. Sixteen hours on top of an iron ore hopper through the desert. It doesn't get much hardcore than that. If you're brave, you can hop off for bathroom breaks whenever the train stops, but make them quick, because this train don't wait!

So there you have it. It may be a bit cheap to do a "best of" list, but the well of ideas was pretty dry there for a while. I think the rains may have come, however, with my first full day in Tangier. I'll have a really good post again soon. I promise.

Those Train Travelin' Blues

So, now it's time for the great transport blog, or at least the first leg of it. Two trucks, a train, a car, a bus, and I've covered something like 2500km of desert in under five days. I think I've had more travel time than sleep this month, but now that I'm in Morocco, I hope to make up for it in one long, marathon nap.

But first, let's recount this trip. I awoke in the dunes of Chinguetti with the prayer call at 5:30 am on May 1st. Tromping a couple kilometers through the desert's sands, I was met by a pickup truck, the ever-present Toyota Hilux, on it's way to Atâr. Growing up in the Midwest, I'm pretty used to crazily careening down gravel roads in the back of a pickup, so this was actually a bit of a treat, taking me back to my youth and adding a bit of excitement: Indiana doesn't have roads winding around desert gorges, only inches from free-fall cliff edges. Made it to Atâr in about an hour and a half and had a couple hours to wait to catch the next pickup to Choûm. Four hours through the desert, with the sun beating down and the sand in my face, I still somehow managed to fall asleep. I don't know when narcolepsy became part and parcel of all my public transport ventures, but it does help to make the trip that much shorter.

All this discomfort was rather easy to take, as I was to meet my real goal in Choûm: the iron-ore train from the mining town of Zouérat to the port city of Nouadhibou. It's one of the longest trains in the world, sometimes stretching to over two kilometers and, fully loaded, weighing several thousand tons. Though it's not even offically meant for passengers, but dozens jump the train every day for the 24-hour trip between the two cities. It's really the only means of transport in this stretch of desert, but for me, and for the few other travelers who've done it, it's an adventure impossible to forgo.

I arrived in Choûm around two in the afternoon, hot, dusty, and in need of food. Unfortunately, Choûm turned out to be little more than a train platform in the middle of the desert. "Dix heures, onze heures," the train would arrive, according to some local kids. However, in Africa, I knew this wait would be a bit longer, and unfortunately, Choûm had little to offer other than shade and a woman selling tea. It was the perfect picture of a town at the end of the earth: dusty, wind-swept, barren, with nothing but a few crows croaking from atop the telegraph wires (I don't actually know what these poles were, but I'd just like to take the time to reimagine Choûm as a lawless, Western boom town.)

So, I settled down beside the tracks to wait for the train. And sleep a bit. Wait a bit more. Wander around the six or eight houses in town. Visit the boutique. Can't buy anything because the shopkeeper's passed out on the concrete floor. Sleep a bit more. Five more hours of this? I'd throw myself in front of the train if one ever went by. Around ten at night, I heard the rumblings in the distance, but my neighbors said only, "Nope, not until 2am." And indeed, this train, loaded full of ore and roaring by for what seemed hours passed us without even slowing. Four hours later though, with a screech and a hiss, a train stretching into the darkened horizon pulled in at our lonely little outpost and, not wanting to pay for a seat on the floor in the one passenger cabin, I climbed into an open iron-ore hopper with Moussa and Mohammed, two kids on their way to Nouadhibou to sell African toothbrushes (those of you who've spent time in Africa know these are sticks).

I expected the iron ore to be bound up in rocks, the hoppers full of uncomfortable stone that I would have to, in some way, tolerate for sixteen hours through the burning desert sun. So I was quite surprised, upon landing in the hopper to find myself sinking slightly in heavy, black sand, the iron ore filings which are processed in Zouérat and shipped in Nouadhibou. However, unlike sand, the iron ore stuck to everything. The first thing Moussa did was to put down a tarp, which we shared for the trip, and wrap himself up in a heavy blanket, something I mimicked immediately as the train took off, the wind catching the lighter particles of iron and sending them flying in clouds of black soot.

For all the romanticism of this trip, which so few in the world have ever heard of, let alone taken, the train was pretty unromantically dull. I spent the night getting the best sleep I've had on public transport. Despite the cold and the wind, the iron ore was quite soft and comfortable, and I, cocooned in my sleep sack, had little trouble with the heat come daytime. Sheer boredom was the primary drawback. The desert was beautiful by moonlight, but in the day, the sun baked the iron ore and just made for a generally dirty, uncomfortable afternoon. But, by the time Nouadhibou peeked over the horizon, I knew I'd done something special and, coated in black dust, tired, half-starved, I knew that this would be a memory I'd carry with me for a while: one of those true "African experiences," i.e. one you're glad you've had, but not necessarily ready to ever repeat.