Africa by Rail: Sweetest Adventure

Curious passersby watched our every move as we walked along a dirt road into Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

I hadn’t seen a bar of soap in three days. Flying dust tickled my nose, settled in my ears and threatened to transform my contact lenses into gravel-weighted discs. With my oversized backpack clinging to my damp shoulders, I might as well have had “tourist” stamped in red ink across my forehead.

My friend John and I stepped through a door standing underneath the Waverly Hotel sign and ordered warm plates of sadza (a local maize dish that looks like Cream of Wheat). John walked up to the crowded bar for a beer as heads turned from all angles in the crowd to get a look at the visitors. A well-dressed woman in heels looked at me and giggled, “You’re so white!”

It wasn’t exactly the reception I’d imagined when I left Boston for a two-week train crossing of southeastern Africa in July of 1989.

I’d wanted to experience the most mysterious end of the continent in its most raw and unpolished form--no once-in-a-lifetime sights obscured by an airplane wing in 30,000-foot-high cumulus clouds for me. I wanted ground-level adventure. And when I saw a U.S. State Department warning that “public transport is unreliable and unsafe,” I knew I’d find that adventure traveling by train.

Our rural route tracked almost 2,000 miles, from Johannesburg, South Africa, through Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia, and on to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. All I knew of this route was what I had read in the guidebook “Africa on a Shoestring” by Geoff Crowther (Lonely Planet Publications), that to reach Dar-es-Salaam from Johannesburg, we would have to travel on at least five rail lines and hope a healthy dose of good fortune traveled with us. We had no schedules, no confirmations and no reservations.

Not only was such planning virtually impossible from 6,000 miles away, but it would have taken much of the fun out of it. About our only concession to preparation was requesting “loose-leaf” visas from the South Africa Consulate that we could discard at the border so that Zambian and Tanzanian officials wouldn’t label us “prohibited immigrants” and deny us entry to their countries.

The first leg of our rail journey was a Zimbabwe Railways trip from Johannesburg through an eastern slice of Botswana, north to Bulawayo. As our first-class car, with its turn-of-the-century polished wood interior, skirted the Kalahari Desert, we watched the landscape change from faceless pasture to short-shrubbed golden savannah.

Windowscaped murals of grazing cows, windmills on parched red earth and colorful rondavel and tin shack communities with names such as Ramathlabama, Tshesebe and Ramokgwebone passed our private compartment. Vendors walked the aisles selling ice-cold South African beer.

It would take 25 hours to reach Bulawayo from Johannesburg. I fell asleep on my bunk, lulled in and out of consciousness by the comforting blasts of the distant train whistle, and awoke to find Zimbabwe speeding by at 40 m.p.h. and my heart pounding almost as fast.

Spotting nuclear power plants in Zimbabwe, on what we found to be a typical 60-degree day, didn’t do much for that National Geographic-esque image I had of the Dark Continent. But being hooked up behind a soot-spraying steam engine in the little Botswana town of Plumtree did.

The constant flow of dust, lack of drinkable water and sporadic electricity further reassured me that I’d reached the “real” Africa.

The Bulawayo woman’s offhand comment about my fair skin rang truer every day. Pasty-faced tourists are a rare sight in rural Africa, and we could hardly have expected to fit right in. We found that just by the color of our skin we were expected to change money and buy souvenir wood carvings.

After the first few days of poking our heads out of train windows, playing “I spy Africa” like culturally untrained tourists, it became natural to feel a reciprocal source of amusement as children pointed to our compartment and called out “white man” in their different languages.

Passing landscapes of low and distant hills--rock croppings, actually--were lathered with the bubbly umbrellas of green, gray and orange trees. Periodically, the colorful mounds would recede, leaving only spindly scrub to give shape to an otherwise nondescript grassland. Each night, in the cool African winter, we’d lean out the window and pick the twinkling points of the Southern Cross out of a lucid sky.

School-age girls with siblings wrapped tightly to their backs and wearing bright cloth waved when we steamed by. Women eyed us from underneath balanced buckets of water. We passed traditional thatched-hut villages and cement-coated mud houses with corrugated tin roofs held in place by stones. It was like a PBS special, untainted by special effects.

When I asked the ticket conductor how long it would take to reach the next stop, the Zambian border town of Victoria Falls, he said, “If God is willing, 12 hours.” This trip has been known to take as long as 2 1/2 days. You learn to expect delays in a region where schedules aren’t considered as sacred as they are in other parts of the world.

We were merely three hours behind schedule when we spotted the telltale sign of Victoria Falls--a misty spray shooting well over 100 feet into the air.

The rough, only half-sketched, tourist-oriented town of Victoria Falls takes in a few pricey hotels, numerous campsites and a few earthy chalets where, according to my book, monkeys, crocodiles and hippos haunt the riverbanks.

The falls themselves, a dramatic mile-wide drop in the Zambezi River, are visually traumatizing, making it easy to see why explorer David Livingstone brought them to the world’s attention in 1855. We met another Boston traveler and spent the day exploring the lush rain forest surrounding the massive waterfall.

We uneventfully walked across the Zambian border and accepted a ride offered by three friendly businessmen leaving a convention at the plush InterContinental Hotel. They talked about their copper business--Zambia is one of the world’s top producers of the mineral--and dropped us in Livingstone’s namesake town, which marked the beginning of the next rail line.

The next day we boarded a train and found the 12-hour ride to the Zambian capital city of Lusaka a most fitting entry into the true heart and soul of the country. Our first-class car was old and dilapidated, with broken windows, rusted lights and fans, bunks that leaked padding, and gaping holes in lieu of fire extinguishers. Decaying walk ramps made the simple act of crossing between cars an almost death-defying stunt.

I’d say we logged an average of about 1 1/2 miles between stops, some of which were marked only by stubby wooden signs in cornfields. Each time, the train would rattle to a halt with what I was sure was its last breath, then gasp retchingly back to life with a sudden lurch, as if rammed from behind. A painful squeak would then be followed by a loud jerky series of choking belches and moans. John’s book vibrated; my pen leaped post cards. Confined to our bunks, we grew more nauseous by the minute.

I lusted after the solid ground outside, intriguing as it was even in double vision. Each squealing stop brought parading scenes of local women and children--baskets high on their heads--selling fresh brown eggs, dried fish, cassava, green oranges, bananas and cigarettes (sold individually). Passengers leaned down from windows and paper kwacha quickly changed hands.

We ended up spending three days in Lusaka--waiting for the train that leaves only twice a week, and waiting for a Tanzanian visa. After our first meal in a small downtown restaurant, we were simply waiting to leave.

The standard scaly-beef-and-greasy-chip-fare was further soured by a soapy floor, darting cockroaches and a grumpy waiter who said they were out of everything else and made us pay our $2 before he’d give us forks.

Housing, fuel and electricity were in short supply in this city of almost a million people. Coca-Cola signs were everywhere; the drink itself nowhere. Stores stocked mostly empty shelves, and many of the goods available (maize, cookies, soap, curried beans and separating mayonnaise) were priced out of reach of the average consumer, who we were told earned about $10 a month. Street vendors hawked loaves of bread for $1, large chocolate bars for $5.

Whenever we made a purchase we were told, “Sorry, no change today.” And in spite of a high military presence, my book warned to never walk at night: “Chances are you’ll get mugged.”

It felt good to get moving again, especially after I convinced John to make the seven-hour ride to Kapiri Mposhi in standard class. I was tiring of the first-class “Cliff Notes” version of Africa and wanted to experience travel as a local. So we stood in line for eight hours like everyone else, boarded a lurching, cockroach-ridden coach and watched the aisles clog with passengers who couldn’t find seats.

The last leg of our journey began in Kapiri Mposhi’s stark-white monster of a station that rose out of the swirling dust like a drug-induced mirage, a transportation castle in a desert of want.

Thousands of people milled about, waiting for the triweekly TAZARA connection to Tanzania--for most, their only link with the outside world.

For $20 we had booked into a second-class, six-passenger compartment for what was to be anywhere from a 48- to 64-hour trip from Kapiri Mposhi to Dar-es-Salaam.

The rail system between these cities was built by China’s Mao Tse-tung in the 1970s, and takes in 147 stations as it snakes through the East African copper country. Sights include some of the remotest and most beautiful lands of Africa, including the almost unknown Selous game reserve with its giraffe, zebra, eland and wart hogs. Unfortunately, photography from the train is forbidden by law--authorities say it is for “international security” reasons.

It was on the TAZARA when I realized that for such a desolate, spacious country--6 million people inhabited a land twice the size of California--Zambia seems remarkably crowded. In the middle of the night, I awoke to find people pulling each other through our window, while outside, policemen attempted to knock them off with clubs. The compartment and hallways were bursting with travelers unable to find room in standard class.

Each stop brought a new round of frantic shouts and hysterical screams, followed by sharp orders from the harried conductor--who, at one point, was thrown into our room from the hall. To get to the toilet, I had to literally crawl over people in the hall.

After that experience, Tanzania was a breath of fresh air. Since anyone who couldn’t show $50 in foreign currency was thrown off the train at the border, the ranks had thinned considerably. Military police with machine guns manned each station, and the country seemed as rich in law and order as it was in landscape.

A lush patchwork of maize and coffee fields lined a backdrop of wrinkly mountains. Rice-packed swamps and banana and mango trees alternated with mud-brick housing compounds. At one point, I saw a small barefoot boy leading a wooden cart and team of oxen. As we neared Dar-es-Salaam, the forest became so thick that it looked like a deciduous carpet, occasionally ripping where trees were falling victim to slash-and-burn farming.

On our final day, the station’s window show changed to include lean men in shorts carrying eight-foot stalks of sugar cane over their shoulders. Some also peddled hand-carved wooden combs, knives and sculptures. A boy offered a toy truck he’d built of sugar cane.

One of the businessmen in our compartment bought one of the rough sugar stalks and pulled it through the window. He laid it on the floor, hacked off a ruler-sized piece and offered it to me.

It was at that moment, after 109 hours on rural African trains, that I realized I had experienced that most indelible of sweetnesses: ground-level adventure.

There was something particularly fitting about that sugar in a region equally raw and unpolished. I’d finally found my way to a land where what you saw was not only what you got, but often all there was.

And, for a tourist passing through, it was just enough.

GUIDEBOOK

Africa Rail Journey

Booking rail travel: Since trains are slow and unreliable throughout southeastern Africa flexibility is essential. Expect to book a reservation by showing up at the appropriate station and standing in line. The major TAZARA railway link, which runs between Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, has two and sometimes three trains per week running in each direction. Bookings can only be arranged in person in either Lusaka or Dar-es-Salaam.

Prices: Due to exchange rates heavily favoring the dollar, southeastern Africa remains one of the least expensive places to visit. Total land transportation costs for this trip were a little more than $100, with the Johannesburg-Bulawayo connection accounting for about $65 of that. Basic meals, such as chicken or beef and rice, averaged $3 to $5.

When to go: Seasons in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania are the reverse of those in the United States, making their winter (May through August) the most pleasant time to travel. During this cool, dry period, daily temperatures range from the 60s to the 80s. The rainy season begins in November.

For more information: Contact the Tanzania Mission, 205 E. 42nd St., Room 1300, New York 10017, (212) 972-9160, or the Zambia National Tourist Board, 737 E. 52nd St., New York 10022, (212) 308-2155. Two recommended books are “Africa on a Shoestring” by Geoff Crowther (Lonely Planet Publications) and “Backpacker’s Africa--A Guide to East and Southern Africa for Walking and Overland Travellers,” by Hilary Bradt (Bradt Publications, England). Both make recommendations on accommodations, including clean budget hotels, campsites and youth hostels.