The TAZARA Express to Dar es Salaam

The train pulled out of New Kapiri Mposhi Station at four o’clock, on time, which is almost unheard of in Africa. Our journey from one African capital to another by rail had begun earlier that day, on a bus. Quite why the line began (or finished, depending on which way you are going I suppose) a two hour drive north of Lusaka rather than in the city itself was something of a mystery. But you soon learn in Africa not to question why things are the way they are: looking for a rational or reasonable explanation for anything is more often than not a futile and frustrating exercise.

We settled into our compartment, a four-berth affair, though we had it to ourselves, not exactly the Orient Express (not that I’ve been on the Orient Express, but if it looks anything like the train we were on then people have a funny idea of what romantic travel should entail), but the plastic covered seats/beds looked like they would serve their purpose well enough. Settling into the compartment didn’t take all that long so we gazed idly out of the window as the rather sodden forests of central Zambia passed by and wondered what we were going to do while the diesel locomotive dragged twenty-odd carriages the 1,860 kilometres to Dar es Salaam.

Built in the 1970s by the Chinese (using prison labour apparently), the TAZARA line and the trains that rattle along it haven’t changed all that much in three decades by the looks of things. The toilets certainly haven’t been cleaned for at least a decade. And the showers, well we didn’t use the showers as it seemed more than likely that if you did you would come out dirtier than when you went in. There is a running joke that there is no word for maintenance in any African language and the TAZARA is certainly testament to this. The railway is on the brink of collapse; its debts run into millions of dollars. This isn’t really a concern though as it has been on the brink of collapse for as long as anyone can remember.

Around half past ten the next morning we pulled into Kasama, a town in Northern Zambia we were about to become more closely acquainted with than we would have ever chosen. By about one in the afternoon it became apparent that we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Rumours began to spread for why we weren’t moving. My favourite, for its imaginativeness, was that a train coming the other way had hit an elephant. Trying to find out from the attendants what was going on was hopeless. Actually, the attendants generally were a bit hopeless. This wouldn’t have been so bad but the only way to lock the compartment from the outside was to find an attendant who had a key. I quickly grew tired of having to do so and so found a way to lock, and unlock, the compartment (all the compartments in fact…) using the can opener on my penknife.

Twenty-four hours after we arrived in Kasama we were still there. What was worse was that there was still no explanation for why we were there. As it seemed unlikely we would be going anywhere soon, indeed, that was about all the attendants could tell us, and we were beginning to suffer somewhat from cabin fever, we decided to get off the train and have a look around. Wandering along the road that we had been told would take us into Kasama we finally discovered the reason for our lack of progress: a freight carriage of a train coming the other way had derailed and having done so had ripped up a couple of hundred concrete sleepers. To our immense relief there were a goodly number of men busily replacing the sleepers (with temporary wooden substitutes) and it looked as though they were almost done. They still had to find a way to lift the derailed carriage back onto the line, but it at least looked hopeful that we would be on the move again later that day.

In Kasama we found a supermarket and were able to stock up on a few essentials: water, bread, chocolate. As we were getting into a taxi to take us back to the station (the town centre had been a bit farther than we had anticipated, we had ended up flagging down a minibus on the way there) a small boy of about seven approached us, repeating ‘give me money’ over and over again. Through the open taxi window I told him to go to school, which prompted him to change his refrain to ‘fuck you’, again repeated over and over until we were out of earshot. Thoroughly charmed by the small town warmth and friendliness of Kasama we were quite pleased to return to the confines of our compartment and wait patiently for the train to be on its way.

By seven that evening we still hadn’t moved, but a more immediate concern was the lack of light in the compartment. The lights only came on the evening as a rule, but that evening the rule wasn’t being followed quite as closely as it had been previously. We went in search of an attendant and found a number of them lounging in the surprisingly well-lit dining-car. We were told that the lights could only be turned on once the train was moving. The ridiculousness of such an assertion from people sat bathed in tungsten seemed lost on the attendants. After a while we gave up and went in search of the fuse box. It wasn’t very hard to find and soon all the lights in the carriage were working.

We did eventually leave Kasama later that night, almost thirty-six hours after we had first arrived. At four o’clock the following morning we passed into Tanzania and, still very much asleep, exchanged idle banter with some cheery immigration officials (I’m not sure that cheery immigration officials exist anywhere in the world, maybe it’s part of the job description: ‘One must, at all times, look upon individuals trying to enter the country with utter contempt and perhaps just a little menace, if the mood happens to take you’).

We awoke for the second time that day a few hours later to discover the world outside our window had changed dramatically. The forests and scrubland of Zambia had given way to vast stretches of arable land, neatly divided into small well-tended plots, enclosed by river-worn mountains – the southern reaches of the Great Rift Valley. Dotted amongst the fields were clusters of banana trees; chickens pecked at the land; cattle grazed on patches of grass. The man-made landscape suggested organisation and prosperity: road bridges over the railway, drainage channels through the fields, brick embankments flanking the line. The greatest difference though with the what we had seen of Zambia was the people. In Zambia, life for most appeared purposeless, without object or meaning; it was difficult to feel anything other than pity. But in Tanzania people were busy in their fields, actively – productively – engaged in life. While I perhaps wouldn’t go as far to say I was envious, though the setting was spectacular, I certainly didn’t pity the life lead by the people we passed Tanzania.

When there is little to do of a day aside from play cards, read (I got through two books while we were on the train) and watch the world slowly go by, meal times become something of an event. The breakfast they served on the train wasn’t terrible. That’s probably the best thing I can say about the food. For lunch and dinner there was a choice of beef or chicken with rice (which they ran out of), chips (which they also ran out of) or nshima (a ground maize porridge, which they didn’t run out, but that’s probably because it looked and tasted like play dough). The beef was mainly bone, something much like what you might give to a dog, and the chicken didn’t look like it had ever actually been a chicken, at least not a very healthy one.

At one o’clock on our penultimate day on the train we tracked down an attendant and ordered a lunch of chicken and chips and watched Tanzania’a great sweeping valleys broaden into endless plains while we waited for our food to arrive. We watched immense rotund Baobab tree after immense rotund Baobab tree standing sentinel over an endless carpet of squat, scratchy Acacia. The soil changed from almost black, through every shade of brown, to a vibrant orange-red. And still our food didn’t come. The short version of the story is that we waited four hours for our food. The long version is a duller version of the short version involving me and Rachel threatening to go into the kitchen (galley? or is that just on a ship?) and cook the food ourselves. When it did eventually arrive the chicken was at least a chicken and had some meat on it, but my memory of that meal might be somewhat distorted by the fact I was ready to eat the plastic seat covers by the time it arrived.

The following morning, our last on the train, we passed through Mikumi National Park and sat enraptured by the wildlife: giraffe, zebra, impala, wildebeest and warthog. It struck me that from very few train windows can one see such enthralling animals. And yet, like so much in Africa, the potential of the TAZARA remains just that - potential. What might be a truly magnificent experience, and perhaps even rival the romance of the Orient Express, is mismanaged and ultimately unsatisfying, mainly because it could be so much more. The basics are there: spectacular scenery, wonderful wildlife, nearly two thousand kilometres of track. But the details – modern carriages, half-decent service, edible food – are sorely lacking.

At the very least we certainly had an authentic African experience. We bought mangoes from the window of train for 2p each, we suffered colossal delays (the journey took four days instead of two in the end - never again will I complain about British trains) and by the end of it all we had some amusing stories to tell.