People puzzling

It was perhaps inevitable that sooner or later something would appear here about that thing that occupies most of my time. While it is technically still a Letter from Africa, Africa does not feature particularly prominently, or at all, in fact. I just thought I would warn you in case you wanted to give this one a miss…

As far as maths is concerned, people seem to fall into one of two categories: those who get it and those who don’t. There are quite a few people in the world who, through no fault of their own, think that they belong in the latter of those two categories when actually they belong in the former, but more of that later. I don’t mean to suggest that those who will always be somewhat confounded by numbers are a lost cause; they simply need to be taught in a very different manner to those who, for some reason another, come equipped with an innate understanding of algebra and trigonometry and similar mathematical marvels.

The difference between the two groups appears, superficially at least, to concern retention. This is perhaps best illustrated with an example. Last week, my class were learning about angles. On being told that an acute angle is any angle between zero and ninety degrees, half the class immediately found a small shelf in their brain on which to store that information and could without hesitation identify which of a page of angles were acute (actually they weren’t looking at a page of angles, we were wandering around the school looking for and identifying angles in buildings and notice boards and staircases, I just thought it would be easier to say they were looking at a page of angles, but then I didn’t want people thinking that my lessons were boring so I thought I better let you in on what we were actually doing). The other half of the class were beginning to get it by the end of the lesson but many were still confusing acute angles for obtuse angles and couldn’t really remember what the word for an angle greater than one hundred and eighty degrees was (reflex…).

That half the children should struggle to grasp the difference between an acute and an obtuse angle is not indicative of their general ability to retain information, though for some this certainly is a problem, but rather concerns their conceptual understanding of angles. In order to quickly assimilate what an acute angle is, a child must first understand that an angle is the measure of the rotation involved in moving from one initial axis to coincide with another final axis (though obviously I would not necessarily expect them to express their understanding in such terms). They must also have understood and accepted that in a complete rotation there are three hundred and sixty degrees (and what follows from this: that there are one hundred and eighty degrees in half a rotation and ninety degrees in quarter of a rotation). What this really means is that those children who immediately grasped what an acute angle is were able to do so because the shelf on which they neatly filed ‘Acute angles’ was in a room with ‘Geometry’ written on the door and part of a stack which had ‘Angles’ written above it in bold lettering.

For the children who get maths, having divulged the names given to angles of different sizes it is possible to immediately move on to calculations involving angles. For those who don’t, one must look for as many different pathways as possible to the Geometry room. When it is eventually found it will almost certainly never be the most organised of places: for some, that there are three hundred and sixty degrees in a complete rotation may always be baffling. And why shouldn’t it be? Why are there three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle? (We have the Babylonians to thank I believe, something about the number of days in a year, but I doubt that is of much comfort to anybody).

If children are not set by ability, and they often are not in primary schools, teachers are confronted by three unenviable options: a) teach two lessons simultaneously; b) teach to the highest ability in the class; c) teach to the middle ground. (The actual answer is secret option d) teach through open ended investigations, which is not always possible and is far from the easy option but it allows children to work at their own pace and potentially stretches them as far as they are able without going beyond into the land of disillusionment. I have seen few teachers go for this option, maybe because it’s secret, so I’m going to stick with the three alternatives previously identified). Planning for one Maths lesson a day is time consuming enough, to plan for two and then deliver them on top of each other is unappealing (I have seen few teachers go for this option either actually, I think I might be the only one, and I only go for it when I’m not busy with option d), obviously). Teaching to the highest ability in the class works well in other subjects but will leave those children whose conceptual understanding of Maths is weak baffled and disheartened for reasons that are hopefully explained by what I have said before. The middle ground satisfies the needs of neither group of children but it does at least come with a government seal of approval.

The demand that every child reach level four by the end of Key Stage 2 has meant that the arbitrary single mark that distinguishes a level three from a level four has become an obsession in many schools (the prevailing middle ground), a line to be crossed at any cost. That cost is quite often fewer children achieving level five; they, after all, are already on the right side of the line that matters. The government may have expected a minimum standard to improve all results equally (a rather foolish expectation if that were the case): that the normal distribution would slide further along the x-axis while maintaining its perfectly formed bell shape. But, of course, that isn’t what happened. Instead, the peak remained exactly where it was, hovering over what has become the Holy Grail of level 4, but extended up the y-axis as the curve narrowed around it (the mean remained the same, the standard deviation from that mean decreased). This meant more children getting level four (good), fewer children getting level three (also good), but also fewer children getting above level four (not so good). The not so good consequence is most ably demonstrated by the fact that it is no longer possible to get level six in Maths at the end of Key Stage 2: so few children were getting it they scrapped the paper. (If you fall into the group of people for whom Maths poses something of a problem then please accept my sincerest apologies for all the preceding talk of x- and y-axes and normal distributions and standard deviations – I hope it didn’t put you off too much and that the point, which didn’t really need those things to be made but I am a maths teacher after all, still came through).

I have no objection to National Curriculum levels; so long as they are applied appropriately. The levelling of work completed in class provides a very useful means of assessing pupils’ progress and, what is more, of ensuring that pupils are making the progress of which they are capable. But insisting that a population of individuals whose circumstances vary so considerably all achieve above a certain level is nonsensical. These are unique human beings with diverse backgrounds. Some will progress slowly, some will progress rapidly and, yes, there will be many in between who progress at a middling rate. But what advantage comes from identifying the average rate of progress? It hinders both those who progress slowly - by labelling them as underachievers - and those who would progress much faster – by considering them needless of attention. As for the middling children, what good does it do for them to hear that they are average, that they are much the same as everyone else? Surely it makes more sense to acknowledge the individual progress each child makes. And so I suggest the following: that every child is encouraged to make the best possible progress of which they are capable. And that their progress is monitored by assessing them according to the National Curriculum levels and that teachers and parents collaboratively establish whether a child is fulfilling their potential. Which leads rather nicely onto my second suggestion: that education is openly acknowledged as a partnership between teachers and parents, even if an unequal partnership.

Children spend around thirty-five hours a week in school. That leaves one hundred and thirty-three hours to fill with other things. Many of those hours are obviously spent sleeping and eating and engaged in other such necessaries, but still, for a few short hours every a child may do as they, or their parents, please. Imagine two boys, both in Year 6 and both wobbling along that divine line that separates a level three from a level four, in English say. These two boys attend the same school and keep the same teacher, overly concerned by SATs results, awake at night thinking of ways to help them fall forwards onto a level four rather than backwards onto a level three. The parents of one of the boys listen to him read every night, they talk to him about what he has been learning in school and they make sure he is in bed by seven every evening. The parents of the other boy largely ignore him; he comes home from school and sits in front of the television or plays on his Nintendo DS until someone realises he should probably go to sleep, at perhaps nine o’clock. Results day comes (this is all fantasy remember) and the boy whose parents listen to him read every night gets a level four while the other boy gets a level three. Should the teacher feel guilty because one of her pupils got a level three? (ignoring for the moment the irrationality of anyone caring so much for anything so arbitrary). I would argue that they should not, that responsibility is elsewhere found.

I have digressed somewhat from my original ramble about the nature of learning and teaching maths. But I must return to address that group of people who think they don’t get maths when really they do; or, at least, the capacity to get it is there. The blame, though perhaps blame is too strong a word - those responsible for this incongruity are maths teachers. Specifically, for not all maths teachers are at fault, maths teachers who equip those in their charge with a method that enables them to solve exam questions, rather than furnishing their pupils with an understanding of how the pieces of the mathematical puzzle neatly fit together. If taught well, a child will end up with a whole mathematical wing to their brain: with a geometry room, full of parallel lines and polygons, regular and irregular, and the stack all about angles; and an algebra room, where numbers are banned and x and y are meaningful abstractions; and the first room to begin to form in the mathematical wing, the calculation room, in which there are four oversized toolboxes, one each for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, all overflowing, added to with every passing year to provide an ever expanding tool kit of mental and written methods to confront the innumerable and unpredictable mathematical challenges that life has waiting. And displayed prominently on the walls of every single one of these rooms, and in the many other rooms in the mathematical wing that have not been mentioned, are examples of how that particular realm of maths has relevance and applicability to the world beyond the classroom and exam papers. If taught badly, however, rather than having a mathematical wing to their brain, a child will end up with a shed instead. The walls of this shed (as well as probably the ceiling and the floor) will be covered with post-it notes, on which might be scrawled ‘a² + b² = c²’ or ‘Area of a triangle = ½ x base x height ’ or ‘SOHCAHTOA’. As the years pass, the post-it notes will fade, their meaning will become ever harder to recall; if, that is, their meaning was ever really clear. The problem is teachers who tell their pupils that pi is ‘just a number you have to learn’, or worse, ‘just a button on a calculator you have to push’, so that when those pupils, who some time sooner or later must escape the confines of the classroom, are presented with a problem that requires the beginnings of a conceptual understanding they soon begin to flounder.

The above is full of crude generalisations. But they are crude generalisations rooted in general truths. People can perhaps not be ever-so-neatly split into those who get maths and those who don’t. But on the spectrum of mathematical understanding, most people I know, including those I teach, tend to lean strongly towards one end or the other. And this, I believe, can and should inform teaching practices. As far as mathematical wings and sheds are concerned, most people, I would assume, have something in between, but I hope the analogy illustrates the flaws of teaching a method rather than teaching for understanding and excites in some the idea that their perceived inability to put the pieces of the mathematical jigsaw together is not the end of the story.

Our Kenyan Christmas

So we finally arrived at my old friend Hollie’s house for Christmas. Was so lovely to see all her family again, they were all so welcoming as ever, though her dad’s lasting impression of me seems to have been my constant eating! Christmas out here in Africa is definitely less of a big deal than it is elsewhere. When we arrived on Christmas Eve we helped to finish off putting up their decorations which Hollie says sometimes they don’t even bother putting up. I made a rather lovely floral display for the table. They had some neighbours over for tea and mince pies on the veranda and we had a lovely roasted ham for supper. Christmas Day itself was pretty quiet too. We had pressies in the morning, Hollie’s parents and bought us some choccie and Hollie had bought me and Paul a kikoi towel each which was very nice of them. There certainly weren’t the piles of expensively wrapped gifts that we get too used to, most of their presents were things specifically asked for (or money) wrapped in paper that has been recycled for years! We also slept for quite a significant part of the day, best thing to do when it’s hot, and I think Paul and I were still recovering from the journey! We were joined in the evening by some friends of theirs for Christmas dinner. We had sailfish for starters which is a bit like smoked salmon but it was rather odd and chewy. Then there was chicken and goose and all the trimmings. We had 6 crackers between the 9 of us, so some people had home made paper hats that we’d made the day before! We played a good funny game after dinner which consisted of balancing as many cardboard bananas as you could on various parts of one’s body whilst trying to carry out forfeits! Lots of ‘silly picture’ opportunities!

The best parts of Christmas were really the non-christmas bits though. On Boxing Day afternoon we went down to rim of the Menegai Crater (an extinct volcano crater, apparently one of the largest on earth) with some friends of Hol’s for sundowners. It was a lovely spot to watch the sun go down over.

We also went and stayed on the Delamere’s private ranch for a night where another friend of Hollie’s has a house (which we won’t go in to cos it really was the biggest dive of a house I have ever seen, an extreme bachelor pad!). It was beautiful. It’s on the banks of lake Elementita, one of the rift valley lakes, so it’s like having your own private national park with none of the car loads of tourists. We walked round the lake (watching out for buffalo!) which was full of flamingos and pelicans and other water birds, went for a night drive where we came upon a small group of hyena in the headlights among other things. We got up before dawn the next morning and had our breakfast down by the lake watching the sun come up. We saw giraffe and buffalo and dozens of antelope. Gorgeous.

We also made a visit to Nakuru National Park so that Paul could see his first rhino! It was a lovely full day, arriving at dawn and leaving at dusk. We saw lots of baboons, who are fascinating to watch, as well as giraffe, hyena, eland and the regular buffalo, impala, zebra, waterbuck warthog etc. We drove the whole way round the lake so we got several lovely views out across the park. It did strike me though just how close this park is to civilisation, the houses are literally built right up to the park fences. It is, like Hollie said, almost like a big open air zoo. It’s funny cos when I was there last I thought it was the ultimate wild place, alive with animals. Maybe as you get older you see things for what they actually are a bit more.

Rachel goes swallow catching

At the beginning of December I got the chance to go ringing swallows with a Dutch guy called Bennie. He comes out to Africa every year to catch and ring European Barn Swallows who are on their winter migration – nice work if you can get it! He is particularly interested in birds that have European rings on already – we caught one from Poland – which tells him where the birds have come from. Apparently most of the swallows that over winter in Zambia are Eastern European birds, swallows from the UK and Holland tend to go down the west coast of Africa and end up in South Africa. We also caught a few with rings on from last year which shows that the same birds come back to the same winter quarters each year.

We would head out on the evenings and set up our mist nets close to reed beds where the swallows roost. We then put on a little tape of swallows talking and sat back and waited for them to come in. And just about on dusk they would. They would flock above our heads in groups numbering over 1000 at times which was really quite a sight. Then as they swooped down for the reeds in to the nets they’d go. We would catch on average 150-200 birds each evening! Luckily Bennie is quite the experienced ringer so he could whip them out, put a ring on them and off they’d go, me I took a little longer so I’d maybe only ring about 30 a night. But we’d have them all out in about 2hrs and then take 10 adult birds and 10 juvenile birds home with us to do more detailed measurements on in the morning.

First thing in the morning we’d process the swallows from the previous evening, measuring their wing and tail lengths, scoring them on fat, muscle and speed of moult, weighing them, to get an overall idea of body condition. Bennie’s past work has been investigating whether body condition (and thus survival) of individuals is affected by roost size so he will use this years’ data to compare it with results of previous years.

We also went out early one morning with our nets to see what other birds we could catch. Nearly every bird was a new one for me! We had waxbills, bulbuls, weavers, shrikes, warblers (one of which, the river warbler, Bennie was very excited to ring as he’d never seen that species in Zambia before…I then promptly let it escape from the bag before he had a chance to…thankfully he was very good about it….I think….). We even caught a Lizzard Buzzard that had seen the little birds caught in the net and gone after one as a meal. But the strangest thing we caught was a cattle egret which had followed a herd of cows right into the nets! Luckily we arrived just in time to chase all the cows off before they made a real mess.

North (by Northwest) to Nairobi

We hurtled out of Dar es Salaam heading towards Nairobi in the coach equivalent of a Fiesta XR2i with a three thousand pounds sound system in the boot. I was tired of Africa: tired of things not working, tired of waiting, tired because trains with so much slack in the couplings that the carriages knock around like they’re on a Newton’s Cradle do not foster deep and peaceful sleep (and neither do cheap hotel rooms without air conditioning when temperatures reach satanic levels at two in the morning). I didn’t want to be in Africa. So I wasn’t.

I had read a few pages of ‘The Lovely Bones’ the day before and had immediately liked the author’s style. So I hid in the book. In this way I didn’t hear the street sellers that crowded around the coach every time it slowed enough for them to run alongside; I didn’t see the crumbling buildings that lined the roadside or the empty faces of those who sat outside them and stared at the vehicles that rushed by; and I didn’t smell the horrific stench of the toilets when we stopped. But a novel cannot last forever, especially when it is being used to escape from the world. And so by early afternoon I was back in Africa, my senses awakened once more to everything I had escaped from for a few short hours that morning.

In a state of dehydration induced delirium a couple of things occurred to me: firstly, I would need water, a lot of water, sometime soon; secondly, we were not going to be in Nairobi before midnight. While the coach driver attacked the roads with a certain suicidal glee (it is a peculiar thing about Africans that they rarely seem in a rush to do anything until you put them behind the wheel of a vehicle, then suddenly they seem overwhelmed by a desire to move as swiftly as humanly possible, and, well, if humanly possible isn’t quite quick enough then angelically possible will do just fine too), he also liked to stop a lot, to pick up more people (for whom there weren’t any seats) or just for some idle banter with the locals.

I considered asking the driver what time he thought we might arrive in Nairobi. But, as others have noted, time in Africa is not the same as time in the Western world; questions concerning when something might or might not happen are generally meaningless, at least if you want or expect a precise - meaningful - answer. As far as would concern most Africans, we would arrive in Nairobi when we got there, that was as much as they would ever need to know. The most accurate and honest answer I could expect was ‘later’ and this wouldn’t quite meet my exacting Western standards of a given hour, or even a given day. I did try to ask the driver about being dropped off outside a hotel in Nairobi (the prospect of wandering the streets of Nairobbery in the early hours didn’t particularly appeal) but I was rudely rebuffed. I began devising a Plan B.

I had hoped we would make it to Arusha, northern Tanzania’s tourist hub, by nightfall; there we could find a hotel for the night and then catch another bus to Nairobi in the morning. But the sun was already setting when we pulled into Moshi, still two hours from Arusha. We sat in Moshi bus station for ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Half an hour. The sun had now set. The coach was bad enough in daylight; the idea of it tearing around in the dark made me distinctly uncomfortable. Time for Plan C, time to get off the coach. We took our lives out of the hands of the kamikaze coach driver. And put them in the hands of a taxi driver. In hindsight this was definitely the right decision, though I might have been less inclined to think so if the taxi driver had wrapped us around a palm tree.

The unlit African roads that separate Arusha from Moshi passed in a 120km/h blur. A blur that was made all the more hazy by the thick black smoke that billowed from the exhaust of a minibus we got stuck behind. We arrived in Arusha somewhat surprised that our limbs were still where they were supposed to be and decided to splash out on a half-decent hotel to celebrate.

For the price of a common-or-garden bed and breakfast in the UK we stayed in the most wonderful hotel. There were leather sofas in our room (I had never stayed anywhere where there was room for anything other than a bed in the room), the bed was the most comfortable I had slept in since coming to Africa and the breakfast the next morning was never ending: fruit then cereal then croissants than toast then sausages and bacon and eggs and baked beans, all washed down with tea and fruit juice and more tea and more fruit juice.

At dinner that evening, in one of the hotel’s many restaurants (well, there were three I think, but more than one seems a lot to me), we talked about how it would be possible to have incredibly different experiences of Africa. The bus we were to get the next day generally shuttles tourists from Nairobi airport, where are they are met by a friendly looking fellow who meets them in arrivals, to the doors of the hotel in Arusha. There they would be greeted by polite, professional, attentive staff who would accommodate them with a minimum of fuss or delay. From their hotel they would be taken on safari, to the Ngorogoro Crater and the Serengeti, staying in lodges or luxury tented camps, enjoying game drives and cultural excursions; the most they would have to do is brush their own teeth. Then back to the hotel in Arusha, the shuttle bus to the airport, then home again. Or you could do these things the way we were. Africa is a lot easier to enjoy if one has money it would seem. But that’s not really Africa.

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.