Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Train Exercises

Time to quit unpacking all waken hours of the day and sit down to blog for a minute. Too many cool things happening for me to let them go untyped.

This past Monday morning, we awoke just before 5am to begin loading the taxi bus with our mound ‘o luggage. Out of all the things we left the States with, here’s what boarded the treni with us: 2 suitcases – 62 lbs, 57 lbs; 3 RubberMaid 18 gallon containers – 50 lbs, 47 lbs, 42 lbs; 2 Sterlite 18 gallon containers – 43 lbs, 37 lbs; 1 Sterlite 15 gallon container – 47 lbs; 2 dogs in kennels – 29 lbs, 10 lbs; 2 carry-on suitcases – 35 lbs, 26 lbs; 1 bookbag – 18 lbs; 1 diaper bag – 8 lbs; 1 purse – 135 lbs (just kidding!).

Everything else listed in my last post was intentionally left in Dar (some by mistake… sorry, Oney) except a green 68 lbs suitcase and the coleman cooler both of which were full of important things. KLM didn’t get those two pieces loaded onto the Dar flight so they came on the next one Tuesday night and were shipped up to Mbeya to us on Thursday. Miracle in and of itself.

At first, the dogs were loaded into our First Class (remember we’re in Africa) cabin with the rest of our luggage. Then, a treni official noticed them and said they had to go in the cargo car. It was the second car behind the locomotive and our car was the next to last car of the whole train. Nearly a mile in between us and the dogs of whom it was our responsibility to take care of for the duration of the journey. Oh boy, here we go.

9am – Train leaves on time. Wait… what did I just say? Where are we?!

10ish am – I kiss my Oney for maybe the last time as I embark on my trek all the way to the front of the train to check on the dogs and give them water.

3 days later – I arrive at the dogs. Just kidding

10:30ish am – I arrive near the front after passing through another first class car, a lounge car, a dining/bar car, multiple second class cars and multiple third class cars. Hundreds of Tanzanian eyes peered at this mzungu as he tried to navigate over legs, off of walls and nearly on their laps. It was fun listening to what they said about me as I passed. Tested my Swahili retention.

I swear the cargo car door was beaming with light when I got to it because I was so happy to have made it. I samahani (sorry; excuse me)’d a few fellas standing around the door and went to open it. Great, something blocking it very, very well from inside. Couldn’t be an upside down dog because it was too stout. That was good. So, I motioned to one of the fellas and he tried the door. He then summoned a guard to whom I greeted and told my situation. I saw he was very pleased this mzungu was trying to communicate with him in his mother tongue. Bonus points for me. He told me we will have to wait until the next stop (there were many, many of them) and go in from the outside. We stopped and before I could blink twice, he zipped out the side of the car, then the blocked door swung open with noone around it. Little spooky actually.

I open the door hoping there is only one cargo car (didn’t notice how many at loading) and immediately noticed it was a different one than where the dogs were. I climbed over beans, bicycles and who knows what else to arrive in a small office. Come to find out, it sat in between two compartments of the cargo car. The rear, through which I just passed, and the front, at the front of which sat our two thirsty dogs. Two Tanzanians were sitting in the office chatting when I hopped down from the loaded items. They were suprised to say the least to see a person such as me come out of nowhere.

I’ll pick up with more of the story tomorrow. This post looks to be pretty long! Great story though. Come back for part 2!

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