Of course, the train stopped sometimes, to allow passengers to embark and disembark. Each time, we would be besieged by local Africans selling their wares. Men, women and children, dressed in bright clothing, would run alongside the carriage, as the train was slowing preparing to stop at some small station in the middle of what seemed to us like nowhere at all. Africans would crowd round, arms outstretched towards each window of the train, begging the passengers inside to buy wood carvings, hand-woven baskets, lengths of fabric and beadwork, which they would hold up for all to see. We couldn’t imagine where these people had come from, let alone how they had got to the railway station, since we could not see any local villages, nor any proper roads or signs of transportation. It didn’t even cross our minds that these Africans might have walked for days on end to sell their goods, and to beg for money.
At one such stop, I clearly remember my mother’s suddenly stating that we must have travelled back on ourselves, for some reason, since she claimed to have seen the same station name on the previous station’s signboard, too. This caused much hilarity amongst some of our Afrikaans-speaking fellow passengers, one of whom explained to my mother that this word was not the name of the place, but was, in fact, the Afrikaans word for “toilets”, denoting the toilet block. We children never let her live this down.
So, we travelled on, breaking up the hours by going to the dining car for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner. All meals were spectacular.
After two days and two nights, the train, having stopped briefly in the town of Bulawayo the previous evening, arrived on the third day in Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia. We had covered endless miles, and were now at an elevation of 6000 feet, on a large plateau which was to make all newcomers, including us, feel so very tired for days on end, as we adjusted to living at this altitude.
It was 8th May 1957, the day before my brother John’s eighth birthday. I cannot remember what, if anything, we did to celebrate John’s birthday.
We had been invited to spend a few days with my father’s friend and colleague, Herbert, and his wife, Bertha, before our family was to travel to the village of Darwendale, fifty miles away, where my father would be working at the local railway station. Herbert, who, like my father, had also worked for British Rail, had emigrated to Southern Rhodesia at the same time as my father at Christmas the previous year. Herbert’s wife had followed by air, later. Herbert and Bertha had bought a house in Southerton, a suburb of Salisbury, near the African townships of Harare and Highfields. Little did we or they know that, within a few years, the Africans would rebel against the Europeans, and that life would become, for a while, more dangerous for us all.
The day of our arrival, however, was marked by sunshine, blue skies, and endless smiles as we all greeted one another.
Many decades later, by which time I was living in Canada, I saw the 2017 movie “Murder on the Orient Express”, which showed railway passengers leisurely chatting in their compartments, strolling along the corridors, dining in splendour, sipping their drinks in the elegant bar car, as they travelled in style across Europe. I wasn’t interested as much in Hercule Poirot’s search for a murderer, as I was in life on board that train. My mind was elsewhere, in fact, instantly transported back to my childhood, to my own first train trip across that vast part of southern Africa.
Fortunately, there weren’t any murders committed onboard our train; not as far as I know, at least!
The Big Hole, diamond mine, in Kimberley, South Africa
Alison Watson3 years ago
Lovely travelogue. What a vast place. So well described.