MILT THOMAS

I know InsideVero.com is a local news magazine, but since I have already written about my last trip to Egypt and Dubai, and I am on my way to the Eastern Caribbean this week, I thought I would relate one travel experience that would have been funnier if it didn’t make me sick. It was my first trip to equatorial Africa and several other Vero folks were with me, but not on the portion I am about to relate. It was one of those side trips you read about in travel guides – a Mombasa to Nairobi train ride like the Orient Express.

I flew to Mombasa with my tour operator friend, Hamdy (recall the Radisson Blu story?). We would spend a night at a beachfront hotel and then take the train back next evening.

While there, I bought a $300 gold necklace for my wife in the historic Old Town. Next morning, I woke up with textbook symptoms of malaria, even though I had been taking anti-malarial pills through the entire Africa trip.

Since this was my first time on the Indian Ocean, I decided a little beach time might make me feel better. The water was glass calm punctuated with moored speed boats and ancient Arab dhows resting side by side. Off in the distance, beyond the calm water was a barrier reef and beyond that, an angry surf. I walked on the beach a while, took a swim and went back to the room, maybe 45 minutes altogether. But it was 45 minutes in the sweltering equatorial sun, and as I stepped into the shower, I realized this was the worst sunburn of my life, complementing my malaria symptoms. Now it came time for the train ride.

The train itself looked sleek and modern, thirty cars long with a single engine, ensuring a slow, luxuriously painful trip to Nairobi, 13 hours away. As I boarded, it was clear this narrow gauge train was not built for normal size humans.

The compartment was so small I could sit on the lower bunk bed and simultaneously reach across to wash my hands in the dollhouse-size sink. I didn’t sit there long though, because Hamdy, all five-foot-seven inches of him, slipped into the lower bunk and claimed it for the night. I stepped up to the top bunk and promptly banged my head on the ceiling. It took a gymnastic maneuver for me to wedge my six-foot- two-inch frame into the five-foot-ten-inch sleeping space. Lying on my back, the ceiling was but an inch above my nose. It reminded me of an MRI chamber. I didn’t lie there for long though, because of the exquisite pain as my sunburned back hit the “mattress,” which was a slippery vinyl material covered by a wool blanket.

On top of that, it was 90 degrees out and the train wasn’t air-conditioned. I checked my ticket stub to see if somehow I had boarded the wrong train. No, right train. Most cars were now filled with local folks and their farm animals, so thankfully I did have a first class compartment.

Mercifully, the train pulled out right on time. A hot breeze filled the compartment, easing somewhat my sweat-soaked and pain wracked body. Then the grimy diesel fumes began wafting in with the breeze.

Someone banged on our compartment door so I reached down from my upper bunk to open it. The cabin attendant, Sam, came in and asked if we wanted something to drink. By now I was fighting waves of nausea, but asked for a Tusker brand beer to cool down.

Just then, barely ten minutes after pulling out of the station, our train came to a sudden stop. When Sam returned with our drinks, I learned the train hit a teenager trying to cross the tracks in front of us. An ambulance had already taken him away, but the police were questioning witnesses, so we would be detained a while longer. Thankful that I had a beer to pass time and cool down. I took a swallow. It was equatorial room temperature.

After thirty minutes, the train started up, but within five minutes we stopped again. Somehow, a bakery truck had become wedged on the tracks trying to beat us to the crossing. I looked out the hallway window to see what was happening, which meant my legs stood in our compartment as I leaned against the window sill.

An hour later, Sam, our cabin attendant, came by to announce it was time for dinner. The dining car matched our sleeping compartment’s Spartan simplicity and Lilliputian size. It was also without air conditioning, but six very large ceiling-mounted fans roared like prop jet engines as they whipped the torpid air into something resembling body temperature. Hamdy and I wedged ourselves into the only available booth. A burly waiter wearing a food-stained apron came to our table, handed us menus and asked what we wanted to drink. I ordered another Tusker beer as I looked over the single page menu, mimeographed (not photocopied) and covered with food stains.

Soon, the waiter came back, this time carrying a large kettle in one hand and a ladle in the other. He stopped by each table and asked in an unsmiling, matter-of-fact way, “Soup?”  Then he came to us. “Soup?” We nodded, so he dragged the ladle through a clear broth and slopped most of it into our white plastic bowls, then moved on to the next table. My broth had four lonely peas floating on the surface. It had little flavor, but at least the soup was colder than the beer.

He returned again, this time carrying a large silver platter covered with mounds of mostly unrecognizable food. “Meat or fish?” he asked, poised with a large serving spoon.

“Fish,” said Hamdy.

He scooped from one mound of food and plopped it on to Hamdy’s plate.

“Meat,” I said, afraid to ask what kind, as he scooped from another mound and plopped it on my plate.

After the lukewarm, mystery dinner, we returned to our compartment, still wondering when the train would begin to roll. I stepped off to see what was holding us up. The bakery truck still sat lodged on the tracks, only now it was surrounded by at least one hundred local men, arguing back and forth about what to do. Finally, one of the disgruntled German passengers stormed up to them and began shouting something. They seemed to listen and began rocking the truck back and forth. Within a few minutes the truck was on its way. The time was now 10:30 p.m. and we had not begun our 13-hour trip.

The train finally began to move. My sunburned skin rebelled in pain, I sweated profusely and I tried to focus on my flashes, nausea and headache. With nothing else to do, Hamdy and I decided to retire for the night.

Hamdy had no trouble falling asleep. He was used to Third World inconveniences. I just lay awake in the upper bunk, my nose an inch from the ceiling, my back on fire. Time crept forward as I looked out into the shapeless darkness and listened to the clack-clack, clack-clack of the train.

Sometime later, Sam the cabin attendant burst into our compartment and turned on the light, yelling something about breakfast at 6:00 a.m. and telling us to be sure we bolted the door, then he left. I couldn’t believe it was morning already with no sign of daylight out the window. I bolted our door and looked at my watch – it was only 2:30 a.m.  Strange. So I shrugged, turned off the light, and climbed back into the MRI chamber, coughing from diesel fumes.

Still wide awake at 4:30, I went outside our compartment and sat in the conductor’s seat by the door. I wrote in my diary, looking out from time to time as the black night slowly transitioned into the gray light of dawn. At 5:30, I decided to get my dopp kit and freshen up in the bathroom.

When I opened the bathroom door, I nearly fainted. There were no toilet stalls, only holes in the floor that opened to the tracks below. Obviously, using them was difficult with the train lurching from side to side. I decided that I no longer needed to freshen up and headed back to the conductor’s seat.

Sam came around soon afterwards to say we could go to breakfast. It was 6:00 and we still had another five or six hours to Nairobi. I didn’t ask him why he announced breakfast at 2:30 a.m. Instead, I woke Hamdy, who felt fully refreshed after a good night’s sleep, and we returned to the dining car.

The waiter who served us last night came by in his stained apron, carrying a huge pot. “Coffee?” he asked, then sloshed it into our cups. I didn’t bother asking for cream or sugar. He then returned carrying the same large silver platter from last night, this time piled with yellow mounds of food. He held up his serving spoon and announced, “Eggs?”

We finally pulled into Nairobi station at 11:15, proceeding directly to our hotel to shower and change. I was shocked to see my back, which was blue in color and had already begun to blister. After cleaning up, Hamdy and I went to lunch, but I was too sick from sunburn, nausea and an ever-worsening headache to eat anything. Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel. I took a handful of pills and went to bed.

I woke up the next morning at 4:00 a.m. We had to be at the airport by 5:30 for our flight. As we packed up to leave, Hamdy found his wallet empty. I then discovered my traveler’s checks were also gone. Suddenly, I remembered the $300 gold necklace I bought in Mombasa for my wife. I had wrapped it in toilet tissue and stuck it in a corner of my dopp kit. But it was gone. We had $2 U.S. between us.

As we tried to retrace our steps, I remembered Sam coming into our compartment at 2:30 a.m. to tell us about breakfast – and warning us to keep our door locked from the inside. Of course, when we left for meals we had no way to lock our door from the outside.

I almost didn’t make it to my flight home. I was so sick, ashen and bathed in sweat, the gate clerk seemed reluctant to let me on board. I ranted and he relented.

When I finally made it home, I called my doctor. It seems the once-a-week malaria preventative I was taking had some small print side effects, one of which was to mimic malaria symptoms. I stopped taking it and the symptoms cleared up immediately. I wish I could say the same for my sunburn. It left some permanent scars on my back to remind me of why I will never travel again by train.