Day 56 – TIA …. This Is Atrocious!

Tazara Ordinary Train Mbeya to Dar Es Salaam - Carriage 1008 Compartment 5

 After very little sleep (none for M!) the station started getting lighter as the sun rose, and the TV changed to a nice loud religious programme! At about 7am they changed the expected arrival time to 2.30pm - now even the easy going Africans were shouting, many of them have babies and many children, all sitting on the concrete floor. We thought they were going to lynch the messenger! It appears as if most of them live locally as they head back home after time changes leaving their luggage in long queues at the door. Like us they had sat up all night unnecessarily when we could have all been in bed.

Some Americans left to take the 12 hour bus trip leaving at 7am, we had our heart set on our private sleeping compartment and watching wildlife so we decided to wait for 2.30pm. At about midday the time was changed to 4pm – the group we were spending time with (2 German girls, 1 American/German guy  and a Swedish guy) were all shattered but decided we could cope with an extra hour and a half . We took it in shifts to look after the luggage and go for food and walks, and also took advantage of the sunny day by drying some clothes on the steps of the station! By 4pm we were packed and excited that the time hadn’t changed for hours, and we could see the drinks ready to be loaded onto the train. Our first inkling of trouble was shouting from the locals sitting inside the station, we then knew something was up, and a look at the board now read 10pm ! 

The poor people with children were so upset and the crowd was very angry! Why can’t they just tell us the truth, they know the train isn’t coming - why keep changing it at the very last minute? We have no idea of what the problem is or whether it’s even fixable.

We caught a taxi back to our hotel, paid $20 to have a shower and then had dinner, heading back to the station around 9:30pm. Our fellow travellers had been told that the train was definitely on its way, it would arrive around 10:20pm, and leave at 11pm. Sceptical as we were, we waited to see if it was true. 

Just after 10pm they opened to the doors to the platform .... a promising development! Everyone was happy as we walked to the edge of the platform - was the train about to arrive? 90 minutes later and still no train .... we were starting to lose hope again when the lights of the train appeared in the distance..... finally!

The train was so long our carriage was about 3 carriages from the end of the platform - we wheeled our cases through the grass, and loaded them on, found our compartment, and settled down to get some sleep. The train headed off around 12:30pm - 33 hours after it was scheduled!