THE next morning the word was out. The port visit to Australia was cancelled. Some damned fool in the National Command Authority took it in his head that the deteriorating situation in the Gulf of Aden required our presence more than the fair ladies of Perth.
It was an obvious case of misplaced international priorities. The gloom was thick enough to stop a Land Rover. We now had to gird our loins for another thirty days on the bounding main. And in the same place, talking about Oman and Socotra Island, and the various flavors of people who infest the blasted desert of the immediate neighborhood.
I suppose we had done too good a job of impressing the Saudis when they came out to see our 35-year-old aircraft carrier. The immediate reaction was that there was absolutely no reason to conserve anything in Africa: neither money, sleep, or precious bodily fluids.
Jambo and I immediately booked passage on the celebrated Night Train to Nairobi, with reservations at the legendary New Stanley Hotel, and return passage by first Class plane tickets.
Jambo got his name from the Swahili word for “Hello,” since that is what he was doing with his toothy grin and handlebar mustache. He was convinced the babes needed him, and I think he might have been right.
Once that large sum of shillings had been lifted from our wallets, it left nothing to do but watch the rain, the girl from Spain, and the gin and tonics on the plain. No pain was felt as we drank by the pool watching the rain drench the hotel grounds.
The Spanish girl did not put her robe back on, and there were six Marines, and elements of three squadrons and two departments watched her throw darts. It was delicious to do nothing at all. All we had to do was kill time and watch the enormous spiders walk around there parachute sized webs. Quite a rude awakening for many a serious imbiber.
One guy looked up from his drink and saw one of the monsters crouched on the window behind the bar. He jumped about a foot very much like I did when I saw the huge pink snakes slithering over the sink that morning.
The beauty of the Night Train was that it did not leave Mombasa station till 1900. We were fabulously toasted by the time it came to pack and leave for the station. We passed the last moments getting smashed with some Brits who flew the 707s of Pelican Airways into Rwanda. The crew was a fascinating bunch of people.
One of the engineers had just returned from taking a piece of the hydraulic system down to the local garage to have some emergency repairs done to it. Perhaps not to Royal Aviation standards, but it would get them airborne for their two hops the next day. There are no roads to the little state of Rwanda, and everything from matches to petroleum must be flown in.
There is money to be made in a place where the gas lines are two days long. Also in ferrying bridges and military gear and weapons into little wars in Uganda. But that is a very different story indeed.
Much of what they said was just fantastic enough to be true. They had tales of American and British mercenaries leading Tanzanian teams against Idi’s troops. A war that contrary to the Western Media was very much still on. That particular morning the headlines of the Nation read that fifty civilians had been slaughtered on a train trying to get out of the north. Many Ugandan refugees in Kenya itself, and the Nation decried the loss of tourism entailed by the bad P.R.
All too soon our wristwatches chimed that it was time to be on our way. We cruised out-of the hotel and discovered the rain had let up. We negotiated a fare down to the rail station. It was outrageous; they wanted five shillings a kilometer, and it seemed like every place you wanted to go was about fifty kilometers away. The hell with it, we said. After all we were headed for action and excitement.
We agreed to the 65-shilling tariff and off we bombed in the back of a red diesel Mercedes, honking like a wild beast in search of its mate.
We scared pedestrians for about twenty minutes and roared up to a wrought iron covered archway in front of a ramshackle white building.
We hopped out, paid off our bandit, and walked up to the gate. We were surrounded by beggars, hangers-on, and fellow travelers. I had a bad feeling for a moment, but it vanished the moment the kind black man next to the gate waved us through.
“Don’t worry bout your tickets. You show ’em on train. Come on ahead.” He smiled and nodded as we walked past him into another era.
The train waited on the siding next to a long platform of old wood and iron-supported roof. Cracked cement was under our feet. The vegetation gave off a delicious perfume, and the wet dirt and dark people scattered along the platform gave me a flash to Bogart and a hundred Hollywood sets, all beckoning towards mystery and intrigue.
What I flashed on about a second afterwards was the little open-air bar halfway down the platform, and it was there we adjourned to discuss the adventure to come. We ordered Tusker beers and scoped out the European women who were grouped at the end of the counter.
There was only one guy with them, and we liked the odds. The situation was calling for pandemonium on the part of two adventure-bound sailors. We drank and ogled till it was nearly time to depart. We staggered out to the train and found our compartment.
It was huge, and featured a big vinyl bench and another ready to fold down above.
We were almost settled when I raced from the train to grab just a few more beers. When I got back Jim was standing outside the car checking the situation. We stood in the moist darkness and started to laugh.
There were dozens of women on the train. It was better than the dream itself…while we were in that place a black man with an erect dignity came up to us. I have been panhandled all over the world but this man had them all beat.
“Good evening, gentlemen.” His dark face was indistinct in the darkness. “I hate to approach you in this fashion, but as it happens I am far from my home, and I am defeated. I have not the money to travel and I was hoping you could find it in you to help me” He spoke in curious precise English
.
His use of the word ‘defeated’ knocked me out. I dug out all the pennies and shilling pieces in my pocket and handed them over. I have never been so easily separated from my money. It just seemed like the tithe one had to pay for the journey.
They turned the power on in the train and the compartment lights began to glow softly. We climbed aboard and hung out the window with everyone else. Good-byes were exchanged up and down the line.
At last, and with virtually no warning, the train started to creep up the track. We passed out of the lighted area and watched the children who were lined along the roadbed to watch the train go by. We curved out of the switching yard and passed through an area of coffee warehouses. I went back into our compartment and watched out the other window. Jim demonstrated how to turn on the fan.
I played with the table-cum-sink. I drank more of my beer. The porter came by and brought down the upper bunk with a twist of a cold chisel. It was an old train; well kept up, but it had obviously been in service for some time. Jambo left to explore the train. I watched a refinery slide by to our right. The flame from the excess methane tower lit the night. It was visible for miles. We passed quickly out into an area of brush. I soaked it all in.
We would be passing by Mount Kilimanjaro in about six hours.
Jambo reported many more women on the train. Things were looking up.
The Porter stopped by again and inquired as to whether we would desire the first or second seating for dinner. I had a handle on the situation from my old Amtrak days; I asked for the second seating. The waiters would be in less of a hurry to get us cleared out.
It was delicious to sit and drink coffee and look at the people. In the meantime I had another beer.
At six-forty five we heard musical chimes advancing down the passageway. It was the porter with four tubular singing bells. He banged them with a wooden mallet and it was music. It had a syncopated beat and a lilt that belied the four notes. His music grew loud as he passed the car and diminished as he moved forward. The first sitting filed dutifully aft. Among them were two very attractive European women.
I caught only the long red skirt in detail, but it was intriguing.
Once, as I was packing to leave on an extended train trip my mother inquired as to whether I was taking any good clothes. I looked at her quizzically; I was still heavily into the blue jeans mode or all-purpose apparel. She looked at me with a smile. “You never know who- or whom- you might meet on the train,” she said with a knowing smile.
Well, I can testify that the only people you meet on Amtrak are retirees, hippies and sexual degenerates. But she was harking back to an era when you actually might meet an elegant someone on the night coach to New York. I had a feeling we had stumbled into the same era lingering on in Africa.
Pity we hadn’t selected the first sitting, I thought.
We explored more of the train during the wait for chow.
I continued my world travels with a trip to the head to off-load fully processed beer. Jim lurked the corridors for unattached women.
My journey was successful, his somewhat less so. At length the musical porter made his rounds again and we headed for victuals.
The restaurant car was worth the price of admission alone.
White ceiling, dark wood walls. Neat table settings. Tables for two on the left hand side of the aisle, parties of four on the right. We were seated with two African gentlemen. In the rear sat two older Americans. Jambo already knew them, of course, as well as everyone on the train and all their stories.
He informed me they were two oceanographers from the NOAA research ship in the harbor. We did not talk to the Africans next to us. They appeared very demanding of the service. We of course were too drunk to care, but keeping our ugly American masks off for use at a later date.
I was picking up some very weird vibes from therm. There was a gentleman in a camouflage bush jacket with short-cropped hair who kept giving me the fish eye. I hadn’t defiled anyone in his family, to my knowledge, so that left a series of possibilities. It was either political or racial, and I wasn’t sure that the two things weren’t the same thing in this neck of the veldt.
Remember, there is a war going on in Uganda. Kenya is a member of the Organization of African Unity, of which not all members have the enlightened policy of racial tolerance exhibited by the Kenyan government.
I kept getting a mental picture of the British overlords sitting in the very same car, doing all the great colonial things we have come to hate in these late decades of Uhuru. And seeing these same masters blown to pieces around the smoking wreckage of a Land Rover in 1960.
Maybe I was just projecting my American racism on a situation I couldn’t understand. Any time you are outnumbered like this at home you feel uneasy. Here it was of course the natural run of things. I had found most of the Kenyans very friendly but still there was a nagging feeling…
The service was first rate. We were catered to by a very dark man with a head shaved smooth as a bowling ball. His massive shoulders and neck erupted out of the white starched mess jacket he wore. The collar was vast and his head sat upon it like an eight ball on a white tablecloth. His movements were graceful. I had the feeling I should take what he served me.
We started with a fish course, very delicate, followed by a lamb curry.
Our table-mates were most demanding. Did we get better service because we were on the aisle? Tough question. I just enjoyed the food.
The rich Kenyan coffee was superb.
We lingered in the wood paneled luxury after the rest of the diners began to file out. We asked if it would be all right if we had a drink after dinner. We were assured that it would.
The porters began their sitting and Jim and I moved to a clear table to drink on.
We were almost immediately joined by the two oceanographers. They were also bombed. We had a splendid conversation as we piled up more of the little airline bottles of gin. One was a grandmother (speaking naturally of the oceanographers) and the other was a weather-beaten gent from Alabama who looked remarkably like Bear Bryant. We talked shop, and travels.
They emphasized the joys of overtime for sea duty. I admitted they had something there. What they also had was a bottle of vodka burning a hole in their suitcase back in the compartment. We decided to go into closed session with it and hope for a view of Kilimanjaro by the moonlight.
No small amount of urging was required once we found that immediately adjoining their compartment was the one occupied by our mysterious European ladies. The only note that clashed was the dude in the camouflage jacket who continued to eyeball us through our impromptu party.
I dunno. Maybe they keep people like us in cages where he comes from.
The silver moon hung in a cloudless sky as Kilimanjaro’s snow-crested peak came into view to the south. One of the local gals who had joined us for free drinks snagged her blouse on the fold-down bed, a couple buttons popped and her glorious brassiere-less bosom was on dramatic display. They were the first I had seen in quite a while, and I was very impressed. There was no false modesty- she deliberately buttoned herself up with great dignity and a gentle smile.
Between the blunt cone of the great volcano and the free floor-show, things were definitely looking up.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303