Slow train to Jozi

 This story first appeared in the Sunday Times Travel section (12 May 2013)

I’m alone in the four-berth compartment as we pull out of Cape Town station but this doesn’t last long.  “Hello!  So where are you going?  Joburg?”  He sits down uninvited, but that’s ok, his smile alone makes him welcome.  His name is Zab and he’s just finished matric and he’s off to initiation school near Klerksdorp.   “In the bush with just a blanket for a whole month,” he tells me.  Yes, he’s nervous, he says, but when he comes home he’ll be a man.

I’m on the Shosholoza Meyl, the re-named, re-branded Trans-Karoo Express, for my return journey from Cape to Johannesburg.  “I wanted to be a musician when I left school but I’m not sure now.  I’ll probably go and study,” Zab is saying.  He plays the guitar.  I point under my seat to where my guitar case is stowed.  Zab’s eyes light up and soon he has pulled the instrument out and is strumming away.  He’s good and he sings well too.  “I used to write a lot of songs,” he says, “mainly for girls.”  He makes it sound as if this happened decades ago but he’s all of eighteen and his beaming face has not a line on it.  He plays for an hour and we’re joined by a couple of engineering students, at which point I stop my poor attempt at singing along to Marley’s Redemption Song.  

It’s a hot, still day as we journey through the Western Cape on our way north.  One of those days in early summer when the coolness of the recent cold front has given way to Karoo-like heat and the whole place is waiting for the relief of the blasting south-easter.  Table Mountain the only thing that seems not to wilt, it is magnificently framed by the bright blue sky.  Not a leaf stirs in the vineyards.

The engineering student from Phalaborwa, with the funky dreads, is debating with the Ugandan thirty-something man who’s joined us.  He’s making a concerted attempt convince the student that upgrading the rail system is the answer to South Africa’s transport problems.  “We need a system like the Gautrain!” he says earnestly.  The student has his doubts.  I try to contribute but the older man is on a roll so I wander towards to front of the train in search of the dining car.

As I sip my drink an eagle, wings low over the khaki scrub.  It’s so big even a springbok glances up and watches it warily.  I track its progress until the springbok has gone back to grazing and the bird has become a speck. 

Meyl passengers are late risers it seems.   There are only a handful of people in the dining car when I arrive for breakfast at 7.30am.  They’ve run out of chilled juice so I can have an extra cup of tea or coffee instead.  Filter coffee?  No, my waitress tells me, it’s a cheap chicory blend.  I choose the tea.

 We’ve stopped again, now somewhere in the veld near Gauteng.  One of the guys asks a crew member for a reason and is told we’re about to be diverted via Vereeniging.  We’ll be late.  Four hours late, as it turns out.  We crawl our way around the south of Johannesburg, stopping to wait for commuter trains to pass.  On the horizon the evening storm-clouds are towering above the high-veld, below, in an informal settlement, a group of women have gathered around someone’s corrugated iron home and are singing a sad-sounding song.  Giggling children chase each other in circles in front of a spaza shop.

This isn’t luxury travel, the Shosholoza Meyl is like a backpacker hostel on wheels, but it puts the traveller closer to the diversity of South Africa and South Africans.  It’s more interesting than haring down the N1 in an air-conditioned car or cruising at thirty thousand feet in an airliner.  It’s more fun too.