Ricardo: "Nobody respects anyone", mutters the Indian taxi driver who takes us to the station. Is, I guess, his eternal litany before the devilish traffic of Mombasa. His relief in front of a city in which, nevertheless, still feel foreign. To us, however, the car pandemonium doesn't even make us grimace. Now we could be enjoying the island of Lamu, one of the star destinations of the Kenyan Indian Ocean, but we give up its postcard beaches for an old train. We are about to fulfill a dream and dreams never have small print. In just over an hour, you will leave Mombasa station for Nairobi. It is not just any train. It's about the legendary Tren Lunatic built by the British more than a century ago between the Indian Ocean and the Lake Victoria, a railway line that at the time seemed crazy due to the difficulty of crossing savannas full of wild animals. Those in charge of laying the road were the ancestors of the taxi driver who now takes us to the station, Indian coolies who later settled in Kenya as merchants and those who, still, many Kenyans are suspicious of its proven ability to prosper their businesses.
We are about to fulfill a dream and dreams never have small print
Xavier: The dreamed entry into our cabin was a shock, more like a slap… nasal. We set foot on the long-awaited train, in which I had imagined traveling for years, and the first impression is that that night we would sleep in the bathrooms. Oil, without any understatement, to mid.
So you look at the cracked leather bunk, a cabinet that was propped up a hundred years ago and a small sink from which a trail of dust comes out with a certain nostalgia and holds its breath in a last attempt to save the blows that, sometimes, gives you reality. So until I almost died of suffocation and I told Richi: "I'm going to ask to change our stateroom".
I then went back to the window behind which there was a woman and a man who sold the tickets.. "Excuse me, It turns out that in our cabin it smells like pee and I was wondering if they could move us ”. They look at me smiling and answer me: “Claro, is that there are people who sometimes use the toilet sinks. I am so sorry, we give you a new one right now " . From the routine of his words I understood that the toilet turned into a urinal was something common among the nostalgic troop, most foreigners, What does this train use?.
The first impression is that that night we would sleep in the bathrooms
Ricardo: This is not the busy platform, chaotic, quaint and rowdy we expected. We are in family. Just a few moms with their bundles of clothes and a handful of mzungus (white man in swahili) in search of the epic of the Lunatic Express that one day they got on Churchill, Hemingway, Karen Blixen or the ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie. A hustler plays the guitar for a few shillings. Is called Leonard Malukeya and tells us that he needs the money to pay for college for his daughters. its «Kumbaya My Lord» sweeten the wait, that seems long and tedious. The goat always pulls to the mountain and the closest thing to the mountain that we have at hand is the station bar, where we go to order some beers. Your terrace is full of locals watching TV. No one will get on the train. They just kill the afternoon. But they don't sell alcohol and we have to get on the train to buy the Tusckers in the dining car for 220 shillings (just over two euros) the fifth bottle. Surprisingly, At twenty past seven they tell us by the public address system that the train is going to leave and five minutes later the Lunatic Train begins its journey 440 km sick Nairobi. Us within.
This is not the busy platform, chaotic, quaint and rowdy we expected. We are in family
Xavier: The train started like it had to drag all of Mombasa with it. Slow, trembling, with the doubts that great occasions require. The daylight was leaving when that iron zombie began to walk.
Then I remember that I was left with my head hanging from the window, excited, contemplating the beautiful turn off of the city. We passed through neighborhoods where life was fragile. What I liked the most was to contemplate the small lights of bonfires or candles that illuminated the increasingly complete darkness. It gave time to intuit everything, to almost understand, from that old wagon that dragged its bad old age with a certain dignity. He was happy.
It gave time to intuit everything, to almost understand, from that old wagon that dragged its bad old age with a certain dignity
Ricardo: Hanging from the window, overcoming the garbage smell of the slums of Mombasa, chewing the soot with his eyes, there was surely nothing they could offer us that would make us get off the train. We were where we wanted, although what we wanted was not, probably, what we imagined.
Our neighbors were a mature Dutchman and his thirty-year-old Kenyan girlfriend and a local family with a baby.. I started to foreshadow that the night could be memorable. When we hadn't even gotten used to the train, an employee began preparing the sleeping compartments as he summoned the few passengers to dinner with a jingle that further accentuated the sense of carefree decadence.
The clock had stopped half a century in the dining car. Padded seats, the row of rotating fans, the withered photo of the president… Although most of the car was empty, They insisted on grouping us by tables to take advantage of the space and save efforts. Across from us sat the Dutch-Kenyan couple. She did not open her mouth throughout dinner and limited herself to whispering confidences of lovers to her partner.. Waitresses, with white uniforms and sports shoes, they dispatched dinner in less than half an hour: A soup that would have awakened the suspicion of the very "El Busón" Master, a condumio of rice and vegetables and lemon chicken with potato (the singular, in this case, it is not a typo). For dessert, a fruit salad (the plural is extremely generous). Cutlery and plates, in another time of silver, they were plastic. There is no other than to take refuge in wine: a couple of bottles of Frontera, a Chilean wine that costs us 1.200 shillings per bottle (the second we share with a young Dutch couple and an American woman who travels alone).
While the manager and two white septuagenarians (old acquaintances, I guess) they dine until all the trays are empty, Javier and I treat ourselves to one of those luxuries that magnify a trip and top off the dinner with half a kilo of ham that has flown from Spain for the occasion., a delight that almost makes Javier levitate.
For dinner they served us a soup that would have aroused the suspicion of Master Cabra himself
Xavier: Night at the Lunatic is a half-built dream. Never fully sleeps, never wake up. We went back to the cabin after dinner and found our beds made. The door did not close properly. It did not matter, we lie down and start not sleeping, not to wake up.
And in that wakeful sleep you noticed that the convoy stopped at stations where, sometimes, you raised your head and you saw clear ghosts. At times, you made calculations if we went through Tsavo or did we get to mars. It was not real that silence broken by the creaking of the locomotive and that, like everything that is not real, it became fascinating.
Night at the Lunatic is a half-built dream. Never fully sleeps, never wake up
Ricardo: At half past five I couldn't take it anymore. Sleeping with the ceiling two feet from my head haunted me a bit. I got up to relieve my bladder. It was not the first, course. The toilet cistern was already overflowing and they wanted to run away.
We wanted to see sunrise, but the haze had kidnapped the sun. Africa was already on its feet. Children were seen on the way to school, people on bicycles, stretching huts… At breakfast the same scene was repeated as at dinner, although in this case we share a tablecloth with the Dutch youth, much more talkative. Juice, some fruit, flint-hard toast and a handful of beans and sausage as the clang of the rickety platform between the carriages hit us.
They felt like asking what car was watching the corpse of Lunatic Train. His funeral was held for some time, but no one has learned and continues to circulate legendary train, fading away any hint of that epic that one day he made only.
We wanted to see sunrise, but the haze had kidnapped the sun. Africa was already on its feet
Xavier: I think the train stops were my biggest surprise. I never witnessed such a lonely train in Africa. Every stop became a requiem. There were hardly any people on the platforms, nor did the maddened load that I expected rise and fall, nor did I see hundreds of passengers, as I assumed, hang from the windows. Nothing was as I had imagined and, however, that seemed to me that it gave a wonderful meaning to everything that I contemplated. That certain desolation was almost poetic, it was an ode to defeat, something that always piques my interest. I liked to stare from my window at old men and children who were sitting at the stations waiting for others, maybe something alive, but not to us.
I never witnessed such a lonely train in Africa. Every stop became a requiem
Ricardo: The night had stolen our way through Tsavo, the amazing park of red elephants and man-eating lions without mane (the descendants of those who paid dearly for the folly of laying a railway line between wild animals). Only the Nairobi National Park could redeem us and offer us a fleeting safari on rails. And about to enter the capital we finally saw zebras, gazelles and the occasional wildebeest dragging their reluctance through the savannah. The train didn't even make them blink, as if they wanted to make it clear that they were first. We went from side to side of the train, as if the wagon was a jeep, Until the animals turned over the baton to the plastic and trash slums that made dreams mute.
About to enter Nairobi we finally saw zebras, gazelles and the occasional wildebeest dragging their reluctance through the savannah
Xavier: The train ends on the heels of the world, or in the ass, pardon me. A little lesson, a hit of reality. The old machine goes through the slums before reaching Nairobi (neighborhoods) from the outskirts. Behind the window one drops all the nostalgia of a trip that now seems like “luxury” to twist one's gaze at that Africa so often contemplated in which this journey ends right. No more dreams and ghosts, no more metal corpses. They are there, flesh and blood; I really contemplated the dead while they are alive. No poetry, no texts to remember from Churchill, crammed in utter misery, without in the honor of allowing them to be buried when they no longer have life. They don't watch the train, they simply avoid it so that it does not pass over them. The really lunatic thing about this trip is to contemplate those people. This strange and fascinating journey could not have a better ending for everything to make sense.
