Spring Break: All Aboard for Gaborone

The only train in Botswana runs between Francistown and Gaborone daily, continuing on to Lobatse. In addition to only running once daily, it is an overnight train. By car, the stretch between the two "cities" of Botswana should take about four hours; the train, operated by Botswana Railways, rambles along at a slow enough pace as to make the trip a comfortable eight and a half hours. Since the train departs (or is at least supposed to) around 9 pm, we got there ninety minutes early to pay for reservations and experience possibly my most self-consciously "white" moment so far in Botswana.

Upon our arrival at Francistown's train station, we were met by an anaconda-length queue. Mothers with two children around her neck, one in front, one in back, and elderly men with worn faces. Endless masses of people of all sorts. Here we were, six lost white twenty-somethings asking for clarification about which line was for what. Without answering, the security stopped the line into the train station and pushed us through. Prompt, preferential treatment. Wholly undeserved.

There they were waiting to get their seat on a bench in a train car packed with people, carrying heavy loads, waiting. Then there were the six of us, with light luggage, sleeping car reservations, on our way to the first-class waiting room.

After a normal, i.e. long, wait we boarded the train. The room consisted of two sets of bunk beds with quite comfortable mattresses, a small overhead, and a table covering a sink. Alex was my roommate, as he almost always is, and two Batswana joined us to fill the car. The first one, Mati, was about as yuppie as one could get. Blackberry in hand, he was headed for a business meeting in Gaborone before returning the next night. The other, whose name I didn’t catch, was mid-fifties and told us of his days training Peace Corps teachers out in the villages. Before the conversation finished, I had drifted off to sleep. Awakened by the room door closing and the flick of the light switch, I sat and waited for my slumber to begin again.

But I noticed the air vents weren’t working. The heat became stifling and since I was on the top bunk, my face was about a foot or so from the ceiling. For the first time in memory, I became acutely claustrophobic. I wasn’t going to survive; I was going to die of suffocation. Every breath I took, every move I made, I was one step closer to my death.

Luckily, however, I was not alone in this feeling. From across the upper bunks, I heard the older man open the door, panting, “It’s too hot in here.” Alas, it’s not just me. Even Africans can’t handle the heat!

Once things cooled down in the car, I fell fast asleep and awoke as the train rolled into Gaborone at quarter to six in the morning. Surprisingly well rested, we hopped in a couple of taxis and headed back to campus to enjoy a couple days of solitude before the reopening, as well as celebrate Valentine’s Day with a mocha frappe.