Is This the Way to Madagascar? by Lydia Laube

Author:Lydia Laube
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: WTL
ISBN: 9781862549043
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2010-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

12 Mountain Training

The next day, boarding the train at six o’clock in the morning was a breeze. After coffee on the hotel’s street-side veranda, I trundled my bag across the road, through the station building, and into the first-class carriage. The young woman who had sold me my ticket the day before was already shunting passengers into their seats. She enlisted a male bystander to lift my bag up and into the overhead rack, even ordering him to turn it around and put it the right way up.

The train was an antique piece from the 1930s. My carriage was worn and looked its venerable age, but it had been scrubbed and polished ready for the trip. I took my seat, a red leather offering that had been designed with the express purpose of keeping you uncomfortably bolt upright. My mother would have been pleased. She spent her life telling me to sit up straight.

The carriage soon filled. It had an open plan design and the seats were arranged so that four people sat facing each other. I was seated with three Malagasy and the rest of the carriage was occupied by a colourful collection of Malagasy people and nine young American students. The wide entrance doors on both sides of the carriage were left open and in the space between them, passengers who had not won a seat sat on boxes, or stood in the open doorways. This looked a perilous occupation to me. How could they fail to fly out when the train swayed violently, as it did often? There was nothing to stop them. When we reached the mountains some men even sat on the edge of the step, swinging their legs in the breeze over incredible drops to infinity.

The train set off dead on time and we clattered along, horn blaring, until we had cleared the town and outlying villages. I guessed that if folk wandered on the tracks the way they did on the roads, this was a necessity. There was only a train on alternate days and it might have come as a nasty shock to find one unexpectedly lolloping up behind you.

From then on the train stopped every half-hour or so. It was a terrific trip. I spent an entire day getting a glimpse of the life of the local people. Through the rattly old glass of the windows, most of which were permanently solidified in the half-open position, I watched freight and supplies loaded and unloaded and passengers hopping on and off.

There are no roads through the mountains. The train provides the only connection between the otherwise isolated villages and the outside world; and it must be an exciting event in some of the people’s lives. Women and children stood on lonely plots of earth in front of shacks perched on mountaintops, where they waved and smiled at us. I wondered what their lives were like, and tried to put myself in their shoes for a moment.

Everyone in the carriage was friendly. As soon as we were underway, the journey became one long eating contest.

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