The Old Trans-Karoo

For most of the train ride to Cape Town I shared the same level of excitement as the children running up and down the isle of the carriage in their underwear.

After the teary conversation with my girlfriend I stayed in that cabin alone and danced and sang out loud to De La Soul and Disney’s Greatest Love Songs. For a lot of the afternoon I knelt on the bench-seat and poked my head out the train window like a dog catching the wind in my open mouth. Jozzi was getting further and further away and the sadness that went with it was speeding fast behind me. Feelings of mystery and wonder were creeping in the closer I got to Cape Town and the rest of Africa… the sunset was magic! The brilliant glow hitting the horizon was hugely powerful, the golden sun was setting on the end of that chapter.

At 6pm I wandered back to my designated carriage where I walked in on three women nattering to each other over a table of assorted snacks.

Olga was a ‘coloured’ pensioner who talked way too much, had a wicked sense of humour, seemed to be mad as a hatter, called me “baby” and “sweety pie” and announced her soul purpose as being a vagabond, travelling all of South Africa numerous times over. May, also someone who called herself “coloured” was a bit of an alcoholic I suspect. Within the first ten minutes of us meeting she lamented that she didn’t realise there would be no ATM on the train (even though she had taken this train trip many times before) and was dying for a drink. I offered to buy her a beer in the dining cart, and after our third she mentioned that she was a lesbian in a five year relationship. She warned me that distance makes you cheat – she had twice. She kept taking photo’s of me which was really disconcerting and I had to tell her to stop. The third girl’s name I didn’t retain, but she didn’t spend the whole night on the train anyway. She was white and seemed quite unexeptional until she had three coffees in a row and each cup had three heaped table spoons of coffee and four heaped spoons of sugar.

I needed to get phone credit and May told me she would walk with me back to 3^rd class where you could buy anything. In first class there was an even amount of dark and black people in relation to white people, but there was not a single white person in third class, so as usual I stuck out and attracted a lot of attention! I was told all the phone cards sold out early. I could get snacks, beer and drugs though…

That night we stayed up late having some good chats and a lot of laughs. As we were all getting ready for bed, I was just tucking myself in to one of the top bunks when I heard Olga announce “see this Kai!” I peered down and there was Olga standing totally naked in the middle of the compartment cupping her breasts. She dropped them allowing them to swing like pendulums near her waist and declared “when you get to my age everything goes due south!”

I burst out laughing.

I was awake early enough to see the sun rise. I stared as we sped past some shanty towns. I was very annoyed that I missed a perfect photo opportunity of a slum nestled on the edge of a perfectly manicured golf course.

As the train pulled up in Cape Town a part of me was sorry to say goodbye to Olga and May. Though Olga had officially talked my ear off and May was sending me broke after I bought her beers and coffee and paid for some guy to carry her bags off the train. I was grateful they made that transition from Cape Town to Johannesburg not only bearable but actually quite pleasant. 

sunset on the trans-karoo

A shanty town snapped from the train window

May and Olga