"Be realistic, Sam! She will never come back. She is gone for good!" I had not expected such cutting words as those. I had been telling Miriam of the recent death of my sweetheart Becks, after she had found me brooding, and staring out of the window. I thought she was being heartless and unsympathetic.
It was approaching 1am. We were drinking in the restaurant car of the TanZam train from Kapiri Mposhi near Lusaka to Dar-es-Salaam. I had been in primary school when the Chinese built this railway, but the adults around me, from teachers to parents and their friends spoke of the project disparagingly. "Communists should have no place in African society. Why is Nyerere (Tanzania's president) being cosy with them?" They seemed to fear that the communists would soon invade Kenya, if things went on the way they were. At the time I did not know what was so terrible about communists, but it was very clear that it was a very bad system. They even forbade churches from worshipping!
But now riding on the 'communist railway', I had only praise for how it ran, in contrast with that in my own country just over the border, which had formed the backbone of the Kenya-Uganda Railway, later East African Railways. For one thing, it had started on time in the afternoon and had been running on schedule since. For another, it lacked the side-to-side swaying of that other, even though it was a fact that this one was built 60 years after EAR. In fact Tanzania had two railway systems, one of which was part of the old East African Railways. That part was metre-gauge, and had fallen into disuse in Tanzania.
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I was actually on my way back home, a home which had become unbearable for me when Becks died suddenly in a freak accident in the parking lot of the University where she was finishing her course for an MBA. As soon as school closed (where I worked as the IT manager) I felt the city in which we had enjoyed so much together would only serve to remind me that we would have had all the time together during the holidays, as she herself would have been done with her final exams. So I had gone on an 'impossible' trip, which had taken me through Mombasa, south to Dar-es-Salaam, and thence to Lusaka even farther to the south a journey of almost 2,500 km.
I had resolved, like the Masai to whom we had family connections, not to go back the way I had come. I sought out the offices of the TanZam Railways as soon as I had landed in Lusaka. I had found to my consternation that TanZam only got as far as Kapiri Mposhi, nearly two hours by road from Lusaka. After a short stay in Lusaka during which I made friends, on the Tuesday I had taken the minibus from that city to Kapiri. On the way a woman in the seat behind me seemed to be scolding the crew (I did not understand the language) that they were going too slow than usual and she risked missing the train.
By a coincidence I had to share the taxi from where the bus dropped us into the station with her. She became another new friend I had made on this 'mad' trip. On the train she was billeted with two British tourist girls who were uncommunicative, while I had two Congolese men who were going to Morogoro, nearly the end of the journey. We expected to arrive on the afternoon of the day after next, 40 hours later. I went to sit with Miriam, who told me she was in business, and was going to fetch items of clothing from Dar to sell in Lusaka. At other times she went to South Africa and others to Dubai. It is strange how travellers can find themselves baring their inner selves and this is what we did. I told her of my recent loss. In return she told me of her abusive partner who constantly beat her up. He would come to her house on his motorcycle drunk. They had been separated for some time yet she still loved him. Shortly before, he had been found stabbed in the stomach by some friends of his, probably in a drunken fit. The time he spent in hospital had served to bring he and Miriam closer together again. I could not help telling her how happy I was for them, although she harboured doubts as to whether he would resume his beating of her once he was discharged from hospital. Zambian society did not yet have mechanisms to deal with battered wives; the habit had been long ingrained in African men and was not really viewed as wrong.
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At Morogoro, where we arrived at 1:30 pm on the Thursday, I was left alone in my compartment and Miriam could leave her companions to their peace and sit with me for the remainder of the journey. She leaned forward eagerly as we talked, and lay her hand on mine at times. We felt a strong pull towards each other in the four hours that we spent together in that compartment. On arrival at Dar, having determined to make my return trip as different as possible from my coming one, I wanted to find a boat from there to Lamu, some 80km north of Mombasa. We found the offices closed for the day, and Miriam, being more of a regular, told me she could show me to a 'guesthouse' as they were called in Tanzania. So we checked into Sea Breeze Hostel and then went in search of something to eat.
On our return, I invited her over to my room, number 202, after she had finished her ablutions. She looked at me doubtfully as she went down the corridor to number 206.
Forty-five minutes later, I called her room. "I am done, Miriam! Are you?"
"Almost. But why do you want me there? We'll be all alone!"
I played dumb. "What is the problem with that?"
"You think I am a silly schoolgirl?" she countered. "You have been on the journey from Kenya, and before that you had been missing your Becks for a month or more. Is there any accounting for the hunger for a woman you have?"
"You are also as hot as coal. How long has your fiancee been in hospital with such a lifethreatening injury?" If she came, it was now out in the open.
"Are you accusing me of seducing you, Sam?" Gosh, women could be so contrary!
I decided to change tack. "I am going for a drink in the bar downstairs. Join me in ten minutes." I held the earpiece away from my ear expecting a flood of words. Instead, all I got was a sigh, then a click as she replaced the receiver onto its cradle.
