Finally the day of the long awaited train ride had arrived: Thursday 4/1/2010. We had made our reservations for the train on Monday but we had to still go to the station in the morning to purchase the ‘real’ tickets. Ann and Willie had to go into town so they were nice enough to drop us off at the train station and direct us to the proper line to wait in. Unfortunately, when we got there, nobody was working the ticket line. We discovered that this is not an uncommon occurrence in Africa: unscheduled “breakfast breaks” can happen at any time. While in line (for a mere 2 hours), we met two other Americans girls, Kim and Magdalena, who were heading to N’gaoundéré to the same mission! In fact, they were also medical students! Not just medical students but osteopathic medical students from Virginia. One of them, Kim, spoke French and was able to get us all in the same “wagon” (aka cabin). After getting our tickets we went back to Anne and Willie’s to eat lunch, take some final pictures, and say our goodbyes. That afternoon, Felix, our trusted taxi driver took us to the train station one last time for our voyage. Arriving at the train station was mildly overwhelming as several Cameroonians approached us offering to carry our bags in exchange for a fee. These men are known as “Porters” and are common to find at any travelling station. We proceeded to the first class waiting area, which seemed completely out of place, complete with nice seats, air conditioning, and a flat screen TV with hip hop videos. After waiting another couple hours, it was finally time to board the train.
We proceeded to get on the train now with our new medical student friends. The cabin was small but had 2 bunk beds. We tried to lay as still as possible to avoid any more heat production as the heat and humidity descended on us and we were unable to open the majority of the windows around us. After sweating through our clothes the train gloriously started to move. With a sudden and forceful jerk we were finally on our way to N’gaoundéré. We read some books via the lights that were hanging on by a thread and slowly drifted off to sleep as it became darker and darker. At one of the stops, a couple innocent-appearing flies made into the cabin. Then about 500 of their fly-friends flooded in, all swarming around our light. Courtney was swatting at the flies with her flip flop and hiding as far in the corner as possible. We searched around frantically for the light switch but were unable to find it. When we really thought there was nothing more we could do, a maintenance man came around with some bug spray. We dashed out of the cabin while he sprayed like crazy, shut the window, showed us how to turn off the lights, and closed the door to fumigate the unwanted insects. We went back into the cabin ten minutes later cleaned the dead flies off our beds and breathed a sigh of relief. We drifted back to sleep and woke up around 6AM as the sun rose. Although the train was supposed to take about 12 hours, Courtney and I had now gotten used to “Africa time” and were not surprised as we rolled into N’gaoundéré around 11AM. We had made it!
-Brent and Courtney
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