Tickets on the platform in Tabora, Tanzania

In my youth (1975), I travelled through Tanzania by train with my younger brother – a journey that became one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German colonial authorities built a railway from Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean to the small town of Kigoma on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Over the decades, hardly any modernisation had taken place, either to the trains or to the tracks. There was no electronic signalling system; everything was operated manually. We had bought return tickets with the option of breaking our journey along the way and planned to spend one night in the small town of Tabora and another at the terminus in Kigoma.

Tabora is well known from the accounts of African explorers such as Livingstone, Speke and Burton. During the era of the East African slave trade, the town also played an important role as a major trading hub in the heart of the continent.

The slow steam locomotive struggled its way up onto the Tanzanian plateau, giving us plenty of time to observe our fellow passengers and the life at the many small stations. At each stop, mainly women and young men sold fruit and other refreshments to travellers through the train windows.

After a long day, we finally arrived in Tabora, tired but excited. As we stepped off the train, a railway employee in uniform was collecting everyone’s tickets. Without giving it a second thought, I handed over ours as well.

It was only about an hour later that I suddenly realised they were return tickets – we still needed them for the rest of our journey. My heart sank, and I felt a knot in my stomach. We had very little money, and in those days it was almost impossible to contact our parents back in Dar es Salaam. The telephone network was extremely limited, and sending a letter would have taken several weeks.

We hurried back to the station, which now looked deserted, as only two trains passed through each day – one heading west and one east. To my relief, I noticed someone inside a small office in the station building. I knocked on the door while trying to remember the Swahili word for “ticket”.

A smiling man in a smart railway uniform opened the door, holding our tickets in his hand. He had noticed that they were return tickets and immediately realised why we had come back. As we had been the only white Europeans to get off the train, he remembered us.

What a relief! We could continue our journey, and the knot in my stomach disappeared as quickly as it had come.