Travels with Bex

Bheki prepares to board the Shosholoza Meyl.

A suggestion had been made that I not travel alone in Economy Class on the Shosholoza – at least not on my first trip.  “Take a local with you,” friends advised, “Someone who has been on the train before and who speaks Xhosa and Afrikaans.”

The closer it came to the time for me to board the train, the more I warmed to the idea of traveling with a companion. Was I getting cold feet? And if so, why? Was this journey upsetting some deep-rooted racism or classism in me? Was I playing into the fear of being a minority – the only white person on a train of black and coloured people? And which was more unsettling: race or class? Was being in the minority more troubling or was or sitting in “third class” when, on the Shosholoza, I could afford to travel in “premier class?”

Was my hesitation to take the Shosholoza by myself really about race and class – the “isms” that are buried somewhere in all of us except, perhaps, for saints and poets? Or was this truly about listening to locals and avoiding, as much as possible, any potential trouble? That long-ago incident in Peru, when I had a knife pulled on me, continues to be my touchstone for taking caution when setting out on new adventures.

I wanted to be certain that my decisions were being guided by caution and not fear. But if it was fear, I wanted to be damn sure that it was not fear based on racism and classism, but a justified concern for safety. And just as importantly, perhaps more importantly, if I was making decisions based on racism and classism that lives within me somewhere, I needed to acknowledge that. Perhaps this would really be more about a personal journey of a widening worldview than it would be a commentary on “economic segregation” along the rail lines of South Africa.

I don’t know the real reason why I invited a friend from the township of Khayelitsha to join me on my first experience on the Shosholoza. Throughout history, explorers have engaged the services of a guide. I hoped my motivation for doing so was similar to those earlier adventurers, but I would be less than truthful if I didn’t say that an element of fear also played into my decision to travel with a local. That and I thought it would just be more fun to have someone to talk with on my first six-hour train journey and the three days spent in the tiny village of Matjiesfontein.

Deciding whether or not to travel with a local was the challenge. Once the decision was made to do so, I knew who I would invite to join me on the Shosholoza.

I met Bheki Kunene when he was just 14-years-old and was dreaming of becoming “South Africa’s greatest in-line skater.” It was an especially daunting goal when you realize that Bex, as his friends call him, had the drive and the vision to realize his dream, but lacked the very tool he needed to be successful. He didn’t have in-line skates.

I had written about Bheki and his aspirations when I was on a fellowship in South Africa in 2003. Late one night, I e-mailed a vignette about Bheki to friends in the U.S. and went to bed. By the next morning, my inbox was full of replies from Americans offering to buy skates for this township kid. Bheki got his in-line skates, began competing in tournaments, and though he didn’t become South Africa’s greatest skater, the two of us did become friends.

The story I wrote then was really less about Bheki than it was about dreams. Over the years, as I got to know Bheki better, I realized that he did have a powerful story to tell.

Bheki was a sensitive child, raised by his mother and grandmother. His father was out of the picture – in prison serving 18 years for robbery – all of Bheki’s young life. His mother, seeing education as the only way out of poverty, encouraged Bheki to excel in school – which he did. He also was cast in a television show that ran for one year on South African TV. And then, things went very wrong.

Bheki did a terrible thing. He was arrested, and the crime he committed generated a good deal of media attention. He was in and out of courts and juvenile detention. In a remarkably short span of time, Bheki’s life went from one of promise and hopefulness to one of notoriety and despair. When the case was settled and the media moved on to the next crime, Bheki was returned to his community with no hope, to say nothing of any expectation, that Bheki would make anything of himself.

Heeding his mother’s advice to get an education, Bheki went from school to school in an attempt to gain readmission. His academic accomplishments would get him in the door, but when administration learned of what he had done, they wouldn’t let him attend school. By sheer persistence, Bheki eventually found a high school to attend and matriculated. He then set his sites on obtaining a degree in graphic design. Again, because of his persistent nature, Bheki made his case for acceptance and finally wore the admissions committee down at Ruth Prowse School of Arts where he was admitted on a conditional basis. Semester after semester, for the full three years of the program, Bheki proved himself and received a diploma in graphic design in 2009. He has since opened the first graphic design company, a one-man shop at this point, but still, the first graphic design company in the township where he lives.

By telling his story, Bheki could inspire young people in the townships. It could change the perceptions of those with power and privilege in South Africa. And it could show people in other parts of the world that Africans are worth investing in.

Bheki had a story to tell, but needed my help in telling it. I had long train trips to take and thought I needed a guide. Traveling together, I could assist Bheki in writing his story, and he could come to my assistance if needed. We might make an odd-looking pair, a young black man from the townships of South Africa traveling with a middle-aged white guy from the Midwestern part of the United States, but odd or not, we set off on a journey on the Shosholoza together.

Of the 60-plus people who boarded the same sitter car in Economy Class that Bheki and I did, I was the only white person. I was prepared to feel like an outsider, to endure some strange looks and possibly even to overhear negative comments, which Bheki could translate if they weren’t spoken in English. For the most part, none of that happened. One or two people may have done a subtle double take when they walked past our row and saw a sole white man in the packed carriage, but I never felt out of place on the Shosholoza.

Bheki and I would talk for some time and then he would sleep and I would read. We would buy grapes and snacks from the vendors who walked up and down the aisles, all day long, selling their wares for a couple of rand. Bheki would watch the bags so I could go to the toilet and I would sit in my seat while he tried to get a break from the oppressive heat by standing between the cars and catching a breeze from the open doors. Occasionally, one of the passengers who had purchased one too many Castle beers would burst into a song or break out laughing, but mostly, that first train journey was just monotonous – and hot.

The first thing I wanted to do after our hot journey on the Shosholoza, was to go for a cooling swim at the pool at the Lord Milner Hotel in Matjiesfontein. Bheki and I checked into our rooms, changed into our swimming costumes and met at the pool where we lounged, swam and talked about, what else, race.

Bheki told me how few swimming pools there are in the townships outside of Cape Town – even though more than a million people live there – and how, for the most part, black kids would not usually go swimming as a fun, recreational outing. I told Bheki that in the U.S., the white kids who can, pretty much live at community pools in the summer, or in the water at a family’s get-away lake, or on the ocean beaches of America’s coastline.

Discussing race in the swimming pool with Bheki reminded me of a conversation I had with an elderly Afrikaner woman who learned that I was staying in the Sea Point neighborhood of Cape Town. Outside of my flat was a beautiful public swimming pool situated at the very edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The white-haired woman was lamenting how she used to enjoy taking her family to the pool but that those days now were gone. Thinking it was because her children were grown and had moved away, I asked if that was the reason. “Oh, no, dearie” was her response. “You can’t go there now because it’s the blacks and coloureds who swim there. It’s a shame. It used to be so lovely.” Lovely for whites only.

Half joking, but only half joking, Bheki asked, “Do you think that’s why none of the other guests are joining us in the water? Because a black man is in the pool?” I didn’t think that was the reason, but the fact that we were even having this conversation, decades after the end of segregation in the U.S. and nearly 20 years past apartheid in South Africa, was unsettling. There would be no overt examples of racism during our stay in Matjiesfontein, but there would be stares and comments that would prove more unsettling than our conversation in the pool.

Both of us were cognizant of the eyes following us as we were shown to our table each night at the only restaurant that serves dinner in Matjiesfontein. One night, a diner stared long enough at Bheki to make him uncomfortable. Indeed, Bheki was more uncomfortable as the only black guest in the hotel than I was being the only white man on the Shosholoza. Servers would ask me which side dishes I wanted with my meal, but just assumed Bheki would eat whatever they put on his plate. With the exception of one guest and one employee, no one would engage with either Bheki or me. Of course it’s conjecture on our part, but both of us sensed extraordinary curiosity about this “odd couple” in Matjiesfontein. That feeling was confirmed one night as we were leaving the restaurant and passing the bar before returning to our rooms.

Three men, who had spent a good deal of time drinking in the bar that day, were sitting outside having a beer. Earlier that evening, when Bheki and I had stopped by for a drink before dinner, the men were talking in English, laughing with other guests and eventually joined the piano player in singing a rousing rendition of “Marching to Pretoria.” My few attempts to engage the men in conversation ended in silence. They must have assumed that Bheki couldn’t understand Afrikaans, or they didn’t care, because when we passed them later that evening, one of them said in a voice loud enough for us to hear – and for Bheki to translate for me – “Sjoe! What is this, then, a white American man with an African boy?”

There could have been all kinds of thoughts racing through this white man’s mind, but we now had confirmation of something both Bheki and I felt since the moment we arrived in Matjiesfontein: people were curious about the two of us and talking about us, but no one would ask us any questions. And although we will never know exactly what they were thinking of us, we knew that race was part of it – at least with the men at the bar. Why else would they need to define us by the color of our skin with me being white and Bheki being African – which is understood to mean black. And although Bheki looks young and is a young man, he is not a boy and wouldn’t be mistaken for one. Certainly, not in the bar where he had been served a beer just a few hours before.

The thing that is so insidious about all of society’s “isms” and “phobias” – racism, classism, sexism, ageism, anti-Semitism, homophobia – is that it is often so covert that it is difficult to prove that you even experienced it. That maybe classism is why you got the worst table in a restaurant; and homophobia is why you didn’t get the job you applied for; and racism is the reason why guests at a hotel in the middle of the Great Karoo Desert stare at you.

You want to be able to say, absolutely, that the other guests just didn’t want to go for a swim on that particular hot afternoon; but you’re left wondering if there might not, just possibly, be some other reason.  And in the “isms” and “phobias” of others, you recognize something similar in yourself. That you might not care who you swim with, but you think your safety is jeopardized because the people you travel with in a certain train car, look different than you do.

Bheki and I missed our scheduled train back to Cape Town from Matjiesfontein because we listened to the advice of a local who told us it was running two hours late. She was wrong. Just goes to show that it’s not always good to listen to the advice of locals after all.

“Black and Blue” – A Book, Not a Bruise

Years ago, I was traveling by myself in Peru, hiking part of the Inca Trail at Machu Picchu, taking an eco-tour down the Amazon River and exploring the neighborhoods of the capital city, Lima. My very first day in the country, when checking into my hotel in Lima, the desk clerk warned me about not walking the streets near the hotel alone. Later that day, as I was about to ignore the local’s advice and head out to explore the city on my own, another hotel employee stopped me and urged me to let him arrange a driver for me. Having seen a bit of the world, I thanked him and said I thought I would be fine. Less than ten minutes later, on a deserted street somewhere in Peru, I found myself face-to-face with a young man wielding a knife with two accomplices on either side of me.

The men had orchestrated this type of mugging before. The three of them were quickly herding me towards a waiting vehicle where a fourth man sat behind the steering wheel of a running car. When one of hoodlums opened a door and began to get in, he created a momentary opening where there was no one in front of me. I grabbed the opportunity and ran from the two men who were about to corral me into the backseat. I rushed past the car and back towards the hotel. I heard car doors slamming and the car screeching, but I didn’t look back to see if they were pursuing me or if they were off in search of another victim who hadn’t heeded good advice. I didn’t stop running until I saw the very uniformed hotel employee who just minutes before had implored me to take a taxi. After I caught my breath and wiped the sweat from my face, I asked if he would please arrange a driver for the duration of my time in Lima.

Ever since that I experience, when traveling to parts of the world unfamiliar to me, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers and, more importantly, the advice of locals.

When the idea for writing “Black and Blue in South Africa” came to me, I knew I would need to solicit input from locals before unknowingly putting myself at risk for some unforeseen calamity that could befall me. I began to engage South Africans in discussions about train travel in their country.  I knew it was safe to travel on the luxury trains like the Blue Train or the Rovos Rail, but what about the Shosholoza Meyl – the train that the majority of locals depend on? Were there any issues with taking a train that cost about 1% of what those high-end trains charged?

To find out, I headed to the Cape Town Station, a train depot that was, at that time, in need of a facelift. (A renovation that did come in time for the opening of the World Cup soccer tournament hosted in South Africa in 2010.) Like train stations in all major metropolitan centers, the Cape Town Station was abuzz with activity. People were everywhere: hurrying to catch trains or rushing to make connections to mini buses that would deliver them a bit closer to their ultimate destinations in the city.

I wandered through the station, following the signs to the Shosholoza Meyl counter. There, I waited in a queue until a customer departed and I could approach a ticket window and talk with a representative about this most affordable railway. I had done some homework before arriving at the train station and had learned that there were various options for traveling on the Shosholoza.

In the Premiere Class, travelers enjoyed a private sleeper berth with meals included in the cost of the ticket. In Tourist Class, passengers shared a sleeping compartment with no food. In Economy Class, there were no sleepers or food – just a cushioned seat in an un-air-conditioned car with 77 other passengers per carriage.

The cost of a one-way ticket on the Premiere Class was approximately $300. The ticket to the same destination in Tourist Class was about $75. In Economy, it was less than $25. There were also the options of the Blue Train or the Rovos Rail, but the cost of each of these luxury trains was exorbitant.

When the queue before me had disappeared and it was my turn at the counter, I greeted the agent with one of the few words I know in the Xhosa language, “molo,” and asked to please have a copy of the schedule for the Economy Class departures between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Looking at my white skin and hearing my American accent she said, “That’s not for you. You take the Rovos or the Blue Train.”

I said thank you very much but explained that those options were too expensive. What I was really interested in was the Economy ticket. “Not for you” remained her response.

“But there is an Economy Class?” I inquired.

“Yes, but not for you.”

“Is there a schedule for the Economy Class?”

“Yes.”

“May I have a copy of the schedule, please?”

“No. That train is not for you.”

By now the queue behind me was growing, but I had nothing but time that day. I sensed that this Shosholoza employee was trying to do for me the exact same thing that the employees at that hotel in Lima, Peru tried to do; to protect me from some danger that I might not be aware of. Still, I wasn’t going to leave the counter until I knew how often the Economy Class departed Cape Town and what the stops were along the way. I tried again.

“Can you give me information, please, for all classes of travel on the Shosholoza Meyl?”

Finally I got, a more promising response. The woman passed me a glossy brochure with colored photos that detailed travel on the Premiere Class, along with a single sheet of paper that listed departure times for every town between Cape Town and Johannesburg in Tourist Class. Now we were getting somewhere.

I thanked her in Xhosa, “Enkosi kakhulu,” and said, “Now, may I have the same schedule for the Economy Class?”

She just looked at me. She sat on one side of the counter and I stood on the other, both of us silent. The clerk seemed set on not giving me the information and I was determined not to leave without it.

Throughout our entire exchange there was a man behind the counter, wearing a sweater with the Shosholoza Meyl logo on it, doing paperwork. At some point in my conversation with the clerk, the man started paying attention to our conversation and occasionally looking at me. He was also paying attention to the line of customers behind me that was getting longer and longer with each minute I remained at the counter. When the clerk and I had reached our impasse and were doing nothing more than staring at each other, the co-worker walked up to the window, a piece of paper in his hand, and gave me a schedule that looked identical to the one for the Tourist Class, except on the top of it was the heading, Economy Class.

The clerk remained silent, but I had what I had come for. I thanked them both for their assistance and left the Cape Town Station with all of the logistical information I needed. But I also now had a concern. The clerk was adamant that I not take the Economy Class of the Shosholoza. Was that just because people with some means didn’t do that since there were other affordable options for a middle-class American? Or was there some other reason, perhaps personal safety, why I shouldn’t take the least expensive train?

At this point, I had been coming to South Africa for nearly a decade; staying in Cape Town and working in the townships of Guguletu and Khayelitsha which are located just minutes from the train station in the center of the city. I had developed a network of colleagues and friends from all walks of life. I turned to them for advice as to whether I should travel in Economy Class of the Shosholoza.

The first person I went to for advice was the very first person I met when I came to Cape Town in 2000. The Rev. Spiwo Xapile is a Presbyterian minister in Guguletu. When I described the interaction I had with the clerk at the station he reflected for a moment, as is his way, and said, “Oh, yeah. No, it is fine for you to take the Shosholoza.”

I then went to Mandla Majola, a community and AIDS activist who lives in Guguletu, but whose works impacts the lives of thousands of people throughout the townships and whose opinion I greatly respect. If Mandla said I shouldn’t take the Economy Class I would have to reconsider the project.

Majola laughed when I told him about my encounter with the clerk at the train station. He replied to my question by saying, “My friend, it is OK. Sit by a granny and have time on your mobile phone, but no, it is fine. And bring some food with you.”

Those were the assurances I needed to move forward with my plan to travel in all classes of trains between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Which is not to say that I got the same response when I told white people about my intentions.

Nearly to a person, my white friends and colleagues in the United States, asked the same question: “Was it safe for me to take the trains in South Africa?” The conversations with white friends and colleagues in South Africa were similar, but more nuanced.

Some assumed when I said I was taking the Shosholoza that I would be in Premiere Class, the train they have occasionally taken in South Africa. Their concerns became apparent only when I explained that I would actually be in the sitter cars, or as they referred to it, third class. Some confused the Economy Class with the Metroliner, the commuter train that connects the townships with the city and has a reputation for crime. Everyone cautioned me about not taking the Metroliner. A few suggested that I travel with someone from the township, at least on my first trip, to see what the experience was like.

I welcomed all advice and was grateful to have a circle of friends and colleagues diverse enough to give me an accurate picture of what I might expect on the trains of South Africa. I also appreciated that they wanted the results of my travels to be a book titled “Black and Blue,” and that I not end up bruised and black and blue from some situation I might unwittingly get myself into.

If only I would have been smart enough to take the advice offered by locals on that trip to Peru years before.

There But For the Grace of God

“Black and Blue in South Africa.” There it was, all of a sudden, an idea in my head.

It was a glorious day in Cape Town. It was hot, but not unbearable. The sun was shining. There was a breeze that actually felt soft against your skin. A few white clouds hung above iconic Table Mountain and the skies above Lions Head were clear and blue. The promenade, a walkway that winds itself along the Atlantic Ocean, was alive with activity: people walking their dogs, caregivers pushing pensioners in wheelchairs, joggers running with ear buds in their ears, children kicking soccer balls and others just lounging on benches or standing at the sea wall looking at the glistening waters of the Atlantic. A few kayakers paddled past, close to the rocky shore. Further out to sea, massive ships waited their turn to enter the harbor. It was the kind of day that Midwesterners fantasize about in the dark, cold, wintery months of January and February in the United States. And I was in Cape Town, walking along the promenade and taking in all of the sites and sounds of life in one of the most beautiful, fascinating and contradictory cities in the world.

And then it came to me. “Black and Blue in South Africa.” A title for a book I had never before considered writing. Traveling by train, a mode of transportation I had never taken on my many trips to this Rainbow Nation. Exploring the worlds of the haves and the have-nots that I had never seriously considered in the past.

It was 2003 and I was in South Africa on a six-month fellowship working to establish nutrition programs for people infected with HIV/AIDS in the black townships located outside of Cape Town. As often as possible, after spending the day in a township like Guguletu, I would hurry back to Cape Town for a therapeutic, solitary walk along the promenade – a chance to process the sometimes horrific stories that come from working in a community where 40% of the population is unemployed and nearly one in five adults is HIV-positive.

Friends from the U.S. were planning a visit to South Africa and were interested in taking a trip on the Blue Train – a luxury tourist train that I had never heard of. I made inquiries for them and discovered that the cost for a ticket between Cape Town and Pretoria was prohibitive, even for my successful American friends. Actually, the price was more than prohibitive; it was shocking. For the cost of a single one-way ticket on the Blue Train, basically a 24-hour adventure, 100 people living with HIV/AIDS in the townships could receive a hot meal, five days a week, for a month.

I didn’t think any more of the Blue Train, at least I wasn’t aware of doing so, but the disparities between those who have power and privilege and those who do not, must have been percolating unconsciously in my mind. For when the idea for “Black and Blue in South Africa” showed itself to me on that sunny day along the promenade in Cape Town, it came nearly fully formed.

Life on and along the train tracks that run between Cape Town and Pretoria would form a narrative arc for a book examining the human costs of economic segregation. Here, as in other parts of the world, rail lines cut communities into two. There is life on one side of the tracks and there is life on the “other” side, or the “wrong” side, of the tracks. The disparity becomes glaringly obvious when a very select group of people – usually white and privileged – travel in luxury on the Blue Train; while the overwhelming majority – usually people of color and poor – go economy class in the sitter cars of a train called the Shosholoza Meyl.

The beautiful Blue Train makes only one stop where passengers disembark. On the southern trip between Pretoria and Cape Town, the stop is to explore Kimberly and to see the “Big Hole” which was excavated by hand in search of diamonds. On the trip north, between Cape Town and Pretoria, the Blue Train stops at the Victorian village of Matjiesfontein, located in the Great Karoo Desert, where passengers wander the few streets of this African dorp and enjoy a sherry before returning to the train to bathe and dress for dinner.

In every town that the Blue Train passes through, the people on the platform stare into the opulent carriages. At times, when the train is stopped, those waiting for the next Shosholoza might cup their hands together and put their faces right up to the glass to get a better peek at how the other half lives. At night, when the cars of the Blue Train glow from the subtle lighting, the Blue Train passing through town is a jaw-dropping site. If it’s not too late, the locals from the other side of the tracks will turn up to just watch the passengers enjoying cocktails in the lounge car or having dinner in the dining car.

There is no interaction between the passengers of the Blue Train and the people who live in the towns it passes through. There is conversation on the train, however, about the beauty of the landscape as well as the utter poverty of some of the homes located very near the tracks.  Sometimes, generalizations are made about what the passengers think they are seeing. The comments aren’t always well informed or kind.

I can’t understand what one especially well dressed man on the Blue Train means when he says, “There but for the grace of God…” I know what the expression means, of course, but does he really think that he ever could have ended up living in a shack along the train tracks of South Africa? His whiteness, his maleness, and his heterosexuality, to say nothing of his wealth, education, status and privilege, makes the second coming of Jesus Christ a more likely occurrence than this gentleman ever knowing what it is like to live on the “wrong” side of the tracks.

The people who do live on that side of the tracks, the ones who sit in economy class on the Shosholoza, know every town along the route between Cape Town and Johannesburg because the train stops in every one of them. A few passengers get on and a few get off, but mostly the passengers sit in their straight-backed chairs for the entire 27-hour journey between cities.

Both trains, the Blue Train and the Shosholoza, pass through the stunning vineyards in wine country with their tended crops and stately homes.  Not one of the 70 passengers in the car I ride in on the Shosholoza, all of them, except for me being people of color, says while looking at the wealthy communities outside the train’s windows, “There but for the grace of God…” Barring some kind of a miracle, or a twist of fate, they know they will never change places with the people who live on the so-called “right” side of the tracks. They also know that God had nothing to do with them ending up on life’s Shosholoza. That was all man’s doing. 

Mlungu on the Shosholoza

Segregation has been relegated to the dustbin of U.S. history. So, too, has apartheid in South Africa. There are no longer separate lunch counters for whites and blacks or separate drinking fountains. African Americans no longer sit at the back of the bus and black South Africans are no longer restricted as to where they can travel.

Why then, when I traveled from Pretoria to Cape Town, South Africa on the Blue Train, were all the passengers white except for one. And why, when I took a different train – the Shosholoza Meyl – that runs along the very same tracks, were all of the passengers black, except for me? Legalized segregation by race may be a thing of the past, but economic segregation is thriving.

The Blue Train, primarily a luxury train for tourists, presents itself as a “Palace on Wheels.” The Shosholoza Meyl describes itself as “a pleasant experience.” Neither descriptor is exactly accurate for the one-day journey between comparable destinations. Starting at $1,500 for a one-way ticket, the Blue Train is over-the-top elegant, but still not a palace. At $22 the sitter car in the Shosholoza is a bargain, but not entirely a pleasant experience.

At the train station in Pretoria, passengers on the Blue Train wait for departure in a private lounge, drinking coffee or sipping champagne. A white-gloved butler escorts guests to the train and orients us to our well-appointed compartments which are complete with plush chairs, a closet to hang clothes (which we will need later to dress for dinner), and a small, but beautiful, bathroom with a deep bathtub.

At the Cape Town train station, the line to board the sitter cars (the economy class) of the Shosholoza begins forming more than one hour before departure. The passengers, burdened with luggage, and bags and boxes, some of which are too heavy for one person to carry, sit on benches or on the floor waiting for the boarding announcement.  When the announcement comes, we are all on our feet and there is a crush of people competing to present their ticket and get on the platform where, once again, we will sit and wait on wooden benches until it’s time to board the train.

No white-gloved butler is on hand to serve champagne to the Shosholoza passengers. Rather, hawkers pace back and forth selling their wares – mostly food for the long journey. Bunches of bananas and bags of red and green grapes are available for five rand (about 70 cents).  One man sells bottles of soft drinks while another just traffics in bread. For traveling parents who might have forgotten gifts for their children, there are cheap toys – model trains and battery-operated little dogs that bark and sit up on their plastic legs and beg.

While watching the peddler of toys show his offerings to a promising customer, a man steps behind me and quietly whispers that he has a pair of gold earrings to sell for cheap. He discretely takes them from his pocket and with his cigarette lighter runs the earring over the flame to prove it is genuine gold. It may well be, but given the suspect source of the jewelry, I shake my head no and he moves on to the woman sitting next to me. Having tried to scratch the gold with a coin, the fellow traveler seems satisfied with the quality and hands the peddler a 20 rand note. He leaves with one less set of earrings in his pocket, but I wonder what else he might have in his jacket – and where it might have come from.

The Shosholoza pulls up to the platform and the dash for a seat begins. People rush to be the first on and 10 minutes later, when everyone has realized there are plenty of seats and their luggage and bags and boxes are secured in the luggage racks above their heads with their food and drink positioned between their feet on the floor of the train car – we wait.  The hawkers lift their products up to the windows and sell more cold drinks to passengers as the temperature begins to rise and there is no breeze in the stationary train car.

For 30 minutes on the Shosholoza Meyl we wait with no air conditioning for the train to embark on its 26-hour journey that will end in Johannesburg.  If there was a wait on my earlier trip on the Blue Train, I don’t remember it. I was too busy listening to the butler diligently detail every amenity in my sleeper car – from which remote control to use for for music, to how to use the electronic blinds on the windows. The final instruction is on how to ring for your butler, at any hour of the day or night, should you need your shoes polished or a cocktail delivered to your room. You are reminded that this is an all-inclusive trip between Pretoria and Cape Town and everything is covered in the price of the ticket except for French champagne and caviar Oh, and of course except for any baubles you might want to purchase in the jewelry boutique.

On the Blue Train, I see only black workers and, with the exception of one person, only white passengers. On the Shosholoza, I am the only white person – the sole mlungu in the Xhosa language. Laws no longer separate us by the color of our skin, but money does.

A very few people in the world – mostly wealthy white people – have the means to travel in the luxury of a Blue Train. And then there is the rest of the planet – poor people, often of color, who must travel in the sitter cars of trains like the Shosholoza – if they travel at all.

In life, there is the Blue Train and the Shosholoza.

There are the private lounges of the well to do and the wooden benches of the poor.

There are the white-gloved butlers who attend to your every desire and there are the hawkers outside of your window selling the few things you can afford.

There is the relaxing bath watching the African night sky race by your window in the bathroom of your private cabin on the Blue Train, and there is the realization that somewhere, along your journey on the Shosholoza, that your drinking water will run out before you arrive at your destination.

There is dressing for dinner for your five-course meal and there is going without food.

There is life on one side of the tracks and there is life on the “wrong” side of the tracks.

There are the white people on the Blue Train and the black people on the Shosholoza. And there are disparities. Along the train tracks of South Africa, it’s a black and blue world. That is what I’ll be writing about in “Black and Blue in South Africa.”

Matjiesfontein in the Karoo

If Alfred Hitchcock had set his thriller, Psycho, in South Africa, Janet Leigh’s character would have checked into the Lord Milner Hotel, the equivalent of the Bates Motel, located in the Karoo Desert village of Matjiesfontein.

This wayside train station, 150 miles from Cape Town and 750 miles from Johannesburg, is quirky, weathered like its desert environment and creepy. These are not reasons to pass up an overnight stay in this historic Victorian village, but you might want to bring a friend for company and for piece of mind. Nights can get long and a bit unnerving in this African dorp of 300 people.

It’s a six-hour journey by train on the Shosholoza Meyl that departs daily from Cape Town and arrives in Matjiesfontein mid-afternoon (or later if the train is delayed). Few passengers disembark at this National Heritage Site and less – as in no one on the day I arrived– boards the train in Matjiesfontein for points north.

Although this is a tiny village – or dorp as the Afrikaners call a small town – you are still momentarily disoriented when you step off the train. The Shosholoza doesn’t linger. The minute your feet touch the platform, the train begins to slowly depart the station, leaving you alone with your luggage in the hot African sun wondering where to go from here.

A man, whose sun-kissed face nearly matches the reddish-orange color of his well-worn bellhop uniform, appears out of nowhere. No words are exchanged. No introduction and no offer to assist with your luggage. There is just a slight movement of his eyes, which suggests that he knows who you are and where you are going. You follow this silent character off the platform, through a corridor, down the steps of the train station and across a dusty parking lot to the former Births and Deaths Registration Office, which is now the reception area for the Lord Milner Hotel.  Some towns have cheery signs that welcome you. Matjiesfontein welcomes you at the Births and Deaths Registration Office. Hitchcock would be right at home.

There are no cars in front of the hotel and no guests in the lobby - just a sole woman standing behind a counter with an “I’ve been expecting you” look on her face. Unlike the Lurch-like bellhop who delivered me to this spot, the receptionist speaks. She welcomes me to the Lord Milner and asks me to sign an old-fashioned guest registry where I write my name, address, telephone number, country of residence and passport number – for all the world to see. (Didn’t Norman Bates ask the same thing of the doomed Marion Crane?) She hands me the skeleton key to my room and, without saying a word, the mysterious bellhop again makes a subtle gesture and begins walking. I quickly grab my luggage and follow him to room M19. He opens the door. I step into my room and when I turn around, the bellhop is gone.

I don’t need the ashtray on the table to tell me I’m in a smoking room. I smell the stench of decades of cigarettes that have been smoked in M19. Given the general state of things as the Lord Milner Hotel, I see no reason to inquire if there are non-smoking rooms available. Or, for that matter, if there are non-ant rooms. I assume it is not just my room that has little brown ants scurrying on the bathroom sink and on the nightstands and even on the bed. One ant goes down the drain when I turn the water tap on and I assume another is crushed when I toss my backpack on the twin bed. 

I throw open the shutters and discover glass-paned doors which lead to a wooden deck which overlooks a dry riverbed. It is 90 degrees and absolutely still. Not a leaf on a tree is moving.  The only way to get cool, and to wash off the accumulated sweat and dirt of six hours spent traveling in un-air-conditioned discomfort in economy class on the Shosholoza train, and now checking into my un-air-conditioned room, is to take a swim. I quickly peel off my clothes that are sticking to me, put on swimming costume (yes, that’s what they call a swimsuit here) and go in search of the swimming pool.

“Pass the traveler’s chapel, cross the dry river bed and take a left” were the directions to the swimming pool given to me by the receptionist. With the sun beating down I envisioned an oasis of chaise lounges and umbrellas surrounding a blue pool filled with shimmering, inviting water. What I discovered was a holiday resort for frogs and toads.

The water can best be described as a shade of excrement brown with an occasional tint of green from the growing algae. The brown water and green foliage made wonderful camouflage for the frogs that were doing their equivalent of floating on air mattresses and drinking pina coladas. I wondered, had I somehow gotten on the wrong train in Cape Town and ended up in Robert Mugabe’s run-down Zimbabwe? Still, it was so hot that the thought crossed my mind of submerging myself in the water. Since I couldn’t see what else might be in the murky brown liquid, I returned to my room to take a cooling shower instead.

Back in sweltering M19, I stripped off my trunks and turned the water on in the shower. In my mind, the tiny bathroom became the black-and-white set from the movie Psycho and I couldn’t get the screeching soundtrack from the shower scene out of my head. I needn’t have worried about my safety, however. Since there was no hot water I was in and out of the cold shower quicker than it would take any psychotic employee of the Lord Milner Hotel to use his skeleton key to gain entrance to my room and pull a Norman Bates number on me.

Refreshed, but hungry, I had 15 minutes before the coffee shop would close for the day at 5:00. Since there is no grocery store and the only restaurant in town didn’t open for dinner until 7:00, I made a dash for the café. Well, it really wasn’t much of a dash. It’s a dorp, remember. The coffee shop was only a minute’s walk from my room.

I entered the coffee shop, what was once the general store for Matjiesfontein and, like the street, and the hotel’s reception area and the swimming pool, there was no one there.  I grabbed a menu and sat on a rickety wooden chair to consider the offerings. Silently, a server appeared at my table. Perhaps she was the bellhop’s sister because she just stood at the table, not saying a word. Not a “Welcome to the coffee shop” or a “May I take your order?”

Matjiesfontein is a fascinating combination of the desert wilds of South Africa mixed with a holdover of British colonialism. What better way to acknowledge this coming together of two worlds than by having what can only be called a “Karoo high tea.” I ordered two scones with cream and granadilla curd (that’s passion fruit puree where I come from) and a drink called cactus shandy. The scones were flaky and delicious. The granadilla divine. The cream was a bit off, but what dairy product wouldn’t be in the heat of the desert? The cactus shandy, made of cactus syrup and soda water, was fluorescent purple in color and very sweet. Tea would have been better, but then there would be nothing South African about my midafternoon treat except the granadilla curd.

I was too hungry and it was too late in the day to leisurely enjoy my snack. It was 5:00 and the silent server stood by the cash register, a not so subtle message that it was time for me to go. I nearly licked the bowl clean of granadilla curd before leaving the coffee shop to explore the streets, buildings and museums of Matjiesfontein.

As this is a near-deserted desert town, there was no need to look both ways before crossing the street that separates the hotel from the train station. A car traveling on the main street of Matjiesfontein is as rare an event as a word coming out of the mouths of the hospitality staff.

A local, who had clearly had too much sun and beer, stopped me as I walked the stairs to the train station and offered to sell me a small apple tree he had dug up earlier in the day and now carried in a plastic grocery bag. He assured me the wilted plant would thrive, even in winter in the U.S. If  I would purchase his offering, a few rand would buy food for his wife and two children who lived, he said, “on the other side of the tracks” from the Lord Milner. There would be no getting to a museum housed in the train station without appeasing the cordial panhandler with a few coins. I gave him five rand but insisted that he keep his dying apple tree.

The encounter with the local resident cost me the same amount of rand as the admission to the Marie Rawdon Museum. Named for the mother of David Rawdon, the man who purchased all of Matjiesfontein in 1968 and brought the dorp back from the dead, the museum, according to a brochure, “houses a vast collection of pieces and is probably the largest private collection open to the public in the country.” But multiple collections do not a museum make. There is a large collection of cameras, along with a smaller collection of bedpans of various sizes and shapes and a still smaller collection of false teeth, along with thousands of other “pieces” displayed haphazardly in cases and on tables and hung from the walls.

The basement of the museum is absolutely eerie. Past a display of artifacts from the Anglo-Boer War, and the collection of bed pans and an occasional mounted animal head missing an ear or two, is an exhibit that could have been taken right out of a scene from Psycho. A female mannequin, attired in a dressing gown, is slumped in a chair facing the mirror of a vanity. An assortment of hairbrushes, hand mirrors and tins are displayed in front of her. It is an homage to Norman Bates’ mother that seems perfectly at home in this odd and sometimes macabre museum. I make a beeline out of the basement and back to the platform. There the local still waited to once again try to give me the dead apple tree to take back to the States. The tree might have been dead, but our interaction was far more engaging than anything I had just seen in the lifeless museum.

On the other side of town, which means a three-minute walk from the train station, is the Matjiesfontein Transport Museum. The price of admission is the same, five rand, and the “museum” is similar to the Marie Rawdon Museum in that it is really just a collection of a few antique bikes and train cars and 20 or so old automobiles from a VW bug to a Citron to a Chevrolet and a Rolls Royce and a newer model Honda Prelude. But there, mixed in with all of the cars that would have been luxurious in their day, is the Matjiesfontein hearse from the 1930s. One could easily imagine it being used to transfer bodies to the cemeteries located just a few kilometers outside of town.

A smaller cemetery is located on the grounds of the Lord Milner Hotel. There, deceased employees of the hotel have been put to rest. Some of the employees who are still walking the earth work as bartenders at the Laird’s Arms, a Victorian-style pub, and as servers at the restaurant of the hotel.

The Laird’s Arms is the drinking hole and, as such, is the hot spot. It’s where you can usually find John, a local man who lives across the railroad tracks who plays the piano at the pub, imitates Louie Armstrong and Ray Charles, and does a five-second impersonation of Nelson Mandela. For a couple of rand he will take you through the “private quarters” where Cecil John Rhodes stayed on his many stops in Matjiesfontein and there he will make a few off-color jokes. When the luxury trains pass through town – the Rovos Rail and the Blue Train – John meets the well-heeled passengers and guides them on a ten-minute village tour on an old London double-decker bus that still advertises Beefeater’s gin on its side.

If you get him early enough in the morning, before his shift at the Lord Milner begins, John will have you pile into his Volkswagen Jetta and drive the 10 kilometers outside of town to the old cemetery where the founders of Matjiesfontein, along with soldiers from the Anglo-Boer War, are buried. John’s bowler hat is off his head collecting tips as much as it is on his head protecting him from the desert sun and his larger-than-life personality is worth every rand thrown in his hat.

There is no such personality working in the restaurant of the Lord Milner Hotel. The somber waitresses, referred to in some guidebooks as surly, wear a uniform of a black dress, with a full, white, frilly apron and a white doily placed on top of their heads. Guests can choose from steak, chicken or Karoo lamb for their main meal. The entrée is accompanied with potatoes, carrots, spinach, sugar beans and butternut all piled on top of each other on the same plate. The guests speak in hushed tones as they eat their meals in the dimly lit dining room.  Some couples don’t say a word. Often the loudest noise is the creaking of the floor as the waitresses deliver meals to the sparsely populated tables.

It’s as though there has been a death in the family. And there have been deaths over the years at Matjiesfontein. It’s not just me who finds the village to be creepy. Legend has it that the hotel and surrounding cemeteries are haunted.

The ghost stories from Matjiesfontein are the standard nocturnal tales of rattling of doors, sounds of laughter coming from empty rooms, cool chills that pass by warm-blooded employees and all of those things that go bump in the night. But like all other parts of Matjiesfontein, the village’s ghostly lore has a unique character who occasionally makes himself known by the side of the road near the cemetery. The apparition has appeared at night and during the day, but all accounts of sightings are basically the same. A sad-looking soldier in khakis, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling, appears and then just as quickly disappears. Could it be one of the fallen soldiers from a long-ago battle of the Anglo-Boer War who died near Matjiesfontein but who, like some of the guests at the Lord Milner Hotel, just can’t find any rest? If you ran into the silent apparition would you assume he was just another member of the staff who appear and disappear without uttering a word? At Matjiesfontein, the divide between this world and the world beyond is very thin indeed.

Matjiesfontein had a rebirth when David Rawdon purchased it in the 1960s. Now, the quirky, eerie village is in need of another transfusion. In Matjiesfontein, the set and the extras and the creepy atmosphere are all in place to make this the ideal location for a remake of Psycho. And just as Matjiesfontein can use a facelift, South Africa’s most famous actress, Charlize Theron, could use a boost to her somnolent career. Maybe a South African version of Psycho, with Charlize Theron as the ill-fated traveler who checks into a secluded Lord Milner Hotel, might revive her career and in the process, give this dying dorp new life.