Serendipity in Worcester

My guide in Worcester, performance artist, Collin "The Bushman."

“How do you know this man who is meeting you in Worcester?” asked a concerned friend in Cape Town when I told him I had arranged for a local to show me around the “other” side of my next stop on the Shosholoza Meyl.

“I saw a performance art piece, that I didn’t entirely understand since much of it was in Afrikaans, at the train station in Cape Town. The performers incorporated music, dance and poetry to tell stories as the audience followed the artists and we snaked our way from the refurbished new station and through the derelict and abandoned corners of the old station. One of the performers is a man named Collin who lives in Worcester. Since that is my next stop on the Shosholoza, I took this as a sign and introduced myself to Collin and asked if he would show me around Worcester. He said yes and gave me his details. It’s as easy as that.” Explaining the connection out loud, I realized that there was nothing reassuring in my story and that my protective friend would not be happy.

“No, man, you just can’t meet a stranger at the train station in Worcester and walk off happy-go-lightly with him all by yourself. This is Africa, man. Worcester isn’t Sea Point. There are gangs there. Would you do this in your country? What do you know about this guy?”

The truth was I knew absolutely nothing about this guy, but I had to come up with a reassuring response to prevent my friend from becoming apoplectic. I had seen it before and I didn’t need one more lecture – coming from whatever place of concern and love – about my “little African adventure.” Reason wouldn’t work with this argument, so I had to try something else.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that I’m in South Africa taking the train to all of these little towns, exploring life along both sides of the tracks. And then, on a day I’m in Cape Town, there is a performance at the train station that touches on the very same themes I’m investigating on my anthropological journey. (It isn’t anthropological, really, but I thought that sounded reassuring.) And, I’ve been trying to make connections in Worcester and coming up short until, right in front of me at a train station, there is someone from Worcester. It’s serendipity. It’s like finding a four-leafed clover. It’s a sign, don’t you think?”

“No, it is not a sign. You could pick a name out of the phone book in Worcester and be no more safe than you would be with this guy. But, OK, you are going to get on the Shosholoza and meet this guy. Fine. You better be texting me so I know where you are and what you are doing in Worcester. Why do you want to go there anyway? You should take the Garden Route to Hermanus. They have guesthouses and art there. They have whales. Americans love whales. Worcester is kak.”

I just shrugged. I didn’t have the energy to explain, one more time, why I was following the train tracks between Cape Town and Johannesburg. I love the ocean-side town of Hermanus,, but the Shosholoza Meyl I’m taking doesn’t pass through there. No, I was off to Worcester with a stranger named Collin as my guide and with fingers crossed that my meeting him really was some kind of a sign.

Unsettled

There have been times, in my travels, when I’ve found myself in unsettling situations. I’ve written about having a knife pulled on me while walking in Lima, Peru. A few people know that I got roughed up in New York City once, but I was young, naïve, stupid really, and escaped with no more than a couple of bruises. There may have been one or two other tense situations more recently, but neither my 90-year-old mother, nor my partner, need know about them. They worry enough when I’m halfway around the world by myself.

My travels the past few months, however, have left me unsettled. But it’s a different kind of unsettled than finding myself in trouble in Lima or New York. It’s not because anything bad has happened or because I’ve ever felt unsafe, either on the trains or in any of the towns along the tracks where I’ve stayed. It’s deeper than that.

I’m unsettled to my core. I’m unsettled in my head, and in my gut and in my heart. I’m unsettled, not because of the things I’ve seen – I’m accustomed to unsettling sites. I’m unsettled because of some of the people I’ve met and some of the conversations I’ve had.

My closest friends know that I have a cynical side and a dark sense of humor. Kiddingly (at least I think they were kidding), new acquaintances have said to me, “I thought you were a nice guy until I got to know you.” Despite my cynicism and my dark side, or maybe because of those survival instincts, I am unwaveringly optimistic. That is, until recently. It is a new sense of hopelessness (hopefully a temporary sense of hopelessness) that has me unsettled.

We all have different opinions, beliefs and worldviews and that’s what makes life interesting. It seems, however, that globally the gulf that divides humanity is getting wider and wider and we are less willing to entertain opinions, beliefs and views that differ from our own. Perhaps it has always been so and I’ve lived in a bubble, surrounded and supported by like-minded people. But it’s not like my bubble is just being burst for the first time. That happened decades ago when I saw how cruel the world could be towards people with HIV/AIDS.

No, something seems different now. Too many people, too often, worldwide, seem to need – and find – scapegoats for the world’s ills. The vile things that come out of people’s mouths have, lately, left me stunned. And weary.

I met a white man who believes that AIDS is the best thing to happen to Africa because it’s “killing off the blacks.”

I have met more than one Muslim who believes the United States orchestrated the 9-11 attacks to start an intentional war against Islam.

I have heard the most offensive words used to describe blacks and Jews.

I have had a Jewish woman tell me that she couldn’t have “those people” (blacks) in her home.

I have had a man tell me that women need to remember that their “place” is taking care of their husbands.

I have lost count of the people who have made derogatory comments about gays and lesbians, and that’s mild compared to what they say about transgendered people.

I have seen Christians, Muslims and Jews exhibit extraordinary hypocrisy.

I have seen a storeowner chase an emaciated, glue-addicted, homeless, eight-year-old boy from his shop because the orphan was begging for bread.

I am in South Africa now and these incidents have happened here, but in no way is this meant as an indictment of South Africa. It happens in the United States and in every corner of the world. My point, and this is why I’m feeling hopeless, is that racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism and an across the board, fill-in-the-blank, kind of anti-everything but a me-and-mine sentiment, appears to be universal. I can handle poverty and hunger and sickness because those are issues with solutions. I can’t handle man’s inhumanity to man because I don’t know how we even begin to change that.

Clearly my unwavering optimism has wavered.

I’m certain it will return because it isn’t in my nature to give up. I don’t believe it is in human nature to give up, either. But sometimes an optimistic needs to get so low that there is no way but up. It’s not a good process to go through, nor is it entirely bad. It is, however, unsettling. 

Spending the night in an un-air-conditioned four-bunk compartment in a stationary train car decommissioned from Rhodesian Railways in 1950 at the Train Lodge in Cape Town trying to write in stifling heat while the carriage shakes slightly with each commuter train that passes by.

Imagination is a blessing and a curse for travelers.

When planning a vacation or a travel adventure, an imagination is as crucial to the process as is a good guidebook and maps. Imagination, after all, is what ignites the travel bug in many of us. We imagine what other parts of the world might look like, what other people might be like, what other food might taste like. We spin globes, when we can still find them, and place a finger on the moving orb to stop the movement and land on a location we might fantasize about visiting. We spread maps and atlases over tables and floors thinking, “I could go here.” Then we turn the page and exclaim, “Or, I could go here!”

A photo of a sun-kissed beach in Mexico becomes the screensaver on our computer as we contemplate a break from the cold, dark days of winter. We envision a three-hour, five-course dinner in a bistro in a quiet arrondissement of Paris as we eat breakfast cereal for dinner, standing at the counter in our kitchen after a long day at the office. We picture ourselves sitting in the center section of a landmark theater in London’s West End enjoying the premiere of a new musical while we watch a rerun of “Two And a Half Men” for the umpteenth time and count, in our head, the number of days before we board a plane for some distant site and, please God, a break from our daily routine.

Imagination, to a traveler, is what makes the list of destinations one wishes to see and experience increase, rather than decrease, with every trip taken. But our imagination can also let us down when we arrive at a much-contemplated destination only to discover that it was prettier or more exotic or just plain different in our mind than it is in reality. Those disappointments aren’t enough to keep us home because for every letdown there are many more times when the real thing far exceeds our imagination. Still, the duds can be quiet disheartening.

Quite by chance, I came across one of Cape Town’s best-kept secrets: a hotel comprised of ten decommissioned train coaches from the old Rhodesian Railway, tucked away at Monument Station in the very center of the Mother City. Having never heard of this place before, in over a decade of visiting Cape Town, I didn’t quite trust the information I had been given. As soon as I got to a computer, I googled “African Train Lodge.” When the hotel’s home page appeared on my screen, confirming the information I had been given, I excitedly made a booking to spend one night in a vintage rail car. I couldn’t wait! In an anticipation of my stay, I let my imagination run free.

In my mind, I would be mingling with world travelers who were choosing to stay at this off-the-beaten-path hotel because it was a totally unique venue. There would be train enthusiasts eager to share their knowledge with me: “Why, yes, these rail cars completed their service in the former Rhodesia in 1950.” There would be locals who would explain that the sleeper cars on the Table Mountain side of the hotel, “Drakensburg, Amatola, Outeniqua and Tafelberg are all named for mountains in South Africa; while those on the Atlantic Ocean side of the hotel, Sabie, Tugela, Breede and Liesbeek, are named after rivers in our Rainbow Nation.”

These imaginary conversations would happen in the bar car as we drank gin and tonics, pausing our small talk momentarily to allow the noisy Metroliner or Shosholoza Meyl trains to pass by, before resuming our delightful conversation. We would talk about our favorite trips in lifetimes of travel. I might join a couple, who are spending their retirement traveling around the world, at their table in the dining car for dinner, more conversation and a bottle of wine. Following a full evening of storytelling and the exchange of contact information, I would take a late night dip in the cooling pool before retiring to my finely appointed coach. While I wouldn’t drift off to sleep to the sound and gentle movement of a moving train, I could imagine the train barreling down the tracks to some faraway location in the distant past.

That’s what imagination will do to you when you travel. You think, based on a website or a brochure, that you are headed to an oasis. But when you arrive, you find yourself in a desert – and not one of those deserts you fantasized about visiting.

Although I had made a reservation online for the African Train Lodge, no confirmation of my booking could be found on the computer when I checked in. Not to worry, the accommodating clerk told me, there were plenty of compartments available. It was summer after all, and the 100-degree temperature earlier in the week had scared off guests who didn’t want to stay in a windowless, airconditionless, motionless, train carriage in the heart of the city.

I paid my 250 rand for the evening – the equivalent of $35 – plus an additional 50 rand for a towel. (Though I would get 30 rand back if I returned the towel when I checked out.) The surcharge for the towel should have been an indication that I wouldn’t be drinking sherry in the bar car with multi-lingual guests.

I would be staying in cabin E in the Breede car, named for a South African river, which meant I would be on the Atlantic side of the hotel. The refurbished cars are positioned on actual tracks and are connected to each other, five on either side, with the platform in the middle having been transformed into a lounge area for guests to congregate.

Breede was the third car in the line of sleeping coaches. I grabbed the handrail and stepped up to board the train and then turned into the narrow corridor and made my way to my cabin. I opened the door to cabin E as far as it would go – until it hit the first set of bunk beds on the right. I didn’t walk into a sleeping compartment as much as I entered a sauna.

It was mid-day. The train cars remain idle on the tracks with no trees or covering to shade them. There they bake in the sun all day. The only window in the small cabin was covered with blue cloth patterned with colorful rondavals, the traditional round-shaped, thatch-roofed huts seen in rural South Africa. I pushed the curtains aside to discover that the original window had been replaced with a single pane of glass that looks out into a parking lot and doesn’t open. Having been warned that the heat in the cabins can be unbearable in the summer, I had, fortunately, brought an electric fan with me. I nearly hyperventilated, however, when I couldn’t find an outlet to plug it in. There, covered by a duvet (which seemed entirely unnecessary in the sweltering heat of the carriage) I discovered an outlet below the lower bunk bed, and right next to the pullout storage drawers. I quickly plugged the fan in and it began to circulate the stale, hot air.

I stood up and immediately hit my head on the wooden frame of the upper bunk on the right side of the room. I turned around, bent down to reach for my bag and hit my head on the top bunk on the other side of the compartment.  I moved again to raise the fan from the floor to the lower bunk and thrice hit my head. My head was ricocheting off one bunk bed and then the next. I felt like Lucy Ricardo in an episode of “I Love Lucy.” It was comical, but it hurt. The two-and-a-half feet that separated the four bunks of the cabin, an upper and lower on either side, made it a challenge to move without hitting your head. And I was only one guest in a cabin designed for four people. If there had been three others in the compartment with me, I would have left the fan for them, gathered my things, got in my car and drove back to my apartment in the area of the city known as Sea Point.

It was obvious that the fan would just blow hot air around my room. The claustrophobic compartment would only become remotely habitable once the sun had gone down. I grabbed my daypack and went off in search of a bottle of water and to explore my surroundings.

The hospitable desk clerk had mistaken my interest in the Train Lodge for an interest in trains – specifically steam locomotives. When I reappeared in the lobby to inquire as to where I could get a cold drink, he had pulled a DVD on the history of steam trains in South Africa for me to watch, along with several brochures about steam engines. He also requested that I follow him to a door, which he unlocked, and then instructed me to walk the old platforms behind the lodge and look at some of the very locomotives – including the famous Red Devil – that were highlighted in the video and print brochures he had just handed me. The significance of the locomotives was lost on me, though I believed the clerk when he said that train buffs come from around the world to see them, and to ride the steam-powered train that still takes tourists from Cape Town, along the Atlantic Ocean, to the seaside towns of Kalk Bay and Simonstown.

I was more interested in watching the trains pull into Cape Town station and then depart again. There is the inexpensive Metroliner, the local train with nary a white face amongst the jam-packed carriages of commuters traveling to and from townships throughout the greater Cape Town area. And the Shosholoza Meyl that traverses the country offering three levels of service: sitter (or third class), tourist class and premiere class. The train deposits passengers at the same destinations, but the journey to those destinations is different as comfort improves and security increases with the more expensive fares.  This is also the place where the luxury trains, the Blue Train and the Rovos Rail, begin and end their journeys, renowned for exceptional service at an extraordinary price. On these high-end lines, there is nary a black face amongst the passengers.

No matter if you pay 10 rand for a commute from Cape Town to the township of Khayelitsha, or 24,000 rand for the “royal” treatment on the Rovos Rail – and yes, these are actual prices – all passengers get the same views of Cape Town, one of the most stunningly beautiful cities in the world.  Looking down from the platform next to the old steam engines I see row after of railway tracks and trash everywhere. But when I look up, past the platform and the train station and beyond the buildings of the city, there is majestic Table Mountain. Whether your head is sticking out from the window of an overcrowded Metroliner, or you are drinking champagne from the elegant viewing car of the Blue Train, you don’t need a ticket to appreciate the natural beauty of the southernmost city on the African continent.

I walk back into the African Train Lodge and thank the desk clerk for allowing me to see a view of the station, and the city, that I otherwise would have missed. Desirous of a break from the sun, I venture into the air-conditioned comfort of the hotel’s lounge where, unfortunately, I realize I cannot stay. Some of the Train Lodge employees have gathered around a flat screen TV with the volume turned up to its maximum. They are laughing hysterically at every sophomoric joke made in a “direct to DVD” movie that stars some vaguely familiar-looking American actors. (I’m being generous here in my use of the word “actor.”) The film is so bad and the volume so painfully loud, that I would rather seek air conditioning in the stench of the cigar bar than stay in the lounge.

I have the bar to myself but find little escape from the volume of the television. The coolness, however, wins out over the other areas of the Train Lodge where I could find quiet, but no air conditioning. I put earbuds in and pretend to listen to my iPod while working on my laptop. I order a large bottle of water along with a burger and chips (French fries to Americans) and begin to cool down for the first time since checking into the hotel.

By the time my lunch arrives my stomach is growling so I take a big bite of my hamburger as soon as it’s placed before me. There is something unusual about this burger. It’s stringy. I take a second bite and when I try to pull the burger from my mouth and set it down on the plate I realize that there is something – something stringy – that extends from my mouth to the piece of meat between the bun in my hands. I chew and pull and finally break through the stringiness and put the burger on my plate – not to be picked up again. I eat a few French fries while contemplating the possibility of ending up with food poisoning in the middle of the night with the nearest toilet being at the far end of the carriage I’m staying in. I pay my bill and return to cabin E of the Breede car thinking a mid-afternoon lie down on my bunk bed, no matter how hot it is, might do me good.

If anything, the temperature of my cabin had increased while I was exploring the Train Lodge. Still, I needed some quiet so I turned on the fan, stripped off my clothes, and lay lifeless on the bed. Not unbearable, I thought to myself, if I lay absolutely still and let the fan works its magic and dry the sweat from my body. Miraculously, despite the heat, I fell asleep – for a few brief minutes. When I woke up I was wet from sweat and needed air. Now. I pulled on my trunks, grabbed my towel (grateful I had shelled out the 50 rand for it) and made a beeline for the swimming pool.

There is, perhaps, no single item that consistently disappoints my travel imagination more than the condition of hotel swimming pools. The artist, David Hockney, has forever ruined my appreciation of swimming pools – especially at budget accommodations. In my mind, I envision a Hockney painting of a pool complete with shimmering blue water and delicate tile work adorning the perimeter of the pool. There are chaise lounges and pastel-colored umbrellas. I don’t know why, and I certainly can’t fault Hockney for this, but in my pool fantasy I imagine Sade’s CD, “Lover’s Rock,” playing quietly in the background through some well-hidden poolside speakers. Always, there is a young man with a swimmer’s body floating on an air mattress in the pool and since that is the reason why Hockney paints swimming pool scenes, I can blame him for that image being forever stuck in my brain.

What a surprise. It was not a David Hockney painting that I discovered at the pool at the African Train Lodge. I couldn’t tell if the water appeared green because of a combination of the color the pool was painted and the accumulation of silt at its bottom, or if the water actually was green. There was the thinnest layer of something indescribable – just like the stringy nature of my hamburger defied description – on the surface of the water. My best guess is that it was sunscreen lotion that had washed off of swimmers and that had then attracted all of the bugs that had drowned – their dead shells suspended in the water by its oily sheen. As hot as I was, I wasn’t yet enticed to get in the water. Call me persnickety, but I like my pool water clear, not opaque and preferably not the same color as my hunter green swim trunks.

Fine. I wouldn’t get in the pool; I would just lounge by the pool. But there were no chaise lounges, just a half a dozen bar stools. Yes, that’s right, bar stools poolside. Oh, and there was an immovable concrete table with long concrete benches on either side. That’s when I noticed the concrete Buddha placed near the deep end of the pool. Based on its potbelly, I would say the Buddha was facing the pool. I don’t know about its face, however, because the head of the Buddha was missing. I’m not too savvy when it comes to Buddhism, but somehow this didn’t seem like good pool karma – to have a headless Buddha watching over the water.

I was running out of refuge – both real and imaginary. The cigar room was full of stale smoke and memories of bad food. The lounge was home to exceptionally banal American films and too easily amused Train Lodge employees. My room was a sweatbox. And the swimming pool seemed to be in the early stages of some kind of science project that even the Buddha didn’t want to see. What’s a wanderer with a romantic notion of travel to do?

What the hell! I closed my eyes and stepped off the concrete deck and into the deep end of the cool green water of the pool. I surfaced and, treading water, opened my eyes. There before me, struggling for its life, was a little oil-covered beetle (well, not so little). Somehow, I didn’t think the headless Buddha would want me to just swim away from the drowning beetle, leaving just one more dead shell on the surface of the water. I pushed the beetle to the side of the pool where I scooped him up in my hand and tossed him towards the crossed feet of the Buddha. He landed on his hard-shelled back, rows of little legs trying to right his body. Oh, for Buddha’s sake! I pulled myself up the side of the pool, reached towards the Buddha, gently picked up the beetle and set him down on his countless feet. He was motionless and for a moment I thought dead, but then he seemed to shake the water from his back and scurry off to safer environs at the Train Lodge. I wished he could take me with him.

While imagination can disappoint, so too can situations change and what was once discomforting can quickly become special. Not finding the pool to be pleasant for swimming, I paddled over to the steps in the shallow end to just sit with my torso in the water. I found, however, that if I lay back, the top step would hold my head above water. The second step would support my back, allowing my legs to just float in front of me. I could look up at the cloudless sky, feel the warmth of the sun, but remain cool with all but my face covered with water. My body floating in the green goo of the swimming pool, I finally had found comfort from the heat of the day and the sounds and smells of the Train Lodge. Completely relaxed, I fell asleep in the pool, supported by concrete that was as comfortable as a pillow.

It was a perfect travel moment – impossible to capture in any fashion other than memory. It would be why, years in the future while having gin and tonics with fellow world travelers in a bar car on a train going to some long-planned destination, I would describe a magical, Zen-like experience at a swimming pool with a headless Buddha at the Train Lodge in Cape Town, South Africa as one of the best travel experiences of my life.

David Hockney could never have painted the scene. And I never could have imagined it.

“It Is Who You Are”

Please Note: This posting contains a word that I am uncomfortable using. It is not my intent to offend or further harm those who have suffered because of this incendiary word. I find I can’t tell this story without quoting what was said to me. And, though it is early in my travels, the specific encounter detailed at the end of this blog captures what I have been experiencing on my train trips.

It had been a long journey from Cape Town to Laingsburg sitting in economy class on the Shosholoza Meyl train and traveling for six and a half hours through the hottest part of the day, in the hottest period of the summer, through one of the hottest spots of South Africa, the Great Karoo.

When I climbed on board the train I was refreshed and cool in a crisply ironed shirt. Within an hour of departure, I was wiping perspiration from my forehead and face. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back and soon my freshly laundered shirt was sticking to the plastic backrest of my seat. The savvy travelers, I realized after a few hours into the trip, battle to be first on the train to get the seats that will have the least amount of sun hitting them. My initial joy in having a row to myself faded when I figured out that both seats would have the sun blazing through the open window throughout the entire journey. How was it possible that over six hours the sun wouldn’t move enough in the sky to provide some relief from the intense rays that would leave half of my face, and all of the exposed skin on my left arm, sunburned?

Drops of sweat began falling onto the book I was reading creating pools of blurred text on every page. Reading “The Story of an African Farm,” the classic South African novel about life in the Karoo by Olive Schreiner, on a summer’s day in the confined carriage of the Shosholoza, was not the best source of reading material. The author’s description of the arid and parched land, thirsty for rain, and the still, hot air, begging for a breeze, only heightened my discomfort as her prose reinforced what I was experiencing barreling down the very train tracks that first made the Karoo accessible to travelers.

At scheduled stops in towns and villages like Worcester and Matjiesfontein, the passengers who boarded the train in Cape Town would scurry off to fill empty plastic bottles with water from the public taps at the small stations. At some stops, when no passengers got off the train and no new ones got on, the stops were so brief that the thirsty passengers would not have time to fill their receptacles. They would have to settle for quickly running their heads under the water faucet and dashing back to the train with water dripping from their heads. I was tempted to join them and let cooling droplets replace the sweat that was staining the pages of my book, but was too concerned that the train might depart without me, leaving me stranded and backpack-less, in some unintended locale.

With each kilometer traveled on the 260-kilometer trip, the heat index seemed to rise while the composure level of my fellow passengers fell commensurately with the temperature. Mothers became short with their generally well-behaved children. The jovial conversations at the start of the journey had been replaced with a heat-induced drowsiness that would only be reversed later in the day when the affects of multiple beers or shots of liquor, enjoyed by some of the young men on the train, led to boisterous laughing, then raised voices and inevitably to squabbling. A single beer might cool the body momentarily and the drinker might dispose of the empty can in the trash bags provided. By the sixth beer, the empties were being thrown out the window and the cooling affects of the libation had been overruled by raw emotions that were easily ignited by a poorly chosen word or a mistaken look or gesture.

Alcohol played no role, however, in an argument between a Shosholoza Meyl employee and a passenger that, by the time it was resolved an hour later, had disrupted the entire carriage. The passenger had brought a box of fish, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag, onto the train with her and placed it in the luggage rack above her seat. Apparently this is not uncommon with passengers coming from the sea and headed inland, or the train employee had a particularly good olfactory sense. Either way, the package of warming fish was discovered and this unleashed the wrath of the train worker much faster than the simmering passions of the beer-drinking men which would not be revealed until later in the journey.

With 20 more hours to go before arriving at the final destination, the employee raged in Xhosa and English, that the stench coming from the poorly wrapped dead fish would be unbearable by the time the train reached Johannesburg. The passenger was given an ultimatum – either pay 60 rand and have the offending parcel moved to a different car on the train or, in a dramatic gesture worthy of a B-list actor, the employee demonstrated how she would throw the stinking package out the open window and onto the littered landscape that runs parallel with the tracks.

The fish argument was happening about 10 rows away from me, but just like the children’s game of “telephone,” where messages are relayed from one person to the next, each row of passengers would pass on to the next what was happening in Xhosa, Afrikaans and English, until all but the sleeping and intoxicated passengers were aware of the raging debate.

At first, the drama created a welcome diversion for all of us weary travelers. Then, when it became apparent that the fish-toting passenger lacked the 60 rand to keep her prized possession, the tone of the carriage shifted from amusement to empathy for the argumentative and distraught passenger. As the latest update spread from row to row, one of the most popular words used in South Africa could be heard repeatedly from other passengers – “shame” – meaning, I recognize what is happening and I feel for you.

When the argument had escalated to a point where it appeared action was about to be taken and the fish might actually be thrown out the window, a passenger seated next to the woman paid the 60 rand and the now even smellier parcel was removed from the passenger coach. I’m uncertain if this was a random act of kindness to assist a fellow traveler in need, or if it was a selfish act on the part of the benefactor to simply put an end to the bickering that was disrupting the entire train car. No matter the motivation, the crisis passed, the fish-detecting employee moved on to the next car and the passengers slipped back into a semi-conscious state.

The sun continued to beat down on me through the window. I would read for a time and then close my book; too hot to concentrate. I would wipe the sweat from my face with a tissue only to then have to remove bits of Kleenex that would stick to my wet face. I would sit forward with my head on the seat in front of me to try to dry the sweat from the back of my shirt. I would join other passengers in standing for a time with my head as far out of the window as possible, in a lame attempt to catch something resembling a breeze.

When the smiling child with beads in her hair sitting in the row in front of me awakened from her frequent naps, we would play peek-a-boo for a few minutes until the activity clearly began to irritate the mother who seemed to be down to her last nerve. In an attempt to stop the game before the mother became angry with both the child and me, I would pretend to sleep, but this would only frustrate the child who had lost her playmate. Eventually, she would tire of trying to stir the white man and fall back to sleep.

I drank liters of bottled water I had brought with me on the train. I chewed and chewed and chewed on bits of spicy, salty biltong – this flavor being dried Kudu meat. I ate buttermilk rusks without the added pleasure of being able to dunk the dry, twice-baked biscuits in coffee. One by one, I popped sweet, red grapes into my mouth – grapes sold by a hawker on the train for five rand for a bag the size of the head of the pick-a-boo-playing child in front of me. I paid a similar price for four succulent pears that left my hands a sticky mess. Refusing to wash my hands in the toilet of the train – a description of which I will spare gentle readers – I used a bit of my drinking water to clean my fingers. I ate because I was bored, not because I was hungry. I drank, however, because I was thirsty.

Throughout the journey, hawkers peddled their wares down the center aisle of the carriage I was riding in, then on to the next carriage and then the one after that – all day long. Hands down, the most successful salesman was the grape vendor. He must have sold 15 to 20 bags of grapes in my carriage alone. The drink vendor did well too, dispensing Cokes and Castle and Black Label beers to parched travelers. The first time the man selling packages of chips and hard candy pacifiers got to the row I was sitting in, he said, “I know you. I’ve seen you on this train.”

“Yes,” I said, “I took the Shosholoza the week before last.”

“Where do you stay?” the vendor inquired.

“In Cape Town.”

“No, not where do you stay in South Africa, where do you stay overseas?”

My accent had given me away. “I live in the U.S.”

“Yo, the U-ni-ted States of Ah-mer-e-ca,” the hawker said, slowly stretching the words out and enunciating every syllable of my country. “You must come from a very strange place, man. The World Series! The world doesn’t care about baseball. The world watches soccer. South Africa had the World Cup last year. Baseball! E-yo!” he said, shaking his head.

“You from Cincinnati? I watch ‘WKRP in Cincinnati.’”

“No, I’m not from Cincinnati, but somewhat close to there. I live in Minneapolis.”

“I know Minneapolis” the chips man said excitedly, “I watch a show from there.”

“Is it ‘Mary Tyler Moore'?”

“Yes. May-ree Ty-ler Muhr. Yo, it’s cold where you stay, man” he said as he moved on to the next row hawking “Chips!”

I sat in my seat marveling at how decades old television series in the U.S. could transcend continents and cultures and serve as an icebreaker for a conversation on a train moving through the Great Karoo. Talking about sports didn’t surprise me, but “WKRP in Cincinnati?” Maybe Loni Anderson should become ambassador to South Africa.

I had just returned to my book when a very excited ice cream hawker began selling his wares in the train car. It was obvious that the heat was starting to affect his product. He had reduced the price of his melting strawberry-vanilla swirl ice cream from five to four rand.

“Ice cream. Four rand. Special price. Ice cream. Four rand.” he said, promoting his product in both English and Xhosa.

No one was buying as he raced through the car desperate to move more units before the heat claimed his profit for the day. A passenger eyeing the soft ice cream offered the hawker three rand.

“O.K.,” the hawker shouted, “Three rand. Sale on ice cream. Three rand.”

The fire sale worked and men began pulling three rand from their pockets and women retrieving three rand from coin purses and tied handkerchiefs that contained small change.

The ice cream seller was easily scooping generous portions of the soft ice cream from a pail, placing it in disposable cups, giving it with a plastic spoon to the buyer, and taking their three rand. Working left to right, row after row, he sold ice cream to someone in nearly every row.

When he saw me sitting in the last row, the only white person in the sitter car on the Shosholoza, the hawker’s head jerked slightly and a surprised look came over his face. “White nigger,” he said smiling, “you want ice cream?”

There was a slight pause before everyone sitting within earshot of the hawker began to laugh. The hawker was laughing and so was I.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. The ice cream man continued smiling, shrugged his shoulders and moved on, leaving the other passengers still looking at me and laughing.

By the time everyone’s ice cream was eaten, or drunk, as the case may be, the laughter had died down and passengers returned to their conversations, or looking out the windows or dozing. I couldn’t return to reading my book. The heat was still oppressive, but I didn’t think about that for the remainder of the journey. Mostly, I thought about what the ice cream hawker had said to me.

Few words in the English language are as inflammatory as the one the peddler had used. I thought, I can’t tell anyone about this experience because to do so would necessitate repeating a word that has caused extreme pain and suffering for centuries. At the same time, this man’s quip had completely captured my experiences on the Shosholoza Meyl and staying in the dorps along the train route. He nailed it.

Not always on the train, but usually, I was the only white passenger in economy class. As such, I stood out. I was the “what is different about this picture?” Yet, I didn’t feel uncomfortable.

In the towns along the tracks where I stayed, at least in the hotels and restaurants, I was not the thing that was different about this picture. Racially, I fit in. Yet, I didn’t always feel comfortable.

When I returned to Cape Town from this excursion I recounted the story of the ice cream hawker to my friends – black, coloured and white. All laughed.

When I told my friends that I didn’t know if I could repeat the story to a larger audience because of the highly charged nature of the word, all said I should.

One friend said, “No, you must tell the story and you must use the words the ice cream man called you. It is who you are.”

It is who I am.

I’m not sure. But when a stranger and a friend both find it to be a fitting descriptor, I must think about that. God knows there will be plenty of time to do so on my next, hot journey on the Shosholoza.