ADVENTURE OVERDUE

by CHIPO BAHLE SIKANYITI (Zambia)

I didn't expect to find Zambia

ADVENTURE OVERDUE “Good evening ladies and gentle, we wish to inform you that there will be a delay in your departure today, as the train has developed a fault. We regret the inconvenience this may have caused.” I had once again gone for my travel adventure but this time crossing the border. Ever since I got into college, I had already made five trips of adventure and this was my sixth. Everything was always moving according to plan each time I set out on tour. I made local tours until the day I decided to go beyond borders, during my one month college break. Traveling to Tanzania needed to be with someone I knew very well. This was my first adventure outside Zambia and this was a dare trip. I contacted a few of my friends who would love to accompany me on the trip and to my surprise, the response was good for people I knew they were hard to convince. We had traveled to Tanzania from Zambia connecting using different buses, and nothing was as exciting as this especially for the first timers. We visited places and got excited by the extraordinary things we saw that we overstayed our visit in the beautiful country of Tanzania. Upon realizing this, we immediately rushed to the train station to book our tickets. We were very fortunate to find space, especially in the first class. This is a train mostly used by Zambian business men and women and it only made a one way trip to Zambia each week. With a growing number of business people crossing the Zambian and Tanzanian borders, this was more than a miracle. We had checked out our lodging house around 10 am to chance the tickets. Noting that the train was to leave Da-ar-salaam at 9pm, it was our last time to visit our few favorite places before departure. “Why not take advantage of this time guys and visit Kalyako Market.” Bernard said “I mean with our remaining money, we can buy few things to sell back at school and get back our money with some profit.” Kalyako market is the biggest market in Tanzania with affordable clothes and accessories. We all looked at each other trying to agree with his idea while at the same time, trying to think of any possible thing that may come up in case we over spent. We stared at each other for five minutes in silence. “Come on guys, Bernard is right, we are done with our visit here so what could possibly go wrong” I said breaking the silence. Everyone later agreed and in no time we were all doing our shopping. Before we could release it, it was getting dark hence, we hurriedly went back to the train station and made ourselves comfortable in the first class waiting room. What seemed to be a three hours wait for the train was turning to be a forever wait. We shared light moments and experience to pass time, but this was also getting boring. We began to lose patience as the train was taking ages to arrive. “Good evening ladies and gentle, we regret to inform you that the train will arrive late than usual, we regret the inconvenience this may have caused.” The announcement worsened everybody’s mood and I couldn’t help but blaming myself. “I should not have involved my friends in the first place” I thought. “What if the train is delayed for two more days, what were we going to eat, we had literally used up our money”. These and so many thoughts made me more restless. I stood and paced around the waiting room hoping for a miracle to happen and alas, as opposed to the announcement the train arrived. I finally saw the lost smiles on everyone’s faces and what could be better than that. We quickly got our bags as we were made to know that the train was not going to be at the station very long. Traveling for four good days with a happy group of friends wouldn’t be more exciting than a long solo train ride. As soon as we got comfortable in our compartments, it was shalom Tanzania.