From the Mountains to the Sea by Train

[7 June 2011] Three times a week, a big red coal-burning engine pulls a half dozen battered railcars from Fianarantsoa on Madagascar’s central plateau through hills, tunnels, rainforest and plantations down to the little town of Manakara on the Indian Ocean. When the train heads back west, it hauls coffee and tea, woven baskets full of oranges and boxcars full of bananas. Heading east, as far as we can tell, it carries crates and crates of Three Horses Beer.

And of course people. Most of the small villages along the rail line aren’t reachable by road and so everyone with business to do, people to see, schooling to acquire or souls to convert takes the train.

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We decided to do the same. Early on a misty morning, we worked our way past the women selling baskets and the crowds of people packed into the waiting room out onto the platform.

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As you can see, we splashed out.

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Our reserved seats were in a car with eight sets of narrow benches on each side and a W.C. halfway back. In the second-class car, conditions were much rougher and more crowded. Even within our car, there was an invisible line. The seats on the left-hand side of the train—the more scenic side—were more expensive and were filled with white tourists, all French-speaking except for us. Across the aisle were a mix of tourists and Malagasy people. A toddler stood patting an NBA basketball while his mother hung up bags of baguettes on a hook by the window.

The train whistle blew and the passengers for the other cars got on, women and men wrapped in patterned shawls and blankets, carrying baggage made from woven plastic, wrapped bundles on their heads, chickens, more bags of baguettes. The P.A. system made several incomprehensible amplified announcements, the train shunted back and forth several times, then stopped again. Eventually, only an hour behind schedule, we set off.

We passed groups of people standing on platforms with baskets of mandarin oranges and sacks full of grass. We passed a family waving from a shuttered wooden rail car, which was apparently their home. We passed muddy red fields where people were making bricks and firing them in tall kilns with smoky fires underneath. Kids waved, adults stood and watched. A man looked up from a field and stood still with hoe in hand, watching the train with a pensive look.

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Then we were really on our way.

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The train’s arrival at the next town was clearly the social and business event of the day. The entire population seemed to be on the platform, greeting those who arrived, seeing off those who were leaving, and selling fritters and tin cups of coffee.

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And that became the pattern of the day, stretches of travel through hills and across rivers—the windows open, the train wheels clattering rhythmically—punctuated by long stops in small towns hectic with activity.

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Women and children sold food of all kinds—fried bananas, fresh bananas, crayfish, vegetable fritters with a spicy sauce, pieces of chicken and fish, some kind of steamed bun. And in these dirt-street, wood-shack towns, many just asked for money. After a while, the contrast between the gorgeous scenery and the desperate poverty became hard to reconcile. And the tiny, ragged children who held their hands up to the train window and said “Madame! Madame!” were heartbreaking.

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But some kids just stood and watched. Some kids chased each other on the platform or hopped up and down on the train steps, jumping off at the last minute when the train moved.

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A group of girls sat on an embankment and sang and clapped. Late in the afternoon, a woman put two little girls on the train and they sat down across the aisle from us, wearing braids, sandals and very clean dresses. She instructed them to sit still and not move until they got to Manakara, and mostly they obeyed.

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At one of the last stops before night fell, kids brought oranges to the doors of the train cars to sell.

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And three or four children got on the train carrying wide woven baskets of beans for sale. Even when the train lurched, they didn't spill any.

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The whole journey was less than a hundred miles, but it was a long, slow hundred miles. Around 6 in the evening, it got dark. The train car was lit with a few dim bulbs and outside was black, black night. The windows were still open and leaves and branches slapped against the side of the train. We stopped in a clearing where a few people stood around a signal fire, and six or seven people got off the train by flashlight. Other stations must have had generators because they had a lit bulb or two, but between them it was pitch dark.

And when we got into Manakara a few hours later, the station was lit but the streets were dark. Pousse-pousse drivers crowded the windows as we pulled in, and a tall man named Patrice claimed us, steering us through the jammed platform and out to the parking lot where his rickshaw was. He borrowed a match from a friend passing by and lit a candle, which he put into a light fixture made from an inverted soda bottle that hung underneath the rickshaw. If he didn’t have a light, he told us, he’d be stopped by the police.

Then off we went through the dark streets of Manakara, Patrice pulling the rickshaw barefoot, jogging at times but mostly walking, pointing out dark buildings that he said were the police station, the library, the Catholic school and the marché. And here, he said, was the street that would take us to the Indian Ocean.

(KK)