After a day in Yaounde, Alex and I made our way to the extreme north, bracing ourselves for a long complicated trip.
The start was auspicious. We heard that it could take three hours to get a reservation on the train and that you might need to show proof that you are legally married in order to get a two person sleeper car. So just to be on the safe side the Peace Corps director wrote us an affivadit to prove that we are legally married. (Our marriage certificate, slightly stained from the rain that came through the roof of the train car.)
But once we arrived at the train station, we sailed to the ticket window and got a ticket in less than one minute. Then, another surprise, the train left at 6PM sharp, with none of the usual delays while waiting for the vehicle to fill up or baggage to be loaded, as on the buses.
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Settling into the sleeper car for the long trip north. Having a beer and good reading material can make the 18-26 hour trip almost bearable.
We chugged through the night uneventfully, until we woke to the sounds of yelling outside the window. The train had stopped and the security guards were arguing with some strangers who had congregated on the tracks. We did not find out till the morning that armed robbers were known to stop the train in the midde of the night in order to grab what they could.
At 3AM, it was ominously quiet again and for the next 7 hours we did not move. A cargo train had derailed ahead of us.
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A view from the train
At about 10AM we finally started rolling again, when suddenly at 10:30AM the train lurched to a stop again. There was a flurry of activity at the back of the train. A man from one of the local towns who was surfing the trains jumping on while it rolled through the station and jumping off once it was in the outskirts, lost his grip and fell partway under the train and lost part of his hands as the train sped past. After another long delay he was put on the train to transport him to the nearest hospital.
We finally arrived in our destination, Ngaoundere, about 10 hours behind schedule and 26 hours after our departure setting a new record for delays.
As Alex said, "Maybe we have wandered too far from the beaten track."
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The train station in Ngaoundere. Only 8 more hours in the bus to go!
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