My cousin David has been to stay briefly, coming from Cape Town where he is staying with his son and family, by train to avoid an 8 hour drive. The trouble is the train arrives at about 11.30pm if it is on time. We/he were lucky as it was a mere 30 minutes late so we all got in a decent night's sleep. The only alternative is a very expensive tourist train which does call here on some days at about 4.30pm but you have to buy a ticket for the whole distance to Joburg costing hundreds of pounds. David quite enjoyed his long journey – 13 or 14 hours so a good deal longer than the flight to London! He had chosen to be in a coupe or sleeper for 6, all men (or women- or you can have a half coupe for a couple. One woman I heard of booked for her husband too, knowing she would actually be on her own but preferring to travel alone. The cost is half that of the overnight coach which she usually takes, feeling safer, so she didn't lose out. The trouble with that method of travel, which is much quicker, is that it is a 45 minute drive to get to Britstown where it passes through. Most have no means of doing that.) But David seemed to have quite enjoyed swapping life stories with his fellow travellers and he could get lunch and supper in the dining car, not a brilliant meal but adequate.
For his return journey two days later the train south arrives at about 1am and was only an hour late. There are plenty of other people around at the station and David insisted he felt safe enough so we left him to wait on his own and we retired home to our beds leaving him to get back to his son's at 5pm or so! It is a marathon journey which we hear dreadful tales about – not safety but the delays of perhaps 6 hours. And for those who can't afford a sleeper the length of journey must be awful. We saw families with babies strapped to the mother's back and bundles of blankets waiting to board. It is sad that with the infrastructure in place for long-distance rail travel that there isnt a better service. Only wagon trains use the E-W line between Port Elizabeth and the far west and many people must wish there was a passenger line to connect them to their distant families in those directions. Perhaps in the future?
David is keen on birds and he was able to confirm that we saw two black eagles from the top of the De Aar hill as well as the usual Lesser Kestrel, about 100 perhaps! There aren't as many as there have been, so maybe they are starting to return to Russia for their summer. There are still many swallows and swifts but we dont know if they will make it back to Europe for summer there or if they stay here. We shall!
While David was here there was a rare knock at the door from someone in the congregation wanting help with CV. We actually have no copier nor printer here so Tom took her across to the FAS House where Lian kindly helped create an impressive document and then Tom was able to drive her to a newly opened correctional centre where she'd heard there was a possibility of a job caring for teenage boys. Her present job at the hospice pays so badly and not on time that she is desperate for anything. But it is difficult. The gap between the rich and poor here is so great. We have just found a few streets on one edge of town with huge mansions and green well-manicured gardens. And yet on the opposite side many live in the most appalling basic shacks. Many are in between and one thing that surprises us is that people don't seem to move away from a poor district but simply rebuild bigger and smarter houses on their plot, cheek by jowl with hovels. Some aspiring people do move to the white side so at least apartheid has broken down to the extent that it is possible. It's not like the old days when anyone coloured or black had to be over the railway bridge by the 9pm curfew. But we think we are the only white people on 'our' side. Having a wide area of railway land slice through the town does exaggerate the situation.
Tom is down with another nasty bout of fever today, hence my rambles.
