Traveling by Train

I do not write this as someone who is an expert on train travels in Cameroon. In fact I have travelled by train just twice in my entire life. The first time I travelled was in July 2012 which means 17 months went by before I was able to step on a train again.

In 2012 train travel was uncommon. In fact many people were oblivious to the fact that there was a passenger train from Douala to Yaoundé and back. Most people travelled to Yaoundé from Douala by bus. This was very convenient as there are many bus stations with flexible departure times. The buses would use about three and a half hours to do the almost 250km separating the two towns without any stops on the way. This sounds all good but the disadvantages were that sometimes the buses would breakdown on the way or be caught in a nightmarish traffic jam when leaving or entering each town or both.

I decided to take the train for the first time out of sheer curiosity. I had no idea how it worked but I was prepared to take the risk. Sometimes, I like to be adventurous so I asked around to know what formalities were required. It turned out to not be complicated so I took off. I arrived the train station early on a Saturday morning for the train was supposed to leave at 7:00am. I bought my ticket and took my seat. Then just before 7:00am the train started moving. It was exciting looking over and seeing the green dense equatorial forests from a closer view. The momentary seconds of darkness when the train passed under a tunnel was quite interesting as well. The train made a few stops at some stations and we arrived Yaoundé after close to 5 hours. I didn’t bother much about the time it took. It was a peaceful ride.

After the first travel, I wasn’t really interested in talking the train again. But recently this year, the train company re-strategized and more importance was given to passenger travel in trains. The company introduced a time table for travel with strict travel times. After a lot of publicity, many people became aware of the trains and decided to try them. Almost a year after this re-invention, I had still not taken the train, not because I didn’t want to but because I had no business in Yaoundé.

So when I failed to take the train to Yaoundé on Tuesday because I was late I decided to take the train from Yaoundé. I had heard a day or two before that the morning train from Yaoundé left at 10:30am. So when I woke up I was still contemplating whether or not I should take the train because that meant giving up my beauty sleep. But as I sat down wasting precious time I decided to speed up and leave. The train was safer and faster than the bus and this was December, I was not ready to take any chances.

I knew I had to be at the train station latest 10:00 am to be able to make it. So when I hailed and entered a taxi at 09:45 am, I wasn’t worried. When I got to the train station at 09:55 am and I saw a large number of cars and a crowd of people, I wondered about what was going on but I wasn’t worried. When I alighted from the taxi and made my way to the counters to buy my ticket, I started worrying. There was a crowd of people milling around the door because the security guards were closing the gates. As I struggled to get in with the crowd, I glanced inside the building and noted that it was packed full. I wondered if all the people there were going to Douala and if they were yet to buy their tickets. I became worried officially.

I got in and made my way to get the tickets, there were so many counters and the queues were so long. I handed my ticket money to Vally* with whom I was travelling to get the tickets while I waited. On glancing around, I noted the counter for first class tickets had about 10 people so I proceeded to stand on the queue. I tried reaching Vally by phone about 5 times but he wouldn’t pick. I kept insisting and he finally answered the phone.  I told him about the first class queue and that it was the best option if we were going to travel with the 10:30 am train. He came over but alas, after a few minutes, we were told that first class tickets were sold out. Vally had to return to the previous queue to struggle to get our tickets. By then, it was 10:10am. We had barely 10 minutes to get our tickets and board. I started panicking.

I tried to make light of the situation by telling myself that even if we didn’t get the tickets we would still travel by bus. But just thinking of the time and energy wasted already made that option undesirable.

I called Vally twice within the next 5 minutes to find out if he got his previous position back and if we were actually going to make it. Everyone had boarded already and I was really panicking.

I had already given up when Vally rushed with the tickets and got our luggage. We rushed to the gate which had been closed by the guards but we were let through. Our tickets were checked and torn when we got to the door and we climb up the train. Finally I was able to let out a sigh of relief.

We were late and our tickets did not have seat numbers so we just sat down on opposite sides of the aisle where the seats where not occupied.

In writing all this, I keep asking myself why the sudden craze for train travel by Cameroonians. The station was packed full and we could barely get our tickets. Was it because it was the end of the weekend and people were returning home? Is it always this complicated to travel on weekdays as well? There is no flexibility with the train and it is more expensive, so why are people keen on taking the train? For how long will this situation continue and is the train company going to make additional investments to cater for this significant increase in customers. What will happen to the bus companies?  Would I be confronted with this difficulty each time I decide to travel by train?

*Name changed