Back in Long Wait Station, I buy a few bananas and eat them. Children pick up the skins I throw away and gnaw away any remaining fruit and toss away only the paper-thin yellow part of the peel. They seem as famished as the eggshell-eating African children I encountered during my bus trip in the desert of Nigeria. Hungry kids everywhere: I think of all the kids dumping uneaten sandwiches and desserts in school cafeterias back in the states.
Some have too much and some have none. This is not good. This will be trouble. This IS trouble!
When my train arrives, I shove aboard with the mob and fight my way to a seat. A pretty young woman in an orange sari flirts with me—the first smiles from a female since I hit the Moslem countries months ago. Hooray! Sadly, she gets off at the next stop. Crowds come and go and the sun sets pink.
The night is very dark. There is no light in the coach, and the countryside is dark too. I guess there is no electricity out here. At the frequent stops, candles and lanterns glow. At one stop a youth crawls in my window shoving a candle-lit basket of food, cooked corn and onions, ahead of him. It smells good but I resist since eating it would probably kill me. By the light of his candle, I see that the passengers in the coach are now shaved-headed, bearded men wearing white sheets.
When there is room in the baggage rack overhead, I climb up into it with my backpack and sleep wrapped in my coat.
The train stops and goes. About four a.m. it stops and stays: it’s the end of the line.
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1 comment:
All of us have some bad and good experiences it's part of learning our lessons in life.
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