V 1 N. 28 The Tracks of Memory

 

The Tracks of Memory

By George Brose

An Essay on Trains, Family, and Growing Up in Ohio

My first memory of trains was watching from two blocks distant at the corner nearest to my maternal grandmother's house in Northeast Dayton. I wasn't allowed to go beyond that corner, but from there I could make out the cars as they rolled between foundries and factories on their way north, maybe to Toledo or perhaps Detroit.   Trains going directly east would have required taking the tracks running parallel to Third Street. Yes, I'm sure those trains were headed north. I could stand on that corner formed by Chapel St. and Milburn Ave. and look as long as I liked, but there was a crack in the sidewalk I dared not pass alone. That was in 1947, and I was four years old, conscious that there was a greater world beyond that crack, but not explorer enough to risk the penalties of transgressing that line in the concrete.

Halfway down Chapel St. to the tracks sat Falb's Cafe, a working man's bar where my father took his afternoon beer on hot summer days. He often brought me along with him and sat me at a table in the back room, the afternoon sun roasting the windows on the west wall and filtering the tubes of light that worked their way through the darkened room. I could see the cigarette smoke soaring from the tables up through those light rays and returning downward in cloud-like patterns over my arms, and I could touch them and disturb them and feel the difference in temperatures between the smoke-filled rays and the sheltered darkness of the room. We shared a waxed paper bag of potato chips. My father had his bottle of beer, I had a Tru-Ade orange drink. He drank a ratio of two to my one. We both drank straight from the bottle, my hands holding steady on the raised bumps of the bottle covered with the cold wet moisture condensing on it. We contested every day who would find the biggest chip in the bag. Somehow, even when he found it, I would get to eat it. We never stayed for more than two beers and one orange, then it was back to the house where supper would be ready by five.

My father worked in those factories although his was across town. He left home early each morning driving one of several cars that seemed to pass through the family. The one I remember distinctly was Josephine, a 1937 Dodge Coupé, black, with running boards on the sides, a two-seater with a high wobbly gear shift between the two passengers. There was a recess in the gear shift knob with a place for a picture to be attached. Patrick, one of my father's hunting dogs from between the wars, could be seen on that knob. My place in that car was the shelf in front of the rear window. I could stretch out comfortably on it and see out all the windows. I could sleep if we were returning from somewhere late at night. I don't recall ever riding on the passenger seat, because sitting there, I could not see where we were going. A unique feature in Josephine was a crank on the dashboard that when turned would allow the windshield to open slightly on the bottom edge, giving better ventilation in summer. We opened it occasionally but the windshield always leaked afterwards in wet weather.

We took that car occasionally to visit my paternal grandparents and drove a seemingly endless fifty miles north of Dayton on the major north-south artery running from Detroit to Florida, Route 25, a two-lane thoroughfare that crossed Route 40, the old National Road in Vandalia, Ohio, making it one of the true crossroads of America. We travelled up through the farmlands passing through Troy, Piqua, switching to Route 66 and carrying on through Houston (pronounced House-tun), then Fort Loramie (I dreamed of a great rampart to protect the settlers from Indian attacks), Minster, and then the family homestead on West Monroe St. in New Bremen where people who were born there still spoke German and had strange-sounding names like Fledderjohan,  Landfersich, Meisenbrink, Dietrich and Dammeyer. The names around us in Dayton had been more of an East European nature and the accents of my grandmother, a Dombrowski from Lithuania, more indecipherable when I heard them spoken with Mrs. Andretchik when they visited in each other's homes.

The common tie between these two places were the trains. A small rural line connecting a few of the farm towns in West Central Ohio provided a daily freight service. I was lucky beyond belief. The railroad ran right beside my grandmother's house and I could stand in the vacant lot between her house and the tracks and see the trains so closely that the engineer quickly became a familiar face to me. He must have been a man who liked children, because each day as he passed slowly going south he would throw candies or lollipops to the two or three kids who stood by the line. Just across the road was a dairy where the train turned off on a spur to deliver equipment or pick up milk, and on one occasion the engineer brought us ice cream from the plant. Twice we were given rides with my father and aunt in the caboose down to Minster and back, a round trip of four miles, but an adventure that seemed a lifetime in duration to me. On one run back to New Bremen, they brought us into the cab of the locomotive, a steam engine that probably finished its active days on that country line that ran from Lima each day to Minster.

                                             Patrick (1931)

George Brose on the running board of

Josephine (note the Dodge Ram hood ornament)

                           Falbs' Cafe, 77 years later and still going strong.   Now I drink the beer.

COMMENTS FROM READERS

"Your aptitude in painting a picture has put me there, seeing the 4 year old George watching his dad knock off a beer or two, seeing you riding below the back window in a time when seat belts were unknown and marveling at the magnificence of trains, experiences my own sheltered childhood didn't allow.  Thank you for laying this out for us."  Roy

________________________________________________

Being raised in Christian Science, my childhood was deprived of experiencing coffee drinking, let alone the consumption of alcohol.  The first time I saw a beer being drunk was 1953 when, at the age of 14, I sat at the next table to that occupied by Hank Sauer, the 1952 National League most valuable player (led the league in HRs and RBI with 37 and 121) whose baseball card was in my collection.  Long story short, 10-12 years before my mother had been the private tutor to the children of the Wrigley family which owned the island of Catalina where the family lived Nov - March before returning to Chicago.  As Bill Wrigley owned the Chicago Cubs, the town of Avalon is where the team spent it's spring training.  Mom was reliving memories of living there and treating me to the joy of spring training.  All the players lived in the Avalon Hotel and ate in its dining room.  There was Sauer, the epitome of a man's man, eating a steak and drinking a beer, unconcerned that it's consumption would cause him to burn in hell forever.    Roy (again)

V 1 N. 27 Where Were You When President Kennedy Was Shot? November 22, 1963

 

Where Were You When President Kennedy Was Shot?

November  22, 1963

 

            To fellow readers and writers,  I sent out this query  November 22, 2024 on the 61^st anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.  The question was inspired by George Cummins a former member of the US Peace Corps who had contacted his Peace Corps group  Tanzania 5,  about their memories of that day.  So I followed up with a similar question to my former Peace Corps team Tanzania 10, who went to that country at the end of 1965,  already two years after the assassination.  We have travelled on many different paths since 1963 and we’ve been molded and shaped by many events in our lives.    I realize that you have to be about 71 years of age to  answer the question.   On the other end of that spectrum, at about 85 years, our memories though fading still have some indelible marks and interesting tales to tell.  Some only responded to say where they were on the map at the time, but others were  more willing to share memories, thoughts, and opinions.  Volunteers responding also represent Morocco and Sierra Leone, and Colombia.    One respondent  sent the front page story from their college newspaper (Bowling Green State) which I’ve attached at the end of this.  In checking out the papers of that date, I learned of another tragedy on that day that has been  long forgotten,  a nursing home fire in Norwalk,  Ohio where 63 residents died, many held in their beds by restraints.  It reminds me that these things are happening everyday somewhere on the planet.  In refugee camps, in The Congo, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, the Sudan, Mynamar,  Kurdistan, Syria, and many, many other places.  We become immune to terrible news in many instances, but the big events such as JFK,  9-11,  the Challenger, and a very few others tend to be those that link us to shock and sadness.   I hope that if you read some or all of these accounts you will be moved to a few moments of reflection and be able to show a good side of humanity to someone who  needs and deserves it,  maybe even to someone who doesn’t.  It may be one of the few paths on which people and nations can heal.    Thank you so much for sharing your stories. 

 

All names and identities have been removed from the accounts.  

 

George Brose

Vancouver Island, British Columbia

 

1.         Doing my college part-time  job - washing test tubes for the School of Applied Medicine

at UPenn with the radio on - shared the dreadful news with students in a nearby classroom.

 

Last night, I was washing up after some pre-Thanksgiving prep and realised it was 

that fateful day 22 November and had no one nearby to "remember".

2.         I was just leaving class at UC Berkeley and walking back to my apartment at Channing and Shattuck.  Soon after I got in the door, my sister called, and I remember her words, “What are we going to do now?”  She told me JFK had been shot and killed.

Like nearly everyone in the country I spent the next two weeks glued to the TV as the saga unfolded.

3.         I was in my final semester of college (I finished in the fall semester) at Alfred University.  Myers Hall had the chemistry department and modern languages, among other departments at that time.  I was walking out of the building to go to the student union when I saw an elderly lady, a faculty member from modern languages, sobbing while sitting on the steps to the second floor.  Between sobs she reported that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Texas.  I was shocked and very sad, as one who saw Kennedy as “my President,” rather than the "national grandfather” as we saw Eisenhower in those days.  I was in mourning for quite some time after that, and actually visited the White House that winter.  Later I have visited the Kennedy grave site in Arlington National Cemetery several times.  The event remains seared in my memory, and later I was in the same hallway, then as a member of the faculty, when I learned of the Challenger explosion.  Those two memories will remain with me as long as I am alive.

4.         On JFK's assassination date I was a junior in school at U. of Oklahoma.  There were mixed feelings on campus about his death.  I heard one coaching staff member say, “Well, they shot Santa Claus in Dallas”.   I spent the afternoon at the student union watching the only color tv on campus.   One of our tennis players Paul Gregory knew Lee Harvey Oswald,  from his association with the Russian emigre community in Dallas.  He made the mistake of mentioning that and was picked up by some federal agency within hours for questioning.  

 

There have been lots of theories about the assassination.  One of the best I ever heard was by someone who spoke on campus a year or so later from the Bertrand Russell Foundation, but I can't remember his name or tell you what his theory was.  I do remember the hall was packed and he spoke for several hours.  No one left the room believing anything the Warren Commission had proposed after listening to the speaker.

 

5.         I distinctly remember when JFK was shot.  I was in a stall in the

 Michigan State University veterinary large-animal clinic holding a thermometer in the anus of a cow.  

A colleague student yelled down the hallway that "John Kennedy has been shot!!"

For some reason that I do not understand, my thought was that it was "John-John", the son. 

 I guess that my brain automatically shut off the enormity of it actually being the President.

What a horrendous and tragic loss to our country. 

 

6.         I was on my way home from Peace Corps assignment in India. Staying at a Youth hostel in West Berlin eating breakfast with some Americans. A German girl stood at our table and said President Kennedy was killed. We did not react.  Kept on talking and eating. She stood and said what is wrong with you Americans? Don’t you care about your president? She repeated that he was Killed. We really did not comprehend what she first said. We apologized her and realized what she said. Of course our lives were changed that day  

 

7.         When I got to Tanzania, with the Peace Corps ,I was sent to Mwanza by myself. Eventually they gave me a Danish volunteer as a roommate. His take on JFK's death was completely different than mine. After reading that famous (Warren) report our government published, I thought the "lone gun man theory" was correct-yes I was naive. He said that most Europeans thought the report was a coverup. He was shocked that Americans were so easily taken in. Do you think we'll ever know what happened?

8.       Northwestern University campus sitting in the library getting ready for afternoon seminar, suddenly hearing a low murmur of voices all around me in a space usually dead quiet in the morning.

 

9.       At St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, England, for a concert (age 16).

 

10.     I was on my way home from Peace Corps assignment in India. Staying at a. Youth hostel in West Berlin eating breakfast with some Americans. A German girl stood at our table and said President Kennedy was killed. We did not react.Kept on talking and eating. She stood and said what is wrong with you Americans? Don’t you care about your president? She repeated that he was. Killed. We really did not comprehend what she first said. We apologized her and realized what she said. Of course our lives were changed that day  

11.       I was walking to class at the University of Arizona when I heard people talking about Kennedy being shot . I couldn’t believe this was true.  As  I was rushing to my dorm so I could watch the news, I heard someone say, “I wonder what this will do to Goldwater’s chances.”  I was shocked by the news and angry about the reaction I had heard. The world suddenly felt less safe and the partisan response made it much worse. Looking back, it was a preview of today’s world.

 

 

12.       We were both in our senior year in high school. I was in Detroit Michigan sitting at a desk in my classroom at Benedictine High School when there was an announcement over the overhead speaker. 

B. said all the classes were sent  back to their homerooms at Chaminade high in Dayton Ohio and an announcement was made over the speaker.  

Hard to believe - 61 years ago   

 

13.     I was in bed in my Bachelors' Offices Quarters (BOQ) room in Okinawa.  I heard it on the radio.  I was an ROTC lieutenant in the Military Police.

 

14.     I was still in my first few months in the Peace Corps in Casablanca, Morocco. My roommate and I were returning to our apartment late in the evening after a long day when one of our young neighbours stopped us on the street, saying, "Your president has been shot." My roommate & I looked at each other and asked, "What is he talking about?" The young man touched his chest  and said, "I am sorry,' before walking away. Neither of us understood what he meant. There were no computers, mobile phones, etc. at that time. We had no quick contacts from home. We left our apartment the next morning, giving no thought about what the kid told us, only to find a long line of our neighbors waiting to shake our hands to express their sorrow for us. We were totally stunned and bewildered, But we were given several newspapers confirming the current details. The rest of the day, at work and our other activities continued the like that. The memory of that day has stayed with me forever.

 

 

15.     Stanford University.

 

16.     I was in a class at college when someone ran through the halls telling each class what had happened.  Everyone immediately scattered back to their dorms.  The whole dorm spent the next few days clued to the TV in the living room.  Our campus had a small lake and when people took a break from the TV, they walked around that lake.  I had met Kennedy over a year before and intended to go into the Peace Corps.  It was hard to think that all that hope was gone.

 

 

17.      I was in my junior year at Washington & Lee in Lexington, VA. I believe I was playing handball about the time JFK was shot so was a little behind in hearing about it.

I don't recall any great sorrow, more just a numbness. I can't remember if I was a real fan of JFK. Although my dad was a a union man and described himself as a "yellow-dog" democrat I may have been partial to Nixon in 1960 since that was the choice of many friends and JFK was a Catholic and suspect to my Baptist faith.

I had just returned from a summer in East Africa where I worked in a Baptist Secondary School in Mombasa and also visited Zanibar for a few hours, Dar for a week where I had to preach in a "revival" and also climbed Kilimanjaro from the Marangu Hotel with a group of Brit school boys and two parents. (The mother parent and I were only ones to suceed in getting to Gilman's Point.)

That summer's experience was still being processed but had a definite liberalizing impact

In any event I was a dorm counselor in the freshman dorm that year and  one of my charges was a kid from Staunton, only about thirty miles away. He decided to get a car from his home and invited me to drive up to Washington for the funeral on Tuesday. It must  have been a three hour drive since I just checked Google maps and DC is 190 miles way  from Lexington.

We must have gotten there in early moring and proceeded to park the car and look for a place to see the procession from the Capitol to the Church. I don't remember exactly what we saw. It passed very quickly. I don't remember seeing anyone I recognized in the large group of family, but I do remember picking out Haile Selassi, Prince Philip and maybe Charles DeGaulle from the large group of world leaders who attended and walked. We left afterwards since attendees of the burial in Arlington Cemetary were taken there by car.

I gradually became much more political at W&L espousing Democratic leaders. Students at W&L were incredibly conservative at this time.  All men and all white, plus heavily fraternity. All worshiped Lee. It wasn't enough to be a member of the Young Republicans; there was also a Conservative Society. We liberals were vastly outnumbered but managed to hold on to the student newspaper and make voices heard. In the 1964 election the student body favored Goldwater by about 4 to 1 but faculty was 80% for Johnson. We liberals managed to keep Johnson posters up. Students were generally shocked by Johnson's massacre of Goldwater.  

I had an especially interesting experience at a Conservative Society lecture. A Vice-Counsul or something similar. from South Africa was invited to speak and he gave a glowing report on the South African apartheid goverment. During the question & answer period I asked him why Albert Luthuli, a Nobel Peace Prize winner was imprisoned on an off shore island without any hope of release. He said he was a criminal and besides we all knew from Martin Luther King's award that a Nobel Peace Prize meant nothing. Loud applause. 

Btw I was in Dar during my third year when word came that Robert Kennedy had been shot. A bunch of Americans gathered around a teletype machine in the Kilimanjaro Hotel late into the night until word came that he was dead. One of the persons there was an American black who was a sort of well known refugee from the USA. He was interesting to talk with. No memory of his name.

 

 

18.     I was a college student at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green Ohio.

I was shopping in downtown Bowling Green when the news hit and spread like wildfire.

Walter Cronkite reported that evening near tears. It was a shocking nightmare.

 

I saved the college newspaper, the B-G News when it next came out on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 1963 and have attached it. I hope you can read it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those not too exhausted,  here is the front page of the Norwalk Reflector Herald  in Ohio about that nursing home fire story.   Probably the only newspaper in the country with a headline above the assassination. 

 

 

 

 

 George,

I was walking across campus at Capital University when I heard he had been shot.  Later that night, several of my fraternity brothers and I decided to go to the funeral.  One of my frat brothers was Richard Nye whose father was Senator Gerald Nye.  Senator Nye took us over to the Capitol building and took us on a senator-only elevator up to the rotunda where his casket was.  The guards stopped the line that was hours long so we could go in and walk by the casket.  The next day we stood along the road and watched the parade to Arlington.

It was a very memorable experience.

Chuck H

 George,

I was in 9th Grade English Class at Campbell Hall in North Hollywood, California when I heard about President Kennedy's assassination.  Our English teacher, Mrs Senter, broke the news to us just as we were beginning class.  Most of us were speechless, although one of the girls broke down at the news.  As you might imagine, not much got done that afternoon.  After I got home and watched the news with my parents, I recall my dad observing how convenient it was for Lyndon Johnson, whom he disliked.

Campbell Hall was a private school connected with St. David's Episcopal Church, also in North Hollywood.  Alec Campbell, the church rector, and his brother Richard "Dick" Campbell, a banker, were the principal factors.  They were Canadians who had emigrated to the United States from British Columbia and had become US citizens.  Dick had served in the Canadian Army during World War II and was also the head scoutmaster for BSA Troop 139, attached to St. David's Parish.  He and I shared an interest in history, so we often had detailed discussions about the two world wars and British Empire history.  I began my athletic career in 8th Grade at Campbell Hall as a soccer halfback of modest ability.   My ball control was average but I had good endurance and a fair turn of speed.  In the spring of 1963 the school held an intramural track and field meet.  The track was a 220-yard oval chalked out on the school's athletic field.  I won the 600-yard run in 1:23.0 and the 440-yard dash in 57.5 and so discovered my athletic calling.  At the time, the 600-yard run was part of President Kennedy's national youth fitness program.  

Jim

 Nice

Ned

 

I was in grade 6 and while walking to school, I heard the news. Because people were so shocked, I knew that this was a really big deal. I can still remember the feeling in my stomach the news gave me.   Laurel

 

V 1 N. 26 A Journey Across Tanzania 1993

     Sometimes it helps to set a scene when writing about one's travels many years in the past.  In 1993, my life was in a state of flux, not sure where or why I was doing somethings in life.  My wife and I had two children in university.  I had been recently laid off from my job coaching a track team at Wittenberg University a small college in Springfield, Ohio.  That lay off wasn't necessarily due to my incompetence, but more due to a declining enrollment at the university necessitating cutbacks in minor sports programs.  My two assistants who were also assistant football coaches were retained, but I was let go.  I also had a part time career repairing houses and doing odd jobs, while my wife was the prime earner for our family serving as a hospital chaplain.  Having lost my job at the college just before our son started his college career enabled him to qualify for a Pell Grant (based on a low family income) that would cover much of his expenses at the University of Chicago.  Our daughter was already attending a university in Montreal and Canadian costs of education were historically much more manageable than going to a school in the US.  So with that economic situation facing me, I decided to take a trip to Africa. Was I stupid, selfish, crazy?  Yes to all of the above.    It would not be a luxury trip with guides, a safari through the Serengeti, or a climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro like the travel agencies provide.  But I did have experience in this part of Africa as a former Peace Corps Volunteer and later as a teacher with a Canadian program in Zimbabwe.  This would be a bare bones trip to out of the way places from the East Coast of Tanzania into its heartland, and across the country (750 miles or 1250 Km) to the shores of Lake Tanganyika where Livingstone met Stanley on November 10, 1871.  From there I would head on down to our former job site in Zimbabwe and then fly home.  Along the way I hoped to pick up artwork that could be sold at a profit back in the US.    Public transport would be the way of getting from place to place.  The part of the trip described below is via a railway built by the Germans in the 19th century to the interior of Africa when that part of the world was called German East Africa.  That railway on its old roadbed was still running in 1993 with seventy-five year old cars and engines, wobbly bridges, and a decaying infrastructure supporting the rails along the way.  It was an every person for themself milieu.  That is not my recommendation for the inexperienced traveller, but you will certainly learn about yourself and maybe pick up a few tips on survival along the way.  When this story takes place, I had already been in East Africa travelling up and down the coast, meeting artists and witch doctors and collecting artifacts that might have some resale value back home.   Note that along this railway there are no game parks or tourist attractions until you get to Kigoma and then it is a few miles north toward the Burundi border where Jane Goodall did her research and lived with the chimpanzees for forty years.

You can see my route starting in the east at Dar es Salaam going west on the blue line, then the purple line at Tabora and on to Lake Tanganyika and Kigoma.  

On the northeast corner of Tanzania lie Burundi and Rwanda 

 During this time an event of serious consequence occurred  in Burundi where the president Melchior Ndadaye was was assassinated on October 21 by a group of army officers of the Tutsi tribe during an attempted coup d'etat.  The president was a member of the Tutsi's rival the Hutu.  This led to a mass exodus of Hutu directly south to Kigoma which was not far from the Burundi Tanzania  border.  An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people were killed in the month after that event.  Civil war would drag on for another ten years.  This was a small event compared to the Rwandan genocide that happened the next year taking the lives of 800,000 to one million in less than three months.

Travel Journal: Tanzania Railway Journey Dar es Salaam to Kigoma on .  shores of Lake Tanganyika

Oct 27, 1993 4:39 pm Dar Es Salaam  Railway Station

I left  the Canadian Organization for Development Through Education (CODE) house at 3:15PM getting a ride from the truck taking people home. They drop me at the station, but I need to buy water for the trip, so I walk several blocks back toward the docks.  I find out my bags are much too heavy to go far. I’m sweating profusely after a block. A guy offers me a lift back for 500 Tsh (26 cents Canadian) which I gladly accept. No one checks my ticket as I go onto the platform, so there is  no way of telling how many of the masses here are boarding the train. I walk down to watch the workers assembling  the cars together. They work in “good” clothes not overalls or any kind of uniform. They are clean but a lot of hard work is being done by hand—helping the switch engine!

Urine & diesel fumes permeate the atmosphere. A roundhouse turntable is manipulated by hand—well balanced as it had the switch engine and the pullman balanced on it. Third class cars are already on line and filling—Reporting hour is 4:00 pm. No one predicts departure time. They are making up the 2nd and 1st class parts of the train last. At Tabora (midway) the train will be split. Some going north to Mwanza on Lake Victoria, some on to Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika,  and maybe some will just stay in Tabora for the return.

I see my name on the manifest, so theoretically all is well but after mistaking my bus last week in Kilwa Masoko I’ll have to be careful. It’s now 5:00 pm and my wagon #2211 hasn't made an appearance. Must still be in the sheds.

Ethnically only a few people are distinguishable to me. The big tribes like Wanyamwezis and Wasukumas I cannot recognize. A family of Somalis is nearby—the women more attractive than most. Dressed in complete matching costumes rather than a kanga over regular clothes. Their heads are covered. More roundish faces than I recall from the past. Men tall and lean. One woman enormously fat for an African woman. —A sign of wealth. 

Now they are starting to bring the 2nd & 1^st class coaches on line. Not much control of the crowd but there was an announcement warning people to be careful while shunting was going on. No one getting squashed that I can tell! Cars marked for Mwanza—some even marked for special groups—“African Inland Mission” chalked on side.

My bags are not the biggest by any means. A lot of people do business this way, carrying goods across country to sell. Zambians come up the Tazara Railway to do this. The Tazara is a more modern line built by the Chinese in the 1960’s.  An Arab in Zanzibar told me he was going out to Kigoma and then to Burundi to sell some sugar. A family of Arabs in turbans just passed by. A guy with two elevated unicycles stands waiting to board. Cars are incredibly dirty on the outside from diesel exhaust. The broken windows have been boarded up. I see my car. Get on the wrong end and have to wait for a family packing 9-10 people onto the car to say goodbye to one traveller. The fat Somali lady is not in my room. I’m in with 5 other men. It’s going to be a ripe 2 ½ days and in Kigoma there will be a refugee situation due to the unrest in nearby Burundi.

I seem to have the most bags of any of my fellow travellers. One guy, Saidi, has a box of young chickens, 50 of them—going somewhere between Dodoma & Tabora—Itigi.

---

Oct 28 Slept well on train from 9 pm to 1:15—At Morogoro I thought the sun was coming up but it was only the station lights. My travelling mates are kind—Saidi is bringing the day-old chicks out to Itigi. He is a med tech, but like everyone is trying to supplement his income. Another young man, whose name is not yet known, is employed in the regional government administration in Tabora.  His wife and child are in a neighboring compartment. I don’t think they mix the sexes on the train here. The third gentleman doesn’t speak English but is friendly. At one time during the evening I tried to go forward to the restaurant car (unfortunately I went the wrong way) but things came to a halt as a conservative Muslim sect occupying several compartments was praying in the aisle. The train is not in excellent shape but it runs well. I’m sure that spares are at a premium. I get a good breakfast in the dining car for Tsh 500 and when the train pulls into Dodoma at 8:15 am there are food vendors and hawkers all over the place. We have tea and traveller number 3 shares his chapati’s. I’m glad I came this way. The countryside is ruggedly beautiful—reminiscent of New Mexico - Arizona. But they do have a season of rain that enables more people to live here. Right now it is the end of the dry season. Rains were just beginning in Dar and Zanzibar. They’ve not started here yet!

In the sleepers it is hot when the train stops. All windows and doors remain open. There is enough breeze inside when we move but I haven’t experienced the heat of the day yet.

                    Riding between the cars

                    Saidi (above)

It’s now mid day—We stopped at 11:30 in Saranda—people lined both sides of the tracks selling food. I distinctly remember one seller with a tray full of ndege  'birds, birds' he was yelling.  There were at least fifty roast birds on his tray.  They were the size of sparrows.  My food back up was a stash of ramen noodles sacs I'd brought with me from home.  I could eat them raw, uncooked and keep going for days in an emergency.  I couldn't get into eating sparrows.   Travellers refer to this place as the Kilimanjaro Hotel or Sheraton—lots of kabobs, wali na nyama, (rice and goat meat) sodas... each day permitting these people to earn a living. My travelling mate the administrator in Tabora tells me that most other regions are more desirable to be stationed in as the local economies are stronger and that permited setting up a business on the side to supplement one's income.

Eyes closed one can feel the heat and dry here—the rains have not yet arrived. But fields seem to be prepared for planting. Cattle crowd around the base of a tree for shade.

I filled up on goat kabobs at Saranda but realized there were two samosas left and ate them before they spoiled. 

We expect to arrive in Tabora (half way) around 7-8 pm. The train will be divided with part going north to Mwanza and the other half on west to Kigoma arriving sometime the next morning perhaps.

4:00 pm. I’ve watched the countryside change very little for the last 4 hours. We’ve covered perhaps 150 miles. The train stops regularly to let passengers off.  At each little village there are people, mainly children, selling a few snacks. The most common thing for sale however is an Ugali spoon that travelers buy for gifts when they return. One lady had bought about twenty of them. I think of giving some kid money for nothing but decide against giving them false hopes or thinking that every white face is going to do that. Through Wagogoland another common item is a black stone to put on a snake bite. The sellers have them wrapped in long strips of plastic. They can rip them off as they sell them. Saidi tells me that you lay it onto the bite where it is bleeding and it will draw the venom out through the blood. After use, you should not scrape the stone but soak it in milk to let it clean itself. I bought 5 of them for 400 Tsh.  The Wagogo resemble the Masai, but their colors are more black than the red the Masai wear.

Saidi leaves us at Itigi. I photograph him and promise to send him a picture. I learn that my other roommate is a conductor on a dallah dallah (minibus) in Dar es Salaam. He’s going to visit his family in Tabora. Saidi was explaining an article in Swahili in a local paper using the new vernacular discussing the boys who work on the buses as having certain characteristics such as: a) Lying – telling customers there is plenty of room to lie down and sleep in the bus. b) Pride because they control the driver telling him when it is OK to take off by hitting twice on the metal roof of the bus as a signal—“Piga debe” hit the can.

8:30 PM — We’ve been in Tabora about 90 minutes. Cars have been shunted around and I think I’m in the right place headed for Kigoma — Some tracks are being replaced in the station only seven guys needed to move a spare rail about 150 yards. They slide it along the tracks at a 90° angle. All my companions are gone and only one new one comes in.

                                                (middle)   MV Liemba in Kigoma harbor

                                               boats for hire in Kigoma

    He’s pretty ripe. Reminds me of teaching at BMC (Bernard Mizeki College) in Zimbabwe where the classrooms could get pretty strong smelling in the dry season when water to wash clothes and bodies was scarce.  We start to move at 8:36 pm. VOA (Voice of America) reports 500,000 refugees have fled Burundi. It’s doubtful they’ve all come to Kigoma. I was warned not to leave sight of my bags while the train was in Tabora – a “town of thieves.” Anyway I stayed in the cabin. I’ll fix the bed soon and turn in. I’m sure I’m pretty ripe too. As we leave the Tabora station in the dark, I see what looks like a locomotive graveyard. Spare parts have probably been cannibalized for many years. 

7:00 am. People came and went in the compartment during the night. I kept an eye open much of the time especially when the train stopped to see if anyone was fooling with my bags. Apparently the tactic can be to pitch the bag through a window to a partner and then run. By 5:30 when I decided to get up there was no one left in the compartment only voices of constant chatter of people standing in the aisle looking out the windows. I spent hours myself doing this yesterday.

We just stopped briefly at a place called “Kandaga Halt” which does not appear on my map. The conductor came by to collect my ticket and estimated our arrival at 8:30 am. I’m looking forward to a good wash in a hotel then finding out how soon the MV Liemba (a passenger ship and freighter, a remnant of WWI ) will be departing southward. The Burundi unrest may have cancelled that northern part of the circuit but will they take the time off and stay in Kigoma or go south a few days early, that is the question. Will I have time to go up to Gombe Stream to see the chimps, or will I miss that part of the trip. Already I’ve scrapped the idea of going to Bukavu because of all the unrest. Perhaps I can go in at Lubumbashi just have to wait and see. The countryside is green and hilly after such a boring landscape all day from Dodoma to Tabora.

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This part of the railway must have posed some interesting challenges to its builders the Germans a hundred years ago. According to my map, if it can be trusted, we will be approaching  Kigoma from the south at the end of our run so I’ll have a view of Lake Tanganyika from my compartment.

In Kigoma will there be some opportunity to work with a refugee organization? Should I give up my antibiotics and other prescription drugs? I certainly need to lighten my load a bit.

Another stop alongside wrecked tank cars. Builder was Charles Roberts Co. Wakefield England 1955. A butterfly of magnificent beauty flies among the tankers. I remember this orange, red, and black creature as one I tried and failed to catch in Loitokitok, Kenya almost thirty years ago now meandering between huge cars of rusting steel. Fragility, beauty, decay, mossiness, a crumbling sort of measurable impermanence but that which will still be here in some form after I have departed the planet.

Some serious construction or maintenance along the line. A Caterpillar 926 E payloader.  Every 10 miles or less there is a little cluster of  mabati tin huts for maintenance crews. Their families live there as well. Some have small shambas, gardens. Some though are in such isolated uninhabitable areas that they must occasionally be resupplied by the railway.

A worker comes in to collect blankets, sheets and pillows. Says there are a lot of Burundians in Kigoma but doesn’t think hotels will be a problem. Refugees are being kept in the stadium and in camps. They are not supposed to be on the streets and Tanzanians are not to assist them. The agencies are responsible for care. This probably is to keep people from disappearing into the society illegally.

Oct 31 – Need to recount about 3 days here. I arrived at Kigoma—a beautiful lake port at 8:00 am Friday. A huge old German railway station here. I relied on a Lonely Planet  guide book and took a taxi for the brief ride to the Kigoma Hotel—Saw that some French Canadians were registered—one was Daniel Lacoste who had lived in Temiscaming Sud about 2 years before we had arrived to teach in that small town on the Quebec/Ontario border in 1978—lots of relatives there. He is the age group of the sec. 4 and 5’s that we taught. The other, Sylvain Martel is from the Ottawa Region. They are organizing to go to Gombe Stream to see the chimps, so the 3 of us and Dave a Canadian/Czech from Westmount and 4 crazy Kiwis Jacqui, Catman, Wade and Norm hire a boat to take us up to the park. I kept my room at the hotel to leave most of my gear. The boat south doesn’t leave til Wed. I arrived on a Friday.

We were fortunate to see the chimps up close in the morning only a 15 minute walk from the lodge. Some visitors are not so lucky. Did lots of filming  and had a great time with the Kiwis—They swear like no one I’ve heard before. Wade stayed with me at the hotel when we got back—good bloke—plumber by trade—works in Austria at ski shops in winter—London at times, now on his way to Capetown to see his girlfriend. Catman works the offshore oil rigs in S.E. Asia—comes to Europe for the summer and does the circuit from Pamplona to Munich Oktoberfest. Jackie and Norm—a quiet couple who put up with everyone’s kidding.

The chimps were as amazing to us as I’m sure they are to all tourists—Families—mothers with small children. They woke up about 6 am. We heard their chatter in the forest and a ranger led us to them. We sat on a trail—one was on the trail about 30 meters in front of us. Soon another was on the trail behind us and walked right through our group. The guide told us to squat down and keep lower than the chimps and there would be no problem.  Soon others joined and went to a palm tree as we followed them. They climbed up into the tree and ate small nuts. Soon there were about 6 in the area. They can move very quietly when they choose. They moved on to another type of tree to change diet. The babies were left to climb around on their own in a tree but when trees were changed mom’s carried the babies. —The mom’s could sit balanced on a limb not using their toes to grasp. They just put weight forward of their heels. They were pretty much in charge of us. They are very powerful. The 3 Canadians went back again in the afternoon and saw a male grab a small bush pig—kill it in its jaws and literally run across the tops of several large trees til it stopped to eat the pig, high legs dangling out of the chimp’s mouth and blood running down its chin.

By 4:30 pm we’re headed back after a swim in the lake. The water temp was ideal and not cold at lower depths. Rains started that morning but let up for us. Today Sunday the 31st a longer rain hit Kigoma—most of the morning from 4 am to 10 am it came down steadily.

The MV Liemba is under repair so the MV Magorozo sails south all the way to Zambia these days.

Oct 31-    Today with the rain, we sit and write though it is clearing now as I write. The Wazungu (white) tourists have decided to make a curry dinner tonight.  We've been served a lot of rice and beans, nothing else.    I know there is other food in the market, so some of the travellers are out shopping—some will clean or cut—I’ll do the sauce. The hotel kitchen will provide rice. There is a pleasant group of people here—about 15 to 20—many have seen each other several times in different places. Several German med students who came out for a few months of volunteer work. Lots of Kiwis—The Canadians—An American woman semi-retired who worked for P&G in Cincinnati and in South America, a Danish woman who was working in Rwanda.

Curry dinner went smoothly – Sylvain and Daniel did the shopping. 4kg of good beef. Daniel didn't let them throw any bones in. Lots of potatoes and onions and curry – even a vegetarian curry for some who wanted that. Cooked on two small petrol burners that the trekkers provided. Cut up everything [with] pocket knives. First cleaned the work table with Dettol. Tried to coerce some of the women to do the cooking but they adamantly declined. Everyone had been saying how tired they were of rice + beans or beans and rice. Got huge compliments for the work. Started preparing at 2:30 and served at 5:00. It was fun. But I think people would have liked anything including a baboon or a zebra.

Evening we walked over to Railway Hotel well situated on the lake looking much like Kariba. Had my first Primus beer from Zaire. Quite good. — Four beers and a bit of a buzz. Kiwis in form. Interesting concept of work six months and travel. Some stay longer. One had bought a van last year with 8 others and went to Pamplona first of July then around Europe finishing off at Oktoberfest in Munich late September.

                                On the way to Gombe Stream, two crazy Kiwis, Daniel, Dave, Sylvain

                                               Lake Tanganyika shore,    two chimps in tree perch

Found out from Scott an Aussie that his reservations on boat were downgraded to 2nd class so I better go over and check. Everything was in order. Ticket was Tsh 7200 about $15 for 3 days on the boat 1st class. MV Liemba is under repair so we will be travelling on the MV Mwongozo a bit less historic.  The MV Liemba was carried out piece by piece from the coast by the Germans before WWI and assembled probably at Kigoma.  During the war, the Liemba then known as the Graf von Goetzen was cornered by a British craft that had been transported to the lake overland from South Africa.  To avoid capture it was scuttled by the Germans.  The British razed it after the war and refitted it and it is still carrying goods and passengers on Lake Tanganyika all these years.

Tomorrow I’ll try to go to Ujiji to see where Stanley found Livingstone back in 1877.  —It’s a few miles south of Kigoma.

Nov 1. Went to Ujiji by bus in a light rain at noon and it did not stop for 3 1/2 hours. We got drenched and we failed to see the place where Stanley supposedly found Livingstone. Stood under cover in the market. Thought the fish might be washed down the hill. Incredible amounts of water overflowing the open sewers in the village. Met a Rwandese speaking good French—He heard me speaking French with Daniel & Sylvain. He will try to locate an mganga (witch doctor)  with Kibuyu to sell if I return tomorrow. Need to mail some letters, perhaps to write some as well. Some of the 15 who were here yesterday left for Gombe Stream at 3. It just stopped raining for them.

After notes:   

My decision not to go up to Burundi is probably wise. The president had been murdered, October 21, by the army a week before the train trip had started,  Lots of killing going on during a ten year civil war that started with that event.   I'm unable to convey this information to Marie back home.   Knowing of the unrest, she will ask an African priest friend back home about the situation. He confides to her, that if I went up there, I'm probably dead.  She carries that counsel in her head for several weeks until getting a letter from me that I had decided not to go to Burundi.  Instead I headed south to Zimbabwe.   I will recount some of that trip in a later story.

Less than a year later the Rwandan genocide would kick off in April, 1994 when the new Burundian president and the president of Rwanda were both killed when their plane was shot down coming into the Rwandan capital of Kigali.  That event touched off the killing of 800,000 people in a three month period.  Not a great time to be travelling over there.  I would start travelling to those countries again in 2007 to train community mediators in both countries as well as the Congo.  

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                                              MV Liemba  formerley the Graf Von Goetzen

V 1 N. 25 My First Parachute Jump, 1969

 

My First Jump From an Airplane

                                                                         George Brose

            I recall that it was just after December 6, 1969 in Bad Tolz, Germany that I took my first jump from an aircraft.   I remember that date because on our way from the Black Forest  to the training site at Bad Tolz in Bavaria, we saw St. Nicholas walking the streets in the evening and stopping at each house with a light on indicating children were present.  It was the custom in Bavaria that some ogre dressed in a Middle Ages monk’s outfit would interrogate families to see if children had been good or bad.  If good they got a sweet from the lout, and if bad the guy went into Gestapo mode and gave the kids a hiding they would not soon forget. 

Five of us in a military van arrived at the old Wehrmacht military base at the foot of the Alps .  That base had an interesting history before and during WWII.   In researching this article I learned that in 1934  the first commandant of the training school in Bad Tolz called the Junker Schule was Paul Von Lettow Vorbeck, the German officer who had been in command of German forces in East Africa in WWI.  That hit home as I had been stationed in the Peace Corps in those African lands just before entering the military as a draftee.  The Junker Schule was part of the SS but not the horrific Waffen SS.

We  had come to Bad Tolz to be trained in the art of falling or being pushed out of a plane with a parachute attached to our backs and a reserve chute to our chests.    I never thought things might go wrong at first, but when the instructors explained what could go wrong, I began to think, “Oh Mama Mia why did I volunteer for this?”   “For the $55 extra each month” came the voice in the wilderness.   So in two weeks, a group of the  7^th US Special Forces taught us what  back home would have taken three weeks, divided into  ‘ground week, tower week and jump week.  We skipped ‘tower week’.    In that second week we trainees would do our five mandatory jumps from a real aircraft in the air rather than a tower.   Remember this was December, it was in the Alps, it was cold, and it was snowing.   One week less was a blessing.

 

We learned the basic Parachute Landing Fall, PLF, by jumping off a bench onto a concrete floor and rolling to one side or the other landing first on two toes, knees bent , rolling over and letting the calf muscle take the next hit and work our way up the thigh, rib cage, and shoulder.  The fun name for this type of landing was  ‘two toes and a nose’.   If we banged the ground with our helmet we immediately got ten push ups to do.  I can assure you that a PLF will give you a very tired neck which after about ten jumps from  a bench will not keep that helmet from banging the concrete.    A thousand push ups later we moved on to the swing landing trainer which was a set up about ten feet high.  You stepped off a platform and being suspended by ropes and pulleys  were gradually lowered while swinging and allowed to hit the ground fairly hard.  The rate of descent was controlled by the instructor.  Eventually they just let go of the rope and let you fall onto the frozen ground that in summer had been sawdust but was now hard as concrete and terribly rutted as well, so the landings were really bruising to the legs.  

 

During that week we did not get the usual harassment associated with parachute training, I think because the instructors just didn’t care.  They had families, it was Christmas, all the wrong reasons for going light but I consider myself very lucky to have been trained that way.  Needless to say I also didn’t mind that it was only one week and then we jumped five times in the second week. 

One other little tidbit,  the commanding officer, an American, had the incredibly Germanic name  Lt. Colonel Ludwig Feistenhaimer.  Affectionately known as Mad Ludwig. 

 

Anyway first jump time came.  We received our briefing, selected a chute and strapped it on.  The guys who packed the parachutes were called ‘riggers’ and theirs was a very special profession.   One of their privileges was they got to wear red caps instead of the time worn olive drab.  They also did not get harassed by anyone associated with jumping, because they were they guys who packed your chute.  When officers came by before a jump to get their chute, they always chose their own.  They would never take a chute a rigger handed them.  Never know if that rigger had it in for you and gave you a badly packed chute, eh Sir?  I wasn’t worried, because I was a lowly Specialist Fifth Class, trained by the Army as a translator of Goethe’s tongue though I wasn’t trained well enough to read Goethe’s works.  Still haven’t. 

Our planes that we would jump from were WWII vintage, the old Gooney Birds or C-47’s.   Twin engine, piston driven, as reliable as any aircraft in the world.  Our briefing before our jump went over what happens in case of emergency.  The main emergency that they could think of telling us was what to do if the static line that is attached to the plane and pulls your chute out of the pack as you fall away from the aircraft fails to break and release you and you find you are being towed at ninety miles an hour (top speed) behind the aircraft.  You actually have a choice if you recall the briefing.  If you wish to be cut loose and try out your reserve chute, you need to put your hands on your head to signal to the Jump Master to cut your line. You fall and then deploy your reserve by pulling on the D ring or handle on the reserve.   There is no back up to your reserve if it does not deploy.  At that point you are FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition).   Is there a Plan B?  Yes, there is.  The Army always has a plan B.

Plan B.   The jump master then told us the details of plan B.   Initially Plan B sounds reasonable.  You do nothing, you land with the plane.  But…..you will be outside the plane being towed behind it.  No coffee, tea, or milk will be served.   The jump master says he will pull your static line in toward the plane with you attached to the end of it, but he won’t be able to get you into the plane.  On this snowy, icy day he did mention that the runway where the C-47 will be landing will have a lot of ice on it and you  will probably slide very easily behind the aircraft.  Gee, sort of like water skiing in the winter at maybe 70 mph behind an aircraft on the ground.     If it happens I think I will choose the first option.      

Any other instructions Mr. Jump Master?    Just a few, remember if you are coming down in the forests around here, keep your feet together.  You do not want a tree going up your rectum.  Yes, Mr. Jump Master.  At that point you could not have gotten a darning needle up my rectum with jar of axle grease to aide the attempt. 

So “Off we went into the wild blue yonder”  as the old song contrives to make this all seem like fun.  Really that’s an old Air Force pilots’ song.   The paratrooper’s song it “We Have a Rendezvous with Destiny”.   You are never sure what is your destiny until you land safely.   It was incredibly noisy in the plane,  we hardly had time to think before, during or after take off.   Everything in those first jumps is done by rote action that you learned during ground training.  Only after five or six jumps do you start thinking about what is going on before and during a jump.   The aircraft wound it’s way up to 1200 feet on that dark grey day over the Bavarian countryside.  I hardly had time to look out a window to see the mountains before the Jump Master signaled with his hands that we should  “Stand Up” , second signal “Hook Up”.   This meant that we should connect our static line with the clip on the end onto the cable going through the plane.   By this time fifteen or so jumpers are on their feet, trying to keep their balance, trying not to piss their pants, and looking at the open door near the tail of the plane.  The Jump Master now signals us to move toward the door.  All this time a red light has been shining until we are on the approach to the drop zone.   As we get over the drop zone, the light turns green and we are going out the door one at a time.  We have been taught to put our hands on the sides of the door and project ourselves outward.  If you don’t project yourself you will be too close to the plane and get a thumping on the fuselage as you go away.    No problem today.  I’m out that door like a bird out of cage.  It’s windy and cold, I count to three or four by thousands and look up and see a beautiful site.  My parachute is open, and I am drifting slowly toward the snow covered ground.  The silence is peaceful.  The next jumpers are too far away to talk to or yell at.  I look down, no trees to contend with, just float down to that snow covered pasture.  Wait, is there  something out of synch here?   There are three feet of snow on the ground, I know, but that snow looks very discolored.  It looks rather yellowish  brown.    WTF?   I am about to learn that the Bavarian farmers are practicing an age old tradition of spraying their fields with a mixture of cow dung and urine that is collected in the barns.  The smell wafts up as I descend closer and closer to my first landing, and suddenly I’m down on the ground with no injury hitting into those three feet of snow.  But I am covered in the spray of those German cattle droppings and kidney effluent mess on the surface of that snow.   Yuk.   But as trained, I keep my mouth shut, I don’t eat yellow brown snow, and I gather up my parachute and put it in the bag we carried with us and start hiking back to a truck waiting at the edge of the field to take us back to our barracks.  We all are smelling like the proverbial Rose of Sharon. 

The stench in our barracks is strong and there is no place to take our outerwear to be washed.  We go through the week with those ripe uniforms.  The Special Force barracks have not smelled like this ever.  We complete our five jumps and are deemed to now be paratroopers in good standing and our paychecks will reflect such.   Over the next year and a half I will have twenty-two more jumps, sometimes from helicopters, sometimes from German planes, and or one or two occasions from a KC 130 jet powered craft.  The brotherhood of paratroopers lasts for life.  Everyone else in the military is known to us as a ‘Leg’.  We know two things.  Jumping from an aircraft is the greatest thrill you can have with your pants on.  And what comes out of the sky besides bird shit is paratroopers. 

                             The author about to slide out of a CH 119 over Malmsheim, Germany

                    The guy standing above me Captain Scheer (origin Switzerland) had jumped at night into North Viet Nam and did reconnaissance and walked out to South Viet Nam.  

  Chopper coming into landing zone, Malmsheim.   German soldiers getting ready.  In 1969, some of these guys were WWII combat vets, having jumped into Crete.  

Ground treats

Out the back door of a big chopper

Two dudes on a Rendezvous with Destiny

(l )David Himmestein  (r) George Brose