Riding the Rails of Despair- The Conclusion

With barely enough room to breathe, let alone go to the bathroom if we wanted to, which we didn’t, the train continued to chug along towards our destination. 6 more hours of Riding the Rails of Despair.


Breakfast consisted of bread, apples, little, fake yogurts bought along the way, and hard boiled eggs we had brought with us. I personally hate that kind of breakfast. In fact, normally I don’t eat breakfast at all, and would rather wait until I’m good and HUNGRY around 11:00 to eat. And then, I want a nice hot, big meal. But I digress. Breakfast was paltry, but satisfied the kids and The Water Guy. Actually, it satisfied all but one of the kids, which introduces our final, tragic chapter of this tale. Roo woke up feeling quite punky, and at first we chalked it up to just a bad night’s sleep. That’s certainly easy enough to deal with; just go back to sleep, we encouraged. She tried. Really she did.


But it was not to be. Maybe the stale air of ripening melons was making her queasy; maybe it was a classic case of claustrophobia? All I know, is that in the course of 10 minutes she turned from pale to a pale shade of chartreuse that a mother always knows is a really bad sign of impending doom. And when there is impending doom, a mother’s brain begins to plot her strategy. Once in a while, though, the mother’s brain lacks the necessary time it needs to strategize adequately or completely. (I'm sure my pathetic lack of coffee also had something to do with this.) In these cases, raw reflex goes into action. As Roo straddled the Vomit Comet to take a ride, I instinctively opened the plastic bag, that I had time enough in my few strategizing moments, to grab.


Not a moment too soon either! Thankfully, she hadn’t eaten so there wasn’t much there. Enough, however, to add another dimension to the already overpowering stench mixture of dirty toilet, rotting veggies, smoked fish, cigarette smoke, and BO. Nice. 6 hours of a barfing kid to add to my stress of not enough room to take a walk, not enough facilities to clean her up, not enough sleep during the night, and 4 other kids who needed to potty occasionally. It would have been fine if this had been a “do it once and get it over with affair”, but sadly, she was really sick. Sick enough, that she hurled for several hours. So what’s a parent to do??


If anything, we have learned to be creative in a crisis. In the little area that shares the entrance to the toilet, there is a window with a tiny bench, under which the trash bin is located, next to a window that DOES open partially. We took up residence there for the next 3 hours, armed with all the plastic bags we could find. One after the other, we hucked those babies right out the window onto the Steppe. Now something you need to understand about trash and OTHER “waste”. .. the toilet has a hole for flushing. Actually, the term “flush” on a train on the Steppe, doesn’t involve water and pipes at all. It involves a tiny bit of water and a direct line to the track. Ever wanted to take a walk along the tracks?? You would NOT want to do that here. Garbage?? Every few hours, the conductor takes the bags of junk and hucks those too, right out the doors at the end of his car. Stewardship of the land and responsible disposal of waste is a very low priority here, and is certainly one of those things that grieves me even to this day. I long for clean spaces, free of litter!


Finally finished with that awful trauma, she lay back down and was able to rest for the remainder of our journey. The rest of us needed to start the process of packing and gathering our bedding to turn in. We packed up our toiletries, and changed back into our street clothes. I forgot to mention that everyone traveling by rail, will board the train, then immediately change into their comfies. For ladies, this means a velour housecoat of sorts with socks and slippers. Men don a sweatsuit. I stripped all the beds and made 6 neat bundles of sheets, pillow case and hand towel, then hauled each one up the long corridor to the hand over to the conductor. Locating all our own bags, and getting them together was quite a challenge with 36 melons sharing our space. I resented this grievous intrusion of my already limited space! But we accomplished getting it all on one bed and prepared to disembark.



In fact, the moment the train ground to a halt, it seemed as if a gigantic weight was lifted off my weary soul. Heavily laden with backpacks, boxes, and bags, we made our way to the taxis and ultimately home. It was a journey to remember, and only just now a memory that we can start to poke fun at.