One lot travels in absolute comfort, for the other it’s just a means to get home

The train thunders into the station, its horn blaring. The raucous entry serves to announce its arrival for those boarding and those that need to move out of its way.

Passengers who, already have their tickets at the Imara Daima Railway Station, prepare to board it.

They make their way down a makeshift structure that serves as a stair down the platform and climb the three horizontal rungs leading into the carriages.

Once inside the carriage. It is evident that a great deal of thought went into the design, from the patterned steel plates covering the floor to the yellow straphangers in the Rift Valley Railways’ corporate colours.

A guard from Gyto Security Company walks the length of the carriage, closing and opening the windows at intervals. At first, this looks like an idle preoccupation and appears random without method but with time a pattern emerges.

Each coach has two entrances/exits, and is equipped with a fire extinguisher and first-aid kit. There are also grab bars for people with physical disabilities.

There are 30, wipe clean, plushy upholstered chairs lining the length of the coach are just like those you would find at an office or a private hospital’s waiting room and 100 straphangers. Overhead are light bulbs and an air filtering system.

THE SCENIC ROUTE

Soon, the train sets off for the city centre in what is the shortest, safest and most scenic routes.

The journey is one that offers a glimpse into the heart of Nairobi’s Eastlands. From Syokimau, a growing surburb mostly comprising recently built homes, it takes you through empty swathes of land, Imara Daima, Mukuru kwa Njenga slums, and the city’s Industrial Area.

As the train makes its way, you get to see the city’s contradictory nature. For every lofty, airy apartment, there is almost an equal number of closely packed flats teetering into the sky.

A river of green, slimy water and human waste runs a short distance from the General Motors where they have an effluent purification plant. On the banks of the river, lush sugarcane stalks compete with robust reeds for space.

The scene obligingly changes revealing structures of rusty corrugated iron sheets, cartons, wood and polythene.

Every few metres, there is a church or school sometimes both share a compound. These give way to crowded flats, where windows open into walls.

Some pigs roll around in the muck as a white goat watches over her playful kid as they browse on a mountain of plastic and polythene.

Further on, a pile of tyres lies next to a concrete-making facility near a garage and a mkokoteni stand.

In the face of Kenyans’ enterprising spirit schools and churches appear to be winning the race.

As the train chugs along, most passengers are busy on their phones. The cadre of passengers varies depending on the time.

The first train, which leaves Syokimau at 6:50 am and arrives in Nairobi at 7:30, mainly transports office workers. 

The men tend are mostly in conservative suits and ties; the women are well groomed, oftentimes with matching shoes and handbags.

Many appear anxious to get to town. You can almost picture them trembling before a disapproving boss with an eye on the clock when they reach the office. They are generally young, with a number of couples sporting shiny, new wedding rings.

The second train, which leaves Syokimau at 9:15 am, is for the more laid back. They are more relaxed and look like middle- to upper-level employees, artistic types or people running their own businesses with the luxury of time.

The students are hard to miss, with their snazzy smartphones, earphones in place as their thumbs move at dizzying speeds across the screen.

One young man, with the last vestiges of teenage insouciance, carries on a lewd and explicit conversion on whatsapp with 3 different girls and double taps away on Instagram. I am mortified and frantically look around to see if anyone sees the scandal written on my face.

Another, a girl, stares in the empty space haughtily avoiding eye contact with anyone wearing this inscrutable look that ensures the seats next to her remain empty. I silently say a prayer for parents with teenagers in this digital age.

The Syokimau train was launched in November 2012, and the novelty is just wearing off. For all its creature comforts, the journey is fraught with dangers.

While offering an alternative from the legendary traffic jams that plague Mombasa road and salvation from the twins of misery for every motorist--boda bodas and heavy trucks—it transforms a normal commute which takes an average of two hours at peak time to one of a maximum of 40 minutes when the train has been good.

There are many things than can go wrong and causing a delays, and when this happens there are few alternatives besides taking a hike.

The return journey starts at 5:50 pm with the departure of the first train that returns to depart again at 7:50pm. To the train regulars, experience or popular lore has advised against sitting against the window.  “Slum residents throw stones at the passing train that sometimes sound like gunshots,” Patrick Kivindyo recalls one such hair-raising incident.

“Some stones were hurled at the train and we were all scared. One person quickly lay motionless on the floor until the commotion ended. It was hilarious!” he recalls.

It is this sort of mischief that causes the RVC to station guards to ensure their passengers came to no harm. That is why they will be closing and shutting the windows along the commute.

Outside the Nairobi Railway station, there are armed para-military types with big guns.

As the train pulls away from the station, it sways gently from side to side, almost like a gentle hand rocking a cradle, and a few tired commuters nod off.

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EMBAKASI ROUTE

If planning to take the train, you can expect a surge of adrenaline. The train will serve as the best time keeper you never asked for. You will walk, you will run and you will wait. Mostly you will wait on your feet.

The new railway stations are as modern as they come with disclaimers to not to sit on the platform. The benches can seat about 40 at a time for a train that expects hundreds. It may or may not leave on time. But it is better to be early than late as I found out recently.

Obviously running late, I cut a conversation midsentence and powerwalked from Kimathi Street, dodging the human traffic of jaywalkers on the city streets. My brisk walk notwithstanding, I could hear the first evening train whistling away and closed gates met my approach.

“Sorry madam the train has just left,” a helpful guard informs me as she blocks my advance.

ANY TRAIN

On a whim, I decided I would not take a matatu, neither would I wait for two hours in town for the next train. There and then I decide to take any available train.

“This is the Syokimau commuter train station. To board the Rift Valley Railways, take the other entrance.” She helpfully points a few metres to a place where there wasn’t an entrance in sight.

“Where?” I ask.

 “Let me take you,” she says.

 A short distance away, she says we have arrived.  There is a long line of beige khaki-clad men and women hawking tickets.

I approach the lady who cheerful calls out, “Come baby girl!” and ask for a ticket to Embakasi.

I pay Sh40, take the pre-printed ticket and walk through a body scanner which I discover is an entrance as well as an exit. No security in sight.

I join the waiting commuters on the platform as we wait for our train. It stands on the second track from the entrance and we have to board one train and walk across the coaches and climb out before getting into our train.

The train is on the second track from the entrance, so we have to go through the train on the first track to get to it. There’s a scramble at the door and someone warns the women to watch their bags.

ALL ABOARD

I cling to my handbag as I climb the rungs into the carriage and find a restaurant-like seating arrangement. One side has two seats while the other has three. They are arranged facing each other, and also back to back. I immediately understand how a lice or bedbug infestation can wreak havoc.

The floor is plywood whose veneer is ripped off in many places exposing the brown pulp beneath. The light bulbs overhead have been stripped away and the air filter looks chocked. The windows do not open.

There are no straphangers, so once the seats have been taken, latecomers have to jostle for space in between the facing seats to stand where a coffee table should be, staring out between the sitting commuters.

Others stand on the aisle and lean against the seats as they hold onto the luggage rack above.

Hawkers selling sweets, groundnuts and a wide array of trinkets call attention to their wares as the train fills up. I silently pray for one with a strong body odour to leave the coach.  The compartment is packed and the smell of sweat is overwhelming. Most people grip their phones tightly and stare into space. It is mostly quiet.

The conductors assign themselves different coaches and, like matatu conductors, they carry the day’s taking with them and manually record them in their notebooks. They walk around checking every ticket, tearing off a tiny piece in the corner.

I wonder what would happen if someone tried to take ride without paying.

The train lurches, starts and stops. Then, without a warning it starts again. The noise it is making is nothing like I have heard before but no one appears alarmed.

The girl next to me sends a text to “siz”, asking if she can send her Sh20 airtime, which she will refund “in the evening”, although it is already evening. She giggles as she and her friend pout to take selfies on her Chinese phone.

A short distance ahead, the train jerks and stops, and the girls wonder whether it is about to stall “like that other time”.  Before they can answer, it starts, chugs and makes another sudden stop. A few passengers alight. The girls wonder whether that is a scheduled stop or if this time the train actually has a problem. They appear to be frequent commuters, but still can’t understand the train’s unpredictable behaviour.

A colleague who occasionally uses this train told me that the morning train, which is usually full, stalls in the middle of nowhere from time to time so they have to disembark and walk.

They do not complain and from the look of things, they don’t seem to be bothered enough to demand an improvement in the service.

The train follows the same track as the Syokimau one until the Makadara Railway Station, where it branches to a different track that passes frighteningly close to makeshift shops and houses and once stops just behind a matatu stage.

With the discovery that there were no stations on the way, I decided to ride to the Embakasi Village which is the train’s last stop.

My colleague informed me that the train parks without fanfare in a wide field.

As we made our way past flats announcing twice as big flats to let at half the prices of the aspirational ones along the Syokimau route, I spot Taj Mall and I decide to end my journey there.

The train stops next to a puddle with thriving reeds and I jump out landing on a well-trod footpath along the rail.

I look up and decide this was indeed a quick way to get decapitated and I walk further away and head for the nearest matatu stage.

**********

HOME SWEET, TRAIN

The next day, I make the return journey on the Syokimau  train, which leaves Nairobi at 5.50 pm. But first, I have to go through the mandatory security check. There are two women doing it; one examines the contents of the passengers’ bags while the other does a body check.

One woman has a record four bags: a handbag, lunch bag, shoe bag and computer bag.

Some “chivalrous” men, believers in the ladies first principle, stand behind the women and reluctantly join the men’s non-existent queue manned by one guard after being nudged.

Inside, the cashier dispenses a swipe ticket and reloads the A card, a prepaid payment card that allows users to pay one once and use the train until the payment runs out.

Once you have a ticket, you can go to the platform. When the train is on time, you can board it immediately. And before it fills up, you can walk the length of the train as connecting doors open from one coach to the next.

Once the seats are taken, women coyly drape shawls and self-consciously balance bags on laps to counter the skirts riding up their thighs.

A voice over the intercom makes some announcement as the train pulls out of the station. There are no ticket checks on this train.

Everyone settles in middle class entitlement. I notice the shoes still retain their high shine at the end of the day; whiffs of designer perfumes still waft in the air. The lights overhead are working and the person on my right is reading JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. 

Across the aisle, a woman is typing away on her laptop while another is making a floor rug with the colourful yarn she has laid out neatly on the seats next to her.

The train arrives at my stop, which doesn’t have a platform.

By now the regulars know how to jump gracefully without dropping whatever luggage they have. It is very amusing to see a newbie trying to climb down. More entertaining if they wore a small dress and high shoes.

Someone from the rail company collects the tickets, I’m not sure if to recycle them or if to prevent littering.

As I walk out of the station, Mombasa road overhead is at standstill.

Track champions and marathon greats from past and present welcome commuters from the mural on the wall.

Frozen in time in their moment of glory, I check my time, 25 minutes. I smile and feel like a champion.

FYI

• The Syokimau train passenger service is a joint venture between Kenya Railways and Rift Valley Railways (RVR). Kenya Railways does the commercial aspects, i.e ticketing, maintenance of the track and coaches while Rift Valley Railways deals with the running of the train.

• The locomotive used on the service was manufactured in the 1980s. However, newer ones were introduced this year; they were manufactured in 1984 but were refurbished

• The train has 10 coaches, up from the seven it started with. Each coach seats 80 passengers and accommodates 50 standing passengers.

• A private security firm guards the passengers in each coach, in addition to the railway police. Both passenger and vehicles are checked before passengers are allowed into a station.

• So far, the train has an accident-free record.

Source: P&L consulting (PR for RVR)